Nashville Post Boom 2023

BOOM 2023

BANK ON IT THE EAST BANK PROMISES TO BE THE DEVELOPMENT STORY OF THE NEXT DECADE

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BEST-L AID PL ANS Is a comprehensive rewrite of Nashville’s zoning code overdue?

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WOODWORKING 101 City primed to embrace mass timber after legislation

10 BANK ON IT East Bank promises to be development story of next 10 years

16 HEADED OUT Former Mayor John Cooper takes stock of four-year term

19 RENOVATE, REVIVE Two developers convert low-end hotels into attainable housing

20 PARDON OUR PROGRESS

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ALAN ASCHENBRENNER

Vanderbilt’s sports facilities updates will require patience

22 IN THE MIX How developers of two mixed-use campuses decided what went where

24 PIPELINE Restaurant development resumes in force after pandemic pause

26 SIDE BY SIDE Newcomers in city’s thriving coworking market signal permanent trend

28 MAKING SPACE Metro entities entice landlords to house homeless, low-income tenants

30 LONG ABSENCE The changing face of shortterm rentals in Nashville

32 IN PL AIN SIGHT These prominent parcels sit empty — to Nashvillians’ detriment

34 MARATHON PACE Marathon Village area is a hive of residential development activity

ANGELINA CASTILLO

36 ON TRACK WeGo Star route offers chance to spur transitoriented development

38 COMPLETE CAMPUS Architect David Bailey discusses Lawson High School design

40 BACKGROUND NOISE How to design acoustics for buzzy restaurants

NASHVILLEPOST.COM | BOOM 2023

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Bank run editorial At the Post, we’ve spent years reporting on the East Bank. The stretch of largely vacant land just across the Cumberland River from Nashville’s rocket-fueled downtown entertainment district has long been the subject of big ideas: from River North down to the scrapyard, an eyesore that a succession of mayors has sought to relocate so that something more appealing can take its space.

The pace is only picking up, and we expect to continue reporting on development there for years to come. In this issue of our annual Boom magazine, focused on real estate, you’ll get a comprehensive look at new Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s plans for the East Bank (page 10) and hear from former Mayor John Cooper about his vision for the area (page 16). You’ll hear from lawmakers, city officials, real estate professionals and others invested in the East Bank.

But the East Bank is not the whole story. This magazine covers development issues across the city — from the conversion of run-down motels into apartments (page 19) to the post-pandemic return of new independent restaurant development (page 24) to the group of people advocating for a complete overhaul of the city’s zoning regulations (page 5).

I hope you’ll find something interesting — and learn something new — in the pages to come. If you don’t, our inboxes are always open for story ideas.

Stephen Elliott, Editor selliott@fwpublishing.com

EDITOR Stephen Elliott MANAGING EDITOR William Williams STAFF WRITERS John Glennon, Hannah Herner, Nicolle S. Praino CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Chris Chamberlain, Lena Mazel

art & production ART DIRECTOR Mary Louise Meadors STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Angelina Castillo, Eric England, Hamilton Matthew Masters GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Sandi Harrison, Tracey Starck PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Christie Passarello

publishing PUBLISHER Heather Cantrell Mullins SENIOR ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS MANAGERS Jennifer Trsinar Jezewski, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Niki Tyree, Keith Wright ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS MANAGERS Teresa Birdsong, Maddy Fraiche, Allie Muirhead SALES OPERATIONS MANAGER Chelon Hill Hasty ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS ASSOCIATES Audry Houle, Jack Stejskal ASSOCIATE ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Kailey Idziak

events MAJOR EVENTS DIRECTOR Olivia Moye Britton MARKETING DIRECTOR Robin Fomusa SALES AND EVENTS SPECIALIST Alissa Wetzel

circulation CIRCUL ATION AND SUBSCRIPTION DIRECTOR Gary Minnis

business

On the cover Nashville’s East Bank Photo by Aerial Innovations Southeast

PRESIDENT Mike Smith CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Todd Patton CREATIVE DIRECTOR Elizabeth Jones IT DIRECTOR John Schaeffer SPECIAL PROJECTS COORDINATOR Susan Torregrossa

FW Publishing, LLC OWNER Bill Freeman 210 12th Ave. S., Suite 100 Nashville, TN 37203 nashvillepost.com Nashville Post is published by FW Publishing, LLC. Advertising deadline for the next issue is February 20. For advertising information, call Heather Cantrell Mullins at 615-844-9252. For subscription information, call 615-844-9307. Copyright © 2023 FW Publishing, LLC.

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October 25, 2023 Dear Chamber Member, In collaboration with our media partner, FW Publishing, I invite you to enjoy this complimentary issue of Nashville Post Magazine. We are excited to offer this great benefit to you as a valued chamber member.

Thank you for your continued investment in the Nashville Area Chamber and your ongoing support of our mission, to create economic prosperity by facilitating community leadership.

Warm regards,

Ralph Schulz President and CEO Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce

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Gensler is a global architecture, design, and planning firm with 53 locations and more than 7,000 professionals networked across the Americas, Europe, Greater China, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. Our Nashville office works across numerous practice areas spanning workplace strategies, education, healthcare, industrial, repositioning, professional services, and cities and urban design. We are guided by our mission to create a better world through the power of design, and to bring innovative strategies and solutions to help shape Nashville as it becomes a global city of the future.

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Connected Neighborhoods are Integral for Nashville to Thrive Over the last decade people have migrated back to cities that provide lifestyle choices and amenities that allow for true live/ work balance.

As one of the fastest growing cities in the country, Nashville, has seen a 1.5% growth in population year over year since 2010.

This influx of residents with a desire to live and work within the city limits has fed urban development on a city-wide scale that has resulted in a dramatic increase in development density and opportunity for growth and revitalization.

As we continue to develop great cities like Nashville, consideration must be given to the relationship between new development and the need to encourage and enhance neighborhood character and a connected urban experience.

One of Gensler’s 10 Meta Trends from Deign Forecast 2023 focuses on the importance of “Reclaiming the Experience”. This suggests that providing a vibrant mix of programmatic amenities within a city will no longer be enough. The next generation of urban residents are focused on finding and curating a lifestyle experience that includes identity, choice, nuance, and purpose.

Successful Growth Approach New development can support the existing fabric of a city by revitalizing vacant city blocks and connecting existing communities to create an integrated, walkable urban experience. Fifth and Broadway is a successful example of this strategy and was a catalyst for this type of large-scale development in Nashville.

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Supplying a multitude of housing options in developing communities also allows people to remain in place and encourages growth and community development. As part of the Edgehill Community Plan, Gensler is working with the city of Nashville to develop a neighborhood character overlay that will preserve the historical significance of this legacy neighborhood while still allowing for new development to enhance the existing community.

What the Future Holds To create a more balanced and thriving city with active, connected neighborhoods, it must offer choices for people of all ages, races, and income levels. The idea of “neighborhoods of choice” promotes economic attainment regardless of status, with a range of options for residents to thrive through different life stages. We, as architects, are evolving with this model and taking what we’ve learned from the Gensler Design Forecast.

Close collaboration with developers, public agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and institutions at all stages, from vision plans and feasibility studies, is paramount to ensure our neighborhoods maintain their character, while also achieving the overall strategic growth plans for a city such as Nashville as it honors the past and looks to the future.

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Best-laid plans Is a comprehensive rewrite of Nashville’s zoning code overdue?

BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT

lot has happened in Nashville since Jan. 1, 1998, when Metro’s current zoning code, Title 17 of the Metro Code of Ordinances, took effect.

Neither the Nashville Predators nor the Tennessee Titans were playing in Nashville yet. The downtown skyline had recently seen the addition of one of its most iconic pieces, the AT&T Building, but otherwise shared little in common with the wall of towers that now defines it. Neighborhoods that now are filled with popular restaurants and commercial centers were sleepy and under-built.

But the rules for how the city continues to unfold remain in place 25 years later, tweaked over time with overlays, specific plan districts, carve outs and other exceptions.

Now, a growing chorus of people — on the left and the right, in government and outside of it — say it’s time to rewrite the zoning code in order to bring Nashville into a future where there is enough housing both for those who already live here and the dozens moving to town every day.

A practical complaint about the current code is related to the layers and layers of additions that have been added over the years. Mayor Freddie O’Connell calls the zoning map “pockmarked.” Metro Zoning Administrator Joey Hargis says the length of the city’s zoning code has doubled since it was instituted.

In 2019, Metro auditors issued a report detailing the rise in the use of specific plan, or SP, zoning, through which developers and the city negotiate rules specific, in some cases, to just one project. Dozens are approved every year. AudiA

HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

tors reported in 2019 that, due to the increase in development and the use of SPs, Metro did not have the staffing to keep an eye on whether developers were keeping their promises.

“No one oversees the entire specific plan process from start to finish ensuring the status of the project is being updated and communicated to each party involved,” the auditors wrote.

Critics of the current code also say that it prioritizes low-density development of the sort that was more popular and appropriate in 1998, forcing developers trying to build the density necessary to affordably house people and create public transit efficiencies to seek exceptions — a timely and costly process that turns some off. And it’s not just progressives advocating for the changes that could bring about more affordable housing and a better transit network.

“On the right, you’re seeing more and more attention paid to zoning. It’s essentially a limitation on property rights, … an arbitrary government limit on the supply of housing,” says Ron Shultis, director of policy and research at the conservative Beacon Center of Tennessee,

which recently published an atlas and report outlining connections between zoning and housing costs in Middle Tennessee. “If given the chance to build more reasonable entrylevel housing, at least some builders will rush to meet that demand.”

Several states in 2023 passed major zoning reform laws aimed at inducing housing construction, including conservative Montana and liberal Washington. The Biden administration this summer announced it is offering funding to local governments that want to rewrite their zoning codes to incentivize more housing.

O’Connell says a rewrite of Title 17 was on his agenda during his second term on the Metro Council, but the ambitious undertaking was derailed by the tumult of the most recent term, especially the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m not the only former or current councilmember looking at a series of community plans that are pockmarked by specific plan districts, [which] suggests to me a zoning code that has not kept up with patterns of growth, community interests and community concerns,”

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O’Connell says. “I hope the Planning Department, Planning Commission and the council will be looking at this.”

One such councilmember is Quin Evans-Segall, newly elected to an at-large seat on the Metro Council. An attorney and former member of Metro’s Industrial Development Board, Evans-Segall campaigned in part on reforming the zoning code — not exactly political red meat.

“We’re looking to make the density we’re already building legal so variance is by exception and not rule,” she says.

According to Evans-Segall and others, the process of rewriting the zoning code could take several years, as it did the last time the city did it. Small reforms could come before the full rewrite. The first year of the process, Evans-Segall says, could include community conversations about NashvilleNext, the planning document adopted in 2015. Take what still works from that document, make changes to outdated pieces, and codify the result.

Emily Lamb, a former Metro

land-use attorney now in private practice with Thompson Burton, says the process, a “pretty massive undertaking,” could take three to five years and would likely require the services of a consultant with experience in rewriting zoning codes. She says the public engagement process could start broad and then drill down on more specific debates in different communities.

“Nashville has changed a ton in 25 years,” Lamb says. “Some of the things written in 1998 are not necessarily applicable to Nashville in 2023, as well as where do we think Nashville is going to be in 2050.”

Three members of the local government and land-use team at law firm Holland & Knight — Jon Cooper, Doug Sloan and Quan Poole, all former Metro officials — caution that the process may be harder than it looks. Cooper calls a rewrite “a herculean task” for Metro staff. Sloan says city leaders should look at refining rather than rewriting it.

“While you can rewrite one section, you have to be mindful that

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it is a domino effect,” Poole says. “One thing you do here is going to impact another section of the code. When you undergo such a substantial change, you have to be mindful of the different sections and what the interplay is between the various sections in the zoning code.”

Another person offering some skepticism is former Mayor John Cooper (no relation to Jon Cooper), a real estate developer before he was elected to the office in 2019.

“The zoning discussion is complex because it is very easy to hide an industry subsidy in the guise of good public policy,” Cooper says.

“Often what happens when you add density is you’re not lowering the prices to people. You’re just increasing the value of the real estate.”

Most advocates of rewriting the zoning code acknowledge there is stuff to like about the existing rules, especially items that have been added since its adoption, like the Downtown Code (adopted in 2010) and the elimination of parking minimums in the city’s Urban Zoning Overlay (adopted in 2022).

“There’s a huge amount of progress that’s

been made in 25 years, but that doesn’t mean it’s not time to redo it,” says David Kleinfelter, a Reno & Cavanaugh attorney and city planner who served on the Metro Council in the ’90s.

A key factor for Kleinfelter, a founder of advocacy group Walk Bike Nashville, is the effect a rewrite could have on transit. A zoning regime designed to “keep the bad uses away from the good uses” is “how America developed where everyone had to drive everywhere,” he says, echoing an argument made by Sloan.

“We’re going to have to get serious about putting density on those corridors, and the community is going to have to embrace the density right outside their doors that requires,” Sloan says, specifically noting the need for denser housing along Murfreesboro Road.

Adds Shawn Henry, a former Metro city planner now an attorney with Tune, Entrekin & White: “Any rezoning effort in Nashville is going to be shortsighted unless the zoning map is similarly changed in a way that intensifies and upzones transit corridors so that more stuff can be built where people can afford and ride transit.”

Rewriting the city’s zoning code is a big lift. Nashville’s land-use officials and lawmakers will be consumed in the near-term with the planning required for the East Bank. Plus, there’s the normal flow of development approvals that already consume much of their time.

O’Connell has said he wants to pursue another go at a citywide referendum for transit funding, another major undertaking that could consume some of the appetite for public meetings and engagement (though, as multiple advocates note, the related transit and zoning conversations could be conducted in tandem).

Still, some Nashville leaders are convinced that the time and energy required of a comprehensive rewrite of Metro’s zoning rules must be expended.

“Sometimes people think because it’s hard, we can’t do it,” says Evans-Segall. “I don’t think we can’t do things just because they’re hard. It actually means we have to do them. I don’t think we will ever have housing affordable to most Nashvillians if we don’t fix how we’re building.”

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1030 Music Row

Out of the woodwork Nashville prepped to embrace mass timber usage after Metro Council legislation

BY WILLIAM WILLIAMS

onstructing buildings with wood has been the norm for thousands of years.

But the use of mass timber is a relatively new construction method. New — but not lacking in what seems like unlimited potential with its environmentally sensitive properties, visual beauty and versatility.

So many possibilities, in fact, that online design publication ArchDaily in 2021 declared mass timber — also called engineered wood and man-made wood — as the building product that will define the “future of American cities.”

The publication noted that 2021 saw multiple milestones related to mass timber, including Oregon becoming the first U.S. state to legalize mass timber high-rise buildings. Not surprisingly, Portland is a leader in the use of C

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mass timber.

In mid-2022, Gensler — the world’s largest architectural firm based on number of employees — published on its website “Is Mass Timber the American South’s Best Kept Secret? Not for Long,” which touts the use of mass timber.

Citing Bernhard Gafner, a partner with Vancouver-based Aspect Structural Engineers, the article notes that mass timber projects undertaken in urban infill locations can yield up to a 90 percent reduction in construction traffic while allowing the builder to operate on a schedule that is 25 percent faster than otherwise.

Furthermore, the Gensler piece — as its title references — stresses the rise in the South of the production and use of mass timber.

Fast forward to 2023 and Nashville has embraced mass timber. Earlier this year, Metro Councilmembers Angie Henderson (who now serves as vice mayor) and Sean Parker co-sponsored successful legislation that allows certain subtypes of mass timber buildings to rise up to 18 stories. The previous maximum allowed number of floors constructed primarily of wood (mass timber or otherwise) was six.

In fact, Parker feels the greater Nashville region can be on the national forefront for

the production and usage of mass timber — which is manufactured by binding wood strands, particles and fibers with adhesives to yield a strong, composite material. The assembled panels of wood are six feet or more in at least one dimension.

“Some of the builders I talked with [while crafting the legislation] were importing materials from the Pacific Northwest or even across the Atlantic Ocean,” he says. “I hope to see more regional production of [mass timber] elements in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.

Southern yellow pine is a fantastic material and we can be producing [it] here in our region. We can lead on this. That means more viable timber farms across the Southeast and more sustainable building materials exported from our region.”

Parker says he wanted to enable more flexible and effective mass timber construction in Davidson County due to three factors.

First, mass timber allows for a more environmentally sustainable construction method than do concrete and steel.

“We do not expect it to replace standard methods, but having it as an option is a step in the right direction,” Parker says. “Production of mass timber elements can sequester carbon

HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

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rather than emit it.”

Second, mass timber construction is often more aesthetically pleasing than the forms and materials used in standard construction methods.

“This is very subjective, but [mass timber] offers an alternative to either the wrapped ‘five over one’ buildings (which combine up to five floors of inexpensive wood-framed construction over a concrete podium) or encased-glass towers,” Parker says.

Third, Nashville’s zoning and construction codes over the years have intersected to yield “dead zones” that disincentivize developers because “zoning entitlements cannot be fully realized,” Parker notes. For example, traditional construction methods, combined with the city’s previous wood-use restrictions, essentially meant developers would opt either for 1) a building of five stories of stick-framed construction over a podium or 2) a structure of 13 or more stories and comprised of concrete or steel. The former approach can be done relatively inexpensively, while the latter is undertaken to maximize profit (with concrete and steel being relatively expensive, “going taller” and creating a more valuable building than otherwise is a legitimate way to financially justify the cost of such materials).

As such, the city has seen few buildings constructed in the seven- to 12-story range.

“Mass timber construction can help level out that difference and make projects of different scales more viable,” Parker says.

To date, Nashville has seen a handful of mass timber structures, with office building 1030 Music Row perhaps the most recognizable. The local office of California-based Panattoni Development Company developed a Music Row site with the building, believed to be the city’s only structure that utilizes crosslaminated timber (CLT) for its elevator shaft (instead of either masonry or shaft-wall assemblies).

Other mass timber buildings include AJ Capital’s Nashville Warehouse Company and Houston-based Hines’ T3 Wedgewood Houston (which is part of The Finery), both located in Wedgewood-Houston.

In addition, the Green Hills-area building housing The Community Foundation is the first to fully utilize CLT for floors and roofs, according to local designer Craig Clark. The other mass timber buildings utilized dowel laminated timber floors, which is more commonly seen.

Clark, a project architect with the Nashville office of Atlanta-based design firm Cooper Carry, says wood brings a beauty to buildings, something that steel and concrete cannot replicate.

“Wood is healthy — not only from an aesthetic perspective, but also from a global one,” Clark says.

“It is the only building material that is naturally occurring and truly renewable. When harvested sustainably, the life cycle of wood creates a continuous supply of building materials. One cubic meter of timber can sequester about one metric ton of carbon dioxide. Steel and concrete give off carbon dioxide, while wood pulls it in and holds on to it.

“Wood is warm, comfortable and healthy,” he adds. “I applaud Councilman Parker and Vice Mayor Henderson. This code change is allowing our city’s developments to be more sustainable.”

Hayne Hamilton, Panattoni senior development manager, says Metro’s recently instituted legislation will allow for mass timber to be considered for many more project types and scales than otherwise, while simultaneously helping Nashville to keep pace with other fast-growing cities that have adopted newer, and less restrictive, building codes.

Of course, with any type wood, there can be concerns not associated with concrete and steel.

For example, when exposed to high-moisture conditions or termites, biodeteriorations and/or fungi decay will occur, thus reducing the structural integrity and durability of wood product as it essentially starts to rot.

In 2022, Joseph Abed, Scott Rayburg, John Rodwell and Melissa Neave reported in their academic work “A Review of the Performance and Benefits of Mass Timber as an Alternative to Concrete and Steel for Improving the Sustainability of Structures” that mass timber buildings are susceptible to wind-driven oscillation due to the wood’s relative flexibility. Such movement can cause discomfort (think sea-sickness) to some people moving about in mass timber buildings.

Panattoni’s Hamilton says mass timber is not suitable for every development company or every project.

“Like any system or product, the project team needs to find the solution right for the building,” he says. “It isn’t one-size-fits-all. Building taller often requires larger [columns and beams] for structural and fire resistance reasons, which affects cost. That has to be balanced with schedule and other project goals.”

Still, he notes mass timber is a very attractive option and that Panattoni would like to undertake an additional mass timber building. Other development companies are pondering using the material for the first time.

“There is widespread interest in mass timber as a building material from speed of construction, sustainability and aesthetics,” Hamilton says. “Consideration in multifamily and industrial projects is gaining traction. The new [Metro] regulations now allow mass timber to compete with traditional concrete and steel on larger-scale projects.”

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BANK ON IT The East Bank promises to be the development story of next decade

BY NICOLLE S. PRAINO AERIAL INNOVATIONS SOUTHEAST

any of Nashville’s peers could never imagine a blank slate like the East Bank — a large swath of city-owned land located directly adjacent to the busy downtown core.

On the way out the door, former Mayor John Cooper’s administration tapped Boston-based The Fallon Company to serve as master developer for Metro’s East Bank property. Now, Mayor Freddie O’Connell and his team begin negotiations with the company as they plan the future of the property to be anchored by a domed stadium for the Tennessee Titans.

O’Connell has named Bob Mendes, the former Metro councilmember who led the council’s special East Bank study committee, for the new role of chief development officer, tasked in part with overseeing East Bank negotiations and development.

“Any sort of negotiation on this scale, there are going to be different levers that people are going to negotiate over,” Mendes says. “I don’t think we’re locked in yet about whether the master development agreement will be the de-

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finitive document or whether there’s flexibility going forward.”

Fallon has proposed options for affordable and market rate housing, retail and office space in addition to hotels, parking, a WeGo transit hub and even space for a new Tennessee Performing Arts Center. One of the company’s main parts of the proposal is the creation of open public spaces like the South Stadium Plaza and the Music City Mile, a pedestrian bridge connecting the Walk of Fame Park on the west side of the river to the future stadium entrance. The plan is for the bridge to anchor the future TPAC and be a space for the arts itself.

Still, Mendes and O’Connell say the Fallon proposal is just that — a proposal.

“I don’t accept it as the East Bank 10 years from now will look exactly like Fallon’s submission, so much as they seem to be on the right track with the park elements, the infrastructure elements, the housing, the overall mix of uses,” O’Connell says.

Adds Mendes: “We’ve had the ability to see

that vision at 100,000 feet, and now is the inflection point that happens to overlap with the change of administrations. …That hard work was always going to start right now.”

Newly elected District 19 Metro Councilmember Jacob Kupin will also play a key role in shepherding development on the East Bank, which was moved into his downtown-centric district as part of redistricting.

“We’ve been in a holding pattern for a while, and you’re going to see the East Bank move much more quickly these next couple of months,” Kupin says.

Private developers with land near the East Bank also know that the real work is about to begin.

“You’re seeing all these dominoes starting to fall, and there’s a real sense of things moving along in a way that maybe you didn’t even see six months ago,” says Jesse Abair, vice president of development at Boston-area-based The RMR Group, which will build the future Station East mixed-use development where a truck stop once sat.

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PIECE BY PIECE

Work is set to begin in earnest on the future Titans stadium next year, and observers expect the timeline to encourage further development in the area.

Fallon has identified three different potential phases of development. Phase one would start in 2025 with plans to conclude in 2027, in line with the opening of the Titans stadium.

Abair says The RMR Group is operating on its own timeline, but his group is also dependent on Metro’s plans for infrastructure upgrades in the area.

“If, in an imaginary world, I had all those pieces in place today, I think we’d move pretty quickly to get our shovels in the ground,” Abair says.

Lucy Kempf, executive director of the Metro Planning Department, says the next steps are going to be easier to manage between the public and private developments because of the overall vision for the area.

“The good news is we have a governing document, and so when we have rezoning our regulatory people look at that plan and say, ‘Yes, we can entertain your rezoning. It needs to generally meet the principles in this plan,’” Kempf says.

While Fallon will oversee development of the nearly 30 acres of Metro land, the area is surrounded by potential private developments.

“Right now, before these projects have moved, we have the most flexibility to make a change,” Kupin says. “As time goes on, our opportunity to make a change or to get things done starts to diminish.”

Abair says his group is awaiting further information about where the future East Bank boulevard will be located, as well as infrastructure upgrades related to transit, CSX railroad tracks and James Robertson Parkway. The teams tasked with overseeing infrastructure plans are beginning to plan key pieces of the overall project — like the boulevard and pedestrian bridge — that must be finalized before other area players can begin planning.

Engineering firm HDR was selected as the program manager that will help coordinate public and private development along the entire East Bank. Metro has selected engineering firm Kimley-Horn to lead utility and infrastructure design for the East Bank.

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“These conversations now with respect to infrastructure are so critical because we have one shot as a group to get it right out of the gate,” Abair says. “Once those pieces are in place, it’s going to be really hard to either unwind or scale up.”

AFFORDABLE AND ACCESSIBLE

“I’ve seen firsthand as the affordability of the city has slipped away,” says Kupin, a residential real estate broker by trade. “I want to be part of the solution instead of watching from afar.”

Despite the ambitious plans, the East Bank will not solve all of the city’s affordable housing needs, he says.

“It’s never going to be enough in this one piece of land,” Kupin says. “I think we can make a big dent in it. We can make a lot of progress in it.”

The district representative says the city and developers will have to find a balance of affordable units and land use that generates income to help the city fund affordable units and other priorities in other parts of the city.

“What’s really amazing about this opportunity is with the Metro-owned land we can have

more control in requiring there to be more affordable housing,” Nashville Civic Design Center CEO Gary Gaston says. “We have the chance as a city to design it as intentionally as we want to create the type of neighborhood that we would all choose to live in.”

Fallon’s proposal includes three possible ways the city could pay for the infrastructure costs on the East Bank. Each would affect how the city gets revenue from the site down the road.

“It’s going to be really important to look at these different scenarios and see what equation works best for short-term versus longterm income and what do we as a city end up paying for,” Kupin says. “We’re going to see a massive increase in our tax base by taking this industrial land and developing it and increasing the properties that are generating tax base revenue for the city.”

Options considered in the Fallon proposal include Metro paying for the infrastructure and getting more revenue on the back end, or the city splitting the infrastructure costs with developers and giving up some revenues going forward.

Ultimately, Kempf says Metro Planning

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Data driven.

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knows it’s important that it has the building blocks to support a place where people want to be.

“It’s for us to ensure that those residential areas are diverse in terms of their type, their footprint and that they can attract a variety of incomes, and that they can be accessible,” she says.

One of the things Kempf is most proud of is the focus on transit and mobility in the plans.

“The vision plan basically established what that grid should be to support development,” Kempf says.

“It’s all in the mobility network.”

Documents from Fallon’s orig-

inal bid estimate final delivery in 2034. The company’s plans include timelines for construction of apartments, retail spaces, offices, parking, plazas, hotels and a stadium village, but Metro officials caution that the plans are preliminary and up for negotiation.

Mendes reiterates that the numbers, timelines and images included in the Fallon proposal are all just a starting point.

“The devil is in the details,” Mendes says. “Mayor O’Connell is committed to having a strong affordable component in the new neighborhood on the East Bank.”

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“There’s just so much that can be done in this dense, tight downtown site that we can get things for the city of Nashville that we’re lacking, and I think will be able to vault us [ahead of ] many of our peer cities,” Gaston adds.

UNPRECEDENTED

“This level of development is pretty much unprecedented in the city,” Gaston says.

Abair, the private developer, says the blank slate on the East Bank is unlike anything else in the country.

“This is a big responsibility when you’re building out new neighborhoods at this scale,” he says. “We want something that the city can be proud of, that we can be proud of, that the public can enjoy. That’s really been a focus.”

Kupin says it’s important to balance public engagement while moving efficiently. He also recognizes that the East Bank was previously part of districts 5 and 6, and he plans to work with representatives from those districts.

“It’s really important for me that this process includes lots of community engagement,” he says. “I think it’s really important that we as a city and a community decide what happens to this space.”

Kempf says she was impressed during interviews with Fallon’s focus on building community with residents.

“That is how you create neighborhoods that feel like they’ve been there for a while and that they connect and are recognizable to Nashvillians,” Kempf says.

Fallon will team with Pillars Development, Holladay Ventures and EDENS as co-developers. Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and EOA Architects are listed as architects for the project. James Corner Field Operations will be the landscape architect and Barge Design Solutions will serve as the civil engineer.

Turner Construction and Polk & Associates Construction, both also involved with construction of the stadium itself, will split the construction management.

“The fundamental design intent is to create a community similar to the European soccer model where stadiums are built within a community fabric,” Fallon stated in its response to Metro. “We envision that at all times the neighborhood is thriving with active streets.”

In addition to a Metro Council committee on the East Bank, the Metro Planning Department has a team dedicated to the development.

Kupin is also optimistic that O’Connell’s time representing District 19 on Metro Council will help him lead on the development.

“You’ve got a lot of people working on this project that really care about Nashvillians and about the city, and making sure that this does

need to be something that generates income and pays for itself and pays for surrounding infrastructure,” Kupin says. “It also needs to be something that the city is really proud of and that people here can access and enjoy.”

Gaston says a goal should be for the East Bank to be a place for people who live in Nashville and not just a tourist destination or extension of Lower Broadway. He thinks that Fallon has heard the city’s wants and he believes the company has the right experience and team to deliver that.

“Now we’ve just got to hold the city and the developer to the plan,” he says. “Now comes the details of making sure that when the buildings are designed, they are designed in a certain way so that it captures the spirit of the master plan.”

O’Connell, Mendes and special projects director Sam Wilcox are among the Metro team working to bring a plan to Metro Council.

“The good news here is this was a reclamation of public land, so we get some choice about how we value that for things the city needs including affordable housing but also for a potential expansion of our property tax base,” O’Connell says. “We’re not at final facts and figures. The project of this quarter is to develop something that has the business and legal components to take a final contract to Metro Council [by the end of the year].”

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On the way out Talking with former Mayor John Cooper about the East Bank, his four years in office and what’s next for Nashville ays before Mayor John Cooper turned over the Metro keys to his successor Freddie O’Connell, the one-term leader of Nashville and former real estate developer sat down with Post editor Stephen Elliott.

In the exit interview, Cooper discussed some of the biggest development projects involving the city, including those in the rearview mirror and those that will continue to unfold without him in the driver’s seat.

D

You’ve spent a lot of time and energy on plans for the East Bank. Do you feel OK about turning that work over to someone else?

I feel good about it because the city is going to have a great future, and the East Bank is going to be one of many sources of excellence going forward. Once you started with Oracle, many things come into play, which means going ahead and doing it, and doing it now is the best choice for the city.

That [future] boulevard where you have transit … I’m grateful for Freddie’s strong support of that. Finally, you’ve got the northsouth connector that the city never had, and it’s not requiring us to build a tunnel.

That’s part of your downtown core. That’s

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an incredible asset, including all the way to the 100 acres of land trapped in flat parking lots next to a stadium for 17 years, which in one path is a valueless thing, which, yes, technically Metro owns.

It’s a billion dollars of value coming back to the city that we can then spend on things like housing and culture and parks and opportunity. It’s unlocked by having the stadium deal, where you go from a big liability with the old stadium to a free event here.

The sports authority is the conduit for the hotel tax, but it’s not our money. It’s tourists paying, but we get to own it. The taxpayers of Davidson County will own a free dome that will be well maintained and paid off, but you get all these other benefits with the East Bank.

What happened with plans for VUMC to take space at the Global Mall?

Originally it would have been easier to just do another Hundred Oaks. Ultimately, because of COVID and the losses they’ve taken from staffing costs, it is harder for them to stretch out all the way to a big Hundred Oaks. That would have been easier for the city. I would have in effect bought the land, in effect flipped it for a nice one-time gain.

That is not as good for the community as this community-backed master plan, which brings it all together. There are very few places where you have college, high school, community assets [at one site]. Do you put in an auditorium? Do you put in an Olympic village, affordable housing and housing, in large part on a college campus?

There’s a mile-long trail on the perimeter.

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This is a super exciting plan, anchored by the transit center down here. You’re beginning to connect the city. Multiple transit hubs working together is the first step for a better transit outcome.

Will you continue to be engaged on the East Bank and other city issues when you are no longer mayor?

Absolutely as a cheerleader and any way that Mayor O’Connell wants me to be engaged. This is the most exciting set of plans that any city in the country has. They’re also not going to be accomplished in the next four years either. It is the next decade before plans this big will be accomplished, but cities have to have plans, and have to have big plans. Cities are slow and the plans have to be big, and that’s how you get things accomplished.

The tax base created by the East Bank is measured in the billions. Even if some of that goes to infrastructure, that’s a whole lot more money for the rest of the county. Everything we’ve been doing is to manage development to create money out to the rest of the county.

Is the former PSC Metals property the next puzzle piece?

[Owner] Carl Icahn lost $10 billion this year. I think he recognizes that a developer there would be useful. He’s interested in very good deals. I personally think that in this next 10-year period of time, in the end it ends [up changing hands]. Everything in real estate ends up being its highest and best use.

What other areas of the county have the potential for big developments like the Global Mall?

Many. [We designated] funding to Planning to create a unit for repurposing Metro assets.

Taking assets that should be neighborhood assets, and getting beyond the city that just sold them and got rid of them. We couldn’t think of anything to do to repurpose them back into the life of the community. The East Bank is an example of this. Global Mall is an example of this. To create partnerships between the community and the councilmembers because the right vision will take some years to do.

Brick Church School, Hillwood School, the old Bellevue library, Stokes Elementary, in time

Cohn School, Richland Park. The future of Nashville is these neighborhood nodes of excellence where you’re repurposing Metro assets to come back and create this environment. You can engage the community to have community-specific answers all over Nashville.

The old city was too broke and did not lead the process to create these good neighborhood outcomes. You’ve got to fix the finances of the city, and you have to practice your skillset.

[The East Bank is] a model on a bigger scale, but it’s not like Hillwood is on a small scale. This is measured in years.

I think the next mayor will have particular opportunities both on Jefferson Street and with the state prison property.

How do you get neighbors to buy in?

You work with the community, what they want envisioned there. Part of it is going to be housing.

What if they don’t want housing?

I’ve not heard anybody say on empty parcels that are unusable, “Oh, we don’t want that.” Of course they can say that, but this is why you’ve

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got a city councilperson. This is why you have a government. Any community planning process can conceivably be hijacked by one voice. You’re trying to listen to all the voices. You’re trying not to give stuff away.

[We want to] get to a city that takes big empty tracks that are not benefiting the community and bring it into a better community.

By adding housing, you are keeping people.

This is what we need more of.

You don’t have a NIMBY problem on [the Global Mall site]. You’re not going to have a NIMBY problem at the prison site. You don’t have a NIMBY problem on the East Bank.

The nice thing about Nashville is you have the ability to add a lot of housing on transit corridors without necessarily having to bring density to your neighborhood.

We are not California. We have a lot of sites. We can build a lot of housing. We can build a lot of housing on transit corridors.

We don’t have to tell people to sell their backyard to build housing. There may be a future in generations where that’s a question, but famously we’re a big county with lots of sites that are under-utilized.

How much credence do you give to polling that shows Nashville residents, in the past few years, starting to say that the city is on the wrong track?

The thing about the poll is you have to connect it to the country. Is this a unique finding here? I don’t think they did that analytic work.

Every mayor who comes here, when you tell them right track/wrong track is flipped they fall out of their chairs The growth of any city is always a challenge. Back in 2019 we were headed, I agree, in the wrong direction.

Do you think Metro will have to raise property taxes again soon?

I don’t, myself. The $3.25 rate is by far the lowest of any city and almost any county. We are the lowest taxed city in the lowest taxed state. What you need to have is a continued growth of the tax base. With continued growth of the tax base, you can afford things and you do not have to increase the rate.

[With reappraisal and equalization] of course, no city can zero out its revenue growth rate. Because of the growth in the tax base,

you can lower the rate. You don’t lower it all the way to exact equalization, because then your overall revenues are the same.

Let’s say our equalized rate is $2.50. We’re paying $3.25 now. If you go to $2.50, the city has no new revenue at all and you can’t continue to pay people and invest in the city. If you go to $2.75 as a rate you’re still adding more revenue to the city but its a 50 cent tax decrease on your rate.

You are paying more as your values go up.

If your house is worth $1 million, you are going to pay more, but you’re now worth $1 million. If you’re worth more, shouldn’t you pay more? If my value goes up I can be expected to pay a little more in property taxes Equalization is a Republican plot. The memo went out from [the American Legislative Exchange Council]. It is basically saying your tax base growth is 100 percent in a tax cut, whereas it should be a mix of tax cuts and investment back in the community. [Zeroing out growth] is a recipe for long-term decline. I’m interested in longterm improvement, being the greatest city in America in the 21st century.

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Renovating and reviving How two developers are turning low-end hotels into attainable long-term housing

BY NICOLLE S. PRAINO

he properties they reinvent might not always be so pretty, but some Nashville developers are looking at ways to solve a problem while making a profit.

Ryan Hooper is a partner at Nashville’s Creative Development Partners and is affiliated with the purchase of both the Save-ALot building on Clarksville Pike and an airport-area former hotel. The group is keeping the Save-A-Lot with new ownership of the business. The former Red Lion Inn & Suites on Atrium Way will be converted to apartments for rent at about $1,000 per month.

“We’ve heard of other developments across the country where they’re doing something like this – where they’re revitalizing an existing asset to add more value to the community than what it is currently existing as,” Hooper says. “So, when this got brought to us off-market, [we] did quite a bit of research and saw that the capital wasn’t going to be as intensive as a ground-up multi-family development.”

He says the reason he liked the idea is because of his own experience: When he first moved to Nashville, Hooper says he could not afford the higher-end apartment complexes.

Another local developer saw the same problem.

“We looked around what was going on during the pandemic and the increase in the cost of living, especially here in Nashville,” Adam Rosenberg, founder of Nashville’s AGB Real Estate, says. “I think there are T

some populations of people who are getting behind, who are having to move further and further out of the city limits to be able to afford a comfortable, great place to live.”

Rosenberg’s group converted a Hermitage budget hotel to an apartment building over the last year and has now acquired another property.

In August, he and partners closed on the Americas Best Value Inn Nashville, which like Hooper’s hotel conversion project is located near the airport but is farther south near Harding Place and Interstate 24. Rosenberg’s group reopened their retrofitted Hermitage property, where the average rent is about $1,150, within 10 months.

“The reason we did this model [is] we had seen it elsewhere and we thought we could execute it extremely well here, and efficiently,” he says. “[Hermitage was a] very quick turnaround for any development, and the more you can do that the more you can begin to address the challenges of attainably priced housing that Nashville and a lot of other growing metro markets are experiencing today.”

Both men say these conversions work not just because they are good for the community but because they make business sense.

“From a business standpoint, it’s not as capital intensive [as ground-up work] and it’s something that there’s already value there in the structure,” Hooper says. “There’s risks on both types of projects, but you know we have a lot of value already in the property we’re buying, and it’s not as risky as tearing something down [and] doing all the horizontal work.”

Adds Rosenberg: “Of course, I have a fiduciary responsibility to my investors and as a real estate developer myself, we want to obtain a profit from that. Could I do another hotel? Absolutely. But the opportunity

to really drive developments that matter was something that hit home for me.”

Hooper, too, likes the community benefits of these types of projects.

“You have a purpose when you are providing that compared to building a new construction modern home, which we’ve done in the past, but it’s much more rewarding,” Hooper says. “Me and my two business partners have always had this drive and want to help different communities and people and demographics, so it just kind of fell into place and it made sense for us.”

Rosenberg got his start in real estate doing the opposite kind of work: He converted a 1950s apartment building in Panama City, Panama, into a “flashy boutique hotel.”

“But what I really want to do for my career and for my development is provide housing that people can be proud of and want to come back to at night and something that is within reach or attainable to them,” he says.

Hooper and his group are looking at other potential business models in addition to real estate to continue revitalizing community properties while Rosenberg says renovating these hotel properties is the blueprint that works for his team.

“For me as a developer it’s a model that is repeatable, and we know that there will be a tenant and a user for us that will be excited about the change that we’re bringing,” he says.

“The [Metro councilmembers] that we do this work [with] are excited to talk to us and work collaboratively and work alongside us. … For us to come in and completely renovate a piece of property that was a blight on the community and bring in hardworking honest people is a really nice story for the community.”

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Pardon our progress Vanderbilt’s ambitious facilities updates trade short-term irritations for long-term benefits

BY JOHN GLENNON

Vanderbilt fan since he was 6 years old, a 1996 graduate of the university and a season-ticket holder for decades, Nashville’s Vince Wyatt has seen just about everything related to the school’s football program.

But even he has needed some time to adjust to the unique atmosphere at FirstBank Stadium this year.

It was one thing to know well beforehand that the stadium — not to mention several other athletic facilities on campus — were in the process of undergoing significant upgrades.

It was another to actually experience it firsthand, seated in a football facility ringed by heavy construction — cranes, excavators, scaffolding, girders, pipes, traffic barriers and mounds and mounds of dirt — while cheering on the home team.

“I’d say just the feeling of being in a construction zone and still having an SEC football environment is definitely a challenge,” Wyatt says. “I’d been mentally prepared for it more than most people, so I wasn’t as shocked.

But yeah, it’s a little odd to be at a game and also in a construction zone at the same time.

“But eventually it’s going to make it look like a lot better place to be. You definitely feel like it’s a promising future for the state of the stadium. So it’s nice to see some real improvements that are shaping up.”

The renovation is all part of the Vandy United initiative, a $300 million investment the school is making in its student athletes and athletics program. It’s designed to elevate each sport at Vanderbilt, supporting major A

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facilities and operational enhancements.

Some of the changes to the current football set-up will eventually include: a new, 100,000-square-foot indoor practice facility for better year-round training; new premium seating and loge boxes for game days; a new video board and stadium acoustics system; a dining facility five times larger than the current one; and a stadium concourse twice as big as the existing version.

Vandy United construction began in February.

When will it end? That’s the question plenty of supporters are asking.

Phil Brown, Vanderbilt’s senior associate athletic director for facilities, event management and capital projects, has an answer — noting there are two distinct projects underway, one in the north end zone and one in the south.

The expectation is that the north endzone project, which also involves upgrades

to the neighboring Memorial Gymnasium basketball facility, should be complete by next September. The work going on now will add 600 seats to the football stadium, just in time for the 2024 season. Construction at Memorial is likely to be finished around October 2024, coinciding with the lead-up to next year’s Vanderbilt basketball season.

The south end-zone project is expected to be finished in time for the 2025 football season.

Brown asks politely for patience as the football stadium undergoes its first significant modernization in over a decade.

“Give us a little bit of grace and we’re going to give you the things you’ve been asking for,” Brown says. “Our fan base has said we need to do some upgrades to update, so we are. But those things take time. It’s just like any construction project. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

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Vanderbilt football coach Clark Lea has certainly embraced the big picture, using the promise of the enhanced athletic facilities to sell recruits on the future and understanding that each day brings construction closer to an end — even if there are some irritations along the way.

“Listen, when the jackhammer was going on outside my office [over the summer] it wasn’t always convenient, but by God it was progress, so we’re going to celebrate that,” Lea said during Southeastern Conference Media Days in July.

“There will never be another year for Vanderbilt where we’ll have this level of construction going on on our football stadium. Let’s embrace it for what it is, and it’s a launching point for us into our future, and let’s have fun with it. A year from now, two years from now, we’ll have a really tough

place to come and play for an opponent.”

Have there been challenges along the way so far? Absolutely, which is to be expected with a first-of-its-kind project of this magnitude.

There’s been the relocation of season-ticket holders in the school’s end-zone sections, which don’t exist at present.

There’s been the redirecting of fans into just a couple of football stadium entrances this season, one of which — on the east side — includes a progression through Memorial followed by a stroll through a concourse shared by the football and baseball facilities.

There was also the very prominent issue of what to do about a scoreboard, since the previous one was uprooted by the north end-zone construction. In an innovative moment that seemed to encapsulate the pardon-our-progress circumstances, Vanderbilt decided to use cranes to hang a temporary scoreboard.

Nasty weather at the Commodores’ season opener against Hawaii forced workers to lower the swaying scoreboard a bit until gusty winds died down. But bottom line: The show went on as planned.

“We’ve had way more positive [fan] feedback than negative,” Brown says. “We’ve done our best to be very communicative with any patrons trying to come to the game, letting them know about ingress and egress, and some of the opportunities we’ve had to get in front of the fans early on has really helped out. … For as disruptive as it looks, we’ve had a really good experience so far, to just get people to where they need to be, and hopefully they’ve enjoyed the game.”

Vanderbilt has long been the butt of football jokes from around the SEC, the result of producing only three winning records in the past 40 years. So the construction situation has led to social-media snipers taking even more pot-shots at the program than usual, amused by the work going on mere yards from the football field.

But Brown and his associates see those slights simply as more motivation.

“I see the vision. I see what’s coming,”

Brown says. “So their negative comments drive us to push forward. We know how positive the impact is going to be on the Nashville community, the Vanderbilt community, our future student athletes.

“So it’s a little bit of motivation, maybe. Hey, we’re going to keep going. We’re glad you’ve taken notice. We’re glad we’ve disrupted college athletics enough for you to see that Vanderbilt is doing something pretty cool.”

The school’s fundraising efforts for the Vandy United project appear to be moving in lock step with the construction.

Vanderbilt announced in 2021 that it had already identified $200 million of the $300 million goal, with a $100 million commitment from the university, $90 million from anonymous donors and a $10 million lead gift from John Ingram, a board of trust member and longtime supporter of Vanderbilt athletics.

The project got another nice boost in September, when it was announced that an anonymous Vanderbilt baseball alumnus and his alumna spouse took the lead in contributing money toward ambitious renovations and enhancements planned for Hawkins Field.

The two donors will match all qualifying gifts and pledges by other baseball alumni, up to $10 million.

“We are very pleased to say this is being funded by a philanthropic effort,” Brown says. “We’re so happy with our alumni and fans that have supported us so far, and we look forward to additional support.

“We’ve achieved a lot. You can see it because things are coming out of the ground now.”

Those things coming out of the ground are signs of progress to longtime fans like Wyatt, who are willing to endure short-term hardships that lead to long-term benefits.

“Each time you go to the game, you do see a little more improvement in what’s happening,” Wyatt says. “You see a little bit more is done. It gives you a little glimmer that the future is going to be brighter over there. It’s exciting to see that.”

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Capitol View

In the mix How developers of two major mixed-use campuses decided what went where

BY LENA MAZEL

s Nashville grows, many of the city’s industrial and commercial sites have transformed into large-scale mixed-use projects.

But what makes these projects work? How do they become more livable, pedestrian-friendly spaces? At two prominent mixed-use campuses, developers have transformed large parcels into spaces where people can connect — their design choices have ultimately created new lifestyles for residents and visitors.

Jeff Haynes is the managing partner for Boyle, the developer behind Capitol View in The Gulch. He tells the Post that the 32-acre urban district was previously “an assemblage of 88 parcels.”

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“We had 30 different land transactions, with a car dealership, a karaoke club, a convenience market, a strip club and odd industrial uses,” he says.

Environmental assessments revealed some soil contamination from the site’s industrial history. After purchasing the parcels, contractors removed hundreds of tons of contaminated materials from the site.

“We had a blank slate to plan an urban mixed-use project from the ground up,” Haynes says. “You don’t often get that unique opportunity, and we had a stewardship obligation to plan it.”

Capitol View now includes office space, retail, 378 apartment units and a Hampton Inn and Suites. It’s also the homebase for HCA Healthcare, the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp. and other organizations.

Boyle convinced HCA officials to add ground-floor retail to their office building. The developer in turn decided ground-floor retail was appropriate throughout the footprint,

changing the feel of the finished product.

A Publix grocery store was another important addition: “We wanted to build a sense of community that was reasonably affordable, where people could live at Capitol View and walk to work at HCA and walk to the grocery store and then walk to our park [on] the greenway and never get in their cars,” says Haynes.

Beyond the office and retail space, Capitol View also features a park dedicated to suffragist Frankie Pierce. There are volleyball courts, a dog park and other athletic areas. Early in the development process, Boyle extended Nashville’s greenway through Capitol View at the request of then-Mayor Karl Dean, and donated land to the city to build Frankie Pierce Park.

When asked about what makes Capitol View work, Haynes credits project architect Cooper Carry and designer Kiser Vogrin. “I don’t think enough credit goes to the original architects and land planners,” he says.

“Everything from the width of the street lanes and sidewalks to the width of our outdoor restaurant seating all played a part in

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One City

Alan Aschenbrenner

creating an urban, walkable, comfortable, safe, pedestrian-friendly environment.”

West Nashville’s One City (styled ONEC1TY) also started with a sizable parcel of land, but developers designed the area with a particular vision: healthy living. The 20-acre development was a new venture for health carefocused Cambridge Holdings, which wanted to build a community focused on “making healthy choices the easy choices,” including by giving residents and visitors easy access to healthy food, green space, exercise and community. One City was Cambridge’s first mixed-use development outside the health care sector; the company typically builds and manages medical facilities.

One City also focused on sustainable design: It’s one of the first LEED Neighborhood Developments in Tennessee and includes five acres set aside for green space (about a quarter of the total development). When Cambridge disassembled a lumber yard on one of One City’s parcels, it reclaimed the wood materials to use in public spaces and buildings. And when the development is completed, it will have fewer flood-prone impervious areas than when it started, according to Cambridge.

Alan Aschenbrenner, senior vice president of Cambridge, explains that healthy living went into unexpected parts of the development, like circadian rhythm lighting in apartments. The company also focused on common areas.

One City holds regular events like the Nashville Shakespeare Festival at its green space; last year One City hosted more than 80,000 visitors for various events, and Aschenbrenner says the development’s common spaces can provide a “counterbalance to the nightlife of the city.”

As a health care-focused developer, Cambridge saw high levels of employee burnout; because of this, the company wanted to provide a space where Nashville’s health workforce could feel more connected. “We see today more social isolation than ever,” Aschenbrenner says. “And a mixed-use development that really engages people at multiple levels is what we should all be doing, right?”

Overall, experience in the health care industry put Cambridge in a unique position. “We spent 30 years using real estate as a tool to improve the patient experience and health outcomes for patients. The state of health care in the U.S. ... we were never going to solve that problem as a developer,” says Aschenbrenner. “But what we can do is create healthier options for communities.”

Cambridge is now looking to recreate One City’s success in new markets (including in the Dallas area), and the company’s leaders hope to see similar developments emerge from other teams, too.

“Things like this can move the needle,” Aschenbrenner says. “They can demonstrate to communities that there’s a different way.”

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In the pipeline After pandemic pause, new restaurant development returns in force

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

ne under-examined side effect of the COVID pandemic is how it stymied independent restaurant projects in Nashville. The economic uncertainties associated with the pandemic created a bit of an air bubble in the restaurant development pipeline, leading to a situation in which a huge chunk of major new projects and investment was limited to celebrity chef-led restaurants in hotels.

Examples of these include Sean Brock’s The Continental in the Grand Hyatt (recently converted to a vinyl-themed bar), Andrew Carmellini’s Carne Mare and The Dutch at the W, Tony Mantuano’s Yolan in the lobby of The Joseph and Jean-Georges Vongeritchten’s reimagining of The Hermitage’s Capitol O

Planned redevelopment on Dickerson Pike

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Grille as Drusie & Darr. The reason these projects moved ahead while independent restaurant developers hit the pause button is the simple fact that hotel construction and renovation projects plunged forward into the headwinds of the pandemic, and those hotels were going to need flagship restaurants whenever they finally opened.

Over the past year, Nashville has finally seen an uptick in independent restaurant

projects as developers feel emboldened by the return of tourism and the continued growth of downtown and beyond as commercial opportunities.

From a real estate perspective, restaurateurs have taken different approaches.

Some have taken advantage of repurposed older buildings, like Atlanta-based Spanish concept The Iberian Pig and chef Michael Hanna’s St. Vito Focacceria, both in the former Colts Bolts building in The Gulch, the Japanese sensation Kisser in Highland Yards in East Nashville and the massive redevelopment of the former Piggly Wiggly building on Dickerson Pike, which will be home to three restaurant and bar projects from the teams behind Old Glory, Rolf & Daughters and Butcher & Bee. Others have invested in new builds in burgeoning neighborhoods, such as Vivek Surti’s Tailor in Germantown, Brock’s Audrey and June on the fast-growing Meridian Street corridor and all the restaurants that are part of the Fifth + Broadway complex, including new outposts of local favorites in the Assembly Food Hall and The Twelve Thirty Club.

Brad and Sarah Gavigan employed both of these strategies, of a sort, as part of the expansion of their Otaku Ramen empire, joining Kisser in Highland Yards (an old building, yes, but basically new construction within a shell) and planning a move

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into a newly remodeled restaurant space at The Factory at Franklin. Sarah addressed what factors emboldened her to make these moves now: “Let me begin by saying that ‘now’ started two years ago. That’s how long it takes to get a project done in this town as an independent. Our Nashville area expansion has been fueled by the understanding that if we didn’t grab our spot we would be left behind. As a brand, we have always been early movers, and although we are deep into boomtown mode as a city, it’s not hard to see that developers are going to continue to buy, sell and trade, every time driving the cost of doing business up.”

On how she chose the specific new locations, Gavigan explains: “East Nashville is our home neighborhood, and we had been looking for nearly five years when we settled on Highland Yards. Franklin was harder, as at first I was not a fan of The Factory having grown up with it as a kid. But once we saw the plans, it was obvious that it would be a great fit for us.”

Micheal Shemtov heads the hospitality group behind Butcher & Bee and Redheaded Stranger, and he feels Gavigan’s pain when it comes to how long it takes to open a restaurant. “[It’s] worth noting that new restaurants are typically many years in the making,” he said in announcing plans for Fancypants at the Piggly Wiggly site. “We initially toured this space in 2021 and back then we thought we’d be open, not announcing, in fall 2023.

We are very bullish on Nashville. Bryan Weaver (chef/partner) and Jake Mogelson (creative director/partner) have planted roots and see this as their forever home. We have continued to invest in our businesses here because we believe in the community that’s being built here and we want to be an integral part of its continued growth.”

Acclaimed NYC chef/restaurateur Anthony Scotto chose a “hermit crab” expansion strategy to accomplish his move to Nashville, opening two restaurants within a year in the former shells of failed restaurants. Although locals wondered whether the spaces in The Gulch and Germantown might be cursed, since they

had seen so many tenants over the years, Scotto has succeeded out of the gate with his Italian eateries Luogo and Pelato.

Scotto and his wife fell in love with Nashville after visiting their daughter, who was in school at Belmont, and they pulled up stakes and moved to Music City. They also recognized the opportunity to grow a new restaurant empire.

“I saw the need for Italian food that was missing,” Scotto explains. “I didn’t expect to do a second restaurant so quickly, but Nashville diners were so appreciative of Luogo, placing it in the top five of almost every TripAdvisor rating category, we took the jump.

We noticed that 80 percent of our diners on

weekends were from Nashville, so we’re really happy to be here!”

Federico Castellucci is the president/ CEO of Castellucci Hospitality Group, the development team behind The Iberian Pig. He saw the opportunity in Nashville from afar. “Expanding into Nashville is an opportunity to introduce The Iberian Pig’s vibrant personality to a city whose food culture has always inspired us,” he shares, echoing Scotto’s optimism about Nashville. “The city has great energy, and we love to visit. It became obvious that this was the landing spot for our first out-of-state location. We are excited to contribute to the city’s growing restaurant community.”

Sarah and Brad Gavigan

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Side by side New players in Nashville’s thriving coworking market signal a trend that’s here to stay

BY LENA ANTHONY

hen one of the nation’s largest coworking operators warns of a potential bankruptcy — as WeWork did this past August — it might be tempting to jump to defeatist conclusions about coworking as a business model. But the gig is hardly up. As 1-in-5 workers continue to work from home, according to the latest census data, the demand for coworking is as strong as ever. That’s especially true in Nashville, with two out-of-state coworking operators, Miami-based Ampersand Studios and Atlanta-based Switchyards, adding Music City outposts this year.

Coworking, the blanket term for workers from different companies sharing the same office space, is not a new concept. Regus, which holds the largest share of coworking office space both worldwide and in Nashville, was Music City’s lone offering until 2010, when E|Spaces opened its first location at the Hill Center in Belle Meade. E|Spaces now has four locations in the area, with a fifth slated for next year in the 17th & Grand building near Music Row. Other major players in the Nashville coworking market include WeWork, which occupies more than 150,000 square feet across four locations, and New York-based Industrious, which was an anchor tenant of Gulch Crossing, the MarketStreet Enterprises-developed Class A office building that opened in 2015.

Dirk Melton, now MarketStreet’s president, says Nashville has all the ingredients that make coworking an attractive office solution.

“We’re in a high-growth market with an entrepreneurial culture where startups and small businesses can thrive, so it makes sense that so many players have arrived here to serve the growing coworking marketplace,” he says.

“We’re now seeing new and different offerings in several submarkets around town that W

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are energizing and activating those locations, which has been our experience in The Gulch for several years now.”

Music Row’s recent development renaissance has hinged heavily on coworking companies betting on its dueling shiny high-rises.

WeWork occupies the top floor at 18th & Chet. E|Spaces is set to have naming rights at 17th & Grand. Kenect Nashville is on 19th Avenue, offering 16,000 square feet of coworking space to both its apartment building residents and those who simply enjoy working out of an apartment building. For now, Ampersand Studios is the lone coworking tenant on 16th Avenue, having opened in September on the second floor of 1030 Music Row, notable because it’s the city’s first sustainable mass timber-framed office building and the former site of the venerable dive bar Bobby’s Idle Hour.

With its Nashville location, Ampersand isn’t just expanding Music City’s coworking options but also adding a decidedly Music City amenity — a 1,000-square-foot production studio equipped for a variety of creative endeavors.

Ampersand Studios was founded in 2018 to do just that — provide a creative and professional business environment, alongside highend production facilities, all under one roof.

Founder Matthew Giles says Nashville was the ideal location for its second location (its first is in Miami’s downtown-adjacent Arts and Entertainment District).

“Nashville is a real growth city with established and ever-growing creative industries,” Giles says. “We felt there was huge potential for Ampersand Studios to offer something unique to that rising demographic, a place for them to both work and create content.

Music Row is synonymous with Nashville’s history in music, so it is a perfect hub to house a creative community.”

East Nashville is another hub for the city’s creative community, and coworking options abound across the Cumberland. WeWork has an opulent outpost on Woodland Street. One street over is the sprawling Center 615, which occupies an impressive 65,000 square feet along both sides of Main Street. Opened in 2011 by real estate investor Christian Paro, Center 615

Ampersand Studios

Collective 615

Switchyards

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calls itself Nashville’s oldest privately owned, locally operated coworking space. Head two miles north and you’ll be at Switchyards Eastwood, the first Nashville outpost of an Atlanta company that bills itself as a members-only neighborhood work club. Switchyards Eastwood is the anchor tenant of the new mixed-use Eastwood Village, occupying about 8,000 square feet of the historic former Hobson United Methodist Church building.

“When we were looking to expand our concept outside of Atlanta, we knew we wanted to stay close and we needed it to be a city with great neighborhoods,” says founder and CEO Michael Tavani.

Nashville fit the bill — and then some.

With memberships sold out and hundreds of names on the waiting list, Tavani says the company already is scouting two to three more east side locations before expanding to other Nashville neighborhoods.

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“We offer 24/7 access to our members, and because of that we need to be close to where people live,” he says. “All around a Switchyards, you’ll see the places where our members live. That’s by design. Work has shifted so much and people are spending so much time working at home or another place. We aim to be that other place — a place to be around other people, a place to focus, a place to take a meeting — all with great coffee and good music.”

Another coworking player carving its own slice in the marketplace is Collective 615, which occupies the west end of the revitalized L+L Market on Charlotte Avenue and operates as a women-only coworking space.

Founder Kathy Thomas found in L+L Market a perfect location: “You can walk across the hall on your lunch break and work out, or buy flowers for your friend’s birthday on your way out the door,” she says. “Life is a hybrid of work

life and home life, and you shouldn’t have to choose one version of yourself over the other.”

Between the work-from-home trend, the growth of in-town neighborhoods and the desire for convenience and proximity, MarketStreet’s Melton sees no slowdown for coworking in Nashville. He points to Wedgewood-Houston as a likely contender for new coworking options. It also happens to be home to Park Commons, the new mixed-use MarketStreet development surrounding Geodis Park and the Fairgrounds.

“It’s a really dynamic area with terrific amenities, and a lot more to come, so we do see an opportunity for a coworking option at Park Commons that will meet future demand and that is also unique and authentic to the community,” he says. “I think of coworking as more than just an office solution. Rather, it is one of a host of the many amenities that make up the fabric of a community.”

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Making space Metro entities entice landlords to house homeless, low-income tenants

BY HANNAH HERNER

ith vacancy rates rising in recent months, landlords at the city’s highend apartment complexes have had to turn to offers of free rent and other incentives to lure tenants who can afford their shiny units.

Meanwhile, lower income tenants with difficult pasts are often not afforded the same leg up.

Metro entities hope some landlords will bite on new incentives to house tenants on government housing assistance or trying to get off the streets.

For families living in public housing complexes in Nashville, Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers offer more neighborhood choices. The waitlist for Section 8 vouchers is set to open again in 2024 for the first time in five years and is expected to receive 10,000 Davidson County applicants. The staff at the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency will take the next approximately four or five years to whittle it down before reopening the list again.

Norman Deep, director of rental assistance at MDHA, estimates that about 30 percent of the 1,800 to 2,000 tenant-based vouchers MDHA distributes per year are wasted, despite the demand.

“It’s for various reasons — it could be they couldn’t find a place,” Deep says. “But we also have participants who do not meet standards that the landlords have nowadays to approve them. Some have not-so-good credit; some have bad rental histories.”

Having worked in the office for 38 years, he’s seen the demand for the vouchers grow and the number of willing landlords shrink. Under the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, a qualifying individual or family pays 30 percent of their income toward rent, and the rest is covered by MDHA, which sends a check directly to the landlord.

Voucher recipients have 120 days to find a W

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Low Barrier Housing Collective’s landlord outreach team meets.

unit. MDHA provides a list of landlords that accept Section 8 vouchers, but the list has gotten smaller in the past 10 years, Deep says.

He estimates the number of willing landlords dropped from 1,000 to 700 during that time.

“The national market, I think, is part of that issue,” Deep says. “You’ve got Airbnbs now that we’re competing with.”

This year, MDHA is amping up the amount paid to landlords. Each year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes fair market rent rates for every ZIP code in the country, which is what MDHA uses for its Section 8 voucher values. This year, for the first time, MDHA is offering landlords 110 percent of fair market rent.

The fair market rent values vary ZIP code to ZIP code, but in East Nashville’s 37206, it amounts to $1,490 for a one-bedroom unit and $1,670 for a two-bedroom. In Brentwood’s 37027, fair market rent is $2,000 for a one-bedroom unit and $2,240 for a two-bedroom. Still, the federally designated figure lags behind actual market rent rates in Nashville, disincentivizing some landlords from joining the program.

“We’re trying to keep the landlords that we got and encourage some new ones to come on board,” Deep says. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get to market rate under our program. We got to stay within our limits and our funding capabilities. We’re going to try this 110 percent and see what it does.

“You want to house as many families as you can, within your funding limitations,” Deep adds. “As you increase these payment standards, that could mean you are assisting fewer families.”

Metro’s Office of Homeless Services is also recruiting landlords in an effort to get people off the streets. Started in 2021, the Low Barrier Housing Collective helps match willing landlords to those climbing out of homelessness using a database populated by area nonprofits.

Landlords in this program are asked to accept tenants who have criminal history, poor credit history, prior evictions or money owed to other landlords. The collective sweetens the deal by offering landlords thousands of dollars in incentives, including up to $4,000 per unit to sign on to the program, $2,500 for any necessary repairs on the unit, $1,000 to re-sign the lease after a year and $500 to accept Section 8 tenants. The collective also offers mediation services, $1,000 more than the security deposit to cover any damages, plus up to two months of rent if the tenant does not work out. The funding comes from a mix of city, state, private and community agency dollars.

So far, 157 property owners have taken the Office of Homeless Services up on the deal, and the organization has distributed 165 signon bonuses.

“I want people to know that if they do have someone that’s a Section 8 voucher recipient,

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and they’re coming through our program, we’re providing that extra backup, that extra cushion, because we’re providing those wraparound services,” says Kim Bowden, landlord engagement coordinator for the Low Barrier Housing Collective. “We’ve got a landlord phone number that’s dedicated 24 hours a day, if there’s anything that’s going on with the tenant and that landlord needs to get in touch with the case managers.”

Landlord Stephanie McElvy dedicates six of her 22 units across the city to referrals from the collective.

She suspects landlords are not taking part for a few reasons: because they may not know about it, or because even though it offers a reliable monthly check, Section 8 requires a unit inspection and working with a government entity.

The housing collective includes some Section 8 tenants, some self-pay tenants and some paying with the assistance of a nonprofit.

McElvy says sometimes she will offer a unit for below market rate.

McElvy started working with

Stephanie McElvy and one of her tenants, Kenny

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a tenant supported by nonprofit social enterprise The Contributor two years ago. The tenant had some criminal history, which prevented him from finding housing.

“I don’t care what’s on the record or what their credit score is, if they have a felony or misdemeanor,” she says. “I’m more like, ‘Listen, I’m willing to give you a second or third chance.

I’m going to be a good landlord.

Let’s create a good situation.’ I think there is a lot of opportunity for landlords to decide what exactly it is that they want.”

McElvy says helping to house people experiencing homelessness has been rewarding and she believes it is part of her civic duty, but with the incentives it is also a solid financial choice.

“Landlords want to know that it makes financial sense,” she says.

“That’s the number one thing.

Once you get all the incentives in place and you have money to fix your property up and you’re getting money to renew the lease, you can set the rate based upon that. You can just try to get yourself back to market value.”

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Short-term rental properties in East Nashville

Not here for a long time The changing face of short-term rentals in Nashville

BY HANNAH HERNER

W

hile thousands of hotel rooms are under construction in Nashville, it is not enough to keep up with tourism demands.

There is still some appetite for short-term rentals like those offered via Airbnb and VRBO — especially for bigger groups like bachelorette parties. Plus, landlords can still stand to make a lot of money offering the properties nightly rather than monthly.

Prompted by neighborhood complaints, Metro Council is slowing the spigot of new short-term rentals in the city, but it’s difficult to crack down on existing units as the state has

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stepped in to protect landlords.

As of Jan. 1, 2022, the Metro Department of Codes and Building Safety no longer issues new non-owner-occupied permits (for investors, as opposed to residents renting out their own home) in residential zones. Over time, as properties change hands, there will be fewer and fewer short-term landlords renting out properties from across town or across the country.

The number of active non-owner-occupied permits has dropped from 1,700 to 459 since 2015.

The change in policy was prompted by the idea that if the owner lives in the home, they’ll be more accountable to the neighbors, says AtLarge Metro Councilmember Burkley Allen, who helped lead the 2015 push for the city’s first short-term rental regulations. The “problem” properties have tended to be those with an absentee owner, according to Allen.

“State law requires that whatever laws were in place when they get their permit is what they’re subject to,” she tells the Post. “There are a number of non-owner-occupied ones in neighborhoods that will be able to keep their permit until the property changes hands and then when it changes hands, that permit will have to lapse.

It may be a long, slow process there.”

Bonell McBroom III, short-term rental chief with the Department of Codes and Building Safety, estimates short-term rentals are mostly compliant, meaning they have the proper permits. If an owner operates a short-term rental without a permit, the landlord will have to wait one year to apply for a permit again.

“People are aware now of the ordinance that says they have to have a permit, and they’re aware of the punishment and the enforcement that goes along with failure to obtain a permit,” he says. “They’re much more proactive. It’s a very lucrative opportunity for them. If they do it correctly, it can be a very profitable one.”

The biggest issue today is people fraudulently obtaining an owner-occupied permit when they do not, in fact, live in the unit.

However, proving a violation is an arduous process, McBroom says.

“We can’t waste our time on frivolous cases,” McBroom says. “We go after cases that we know it’s a win. It’s just a waste of time to do anything other than that. We have a small staff so we can’t afford to do that and be able to

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maintain compliance.”

For help nailing landlords out of compliance, Codes has contracted with host compliance agency Granicus since 2017. Granicus software scans dozens of websites similar to Airbnb and cross checks it with Nashville’s parcel data while compiling a folder of screenshots for potential enforcement. The company passes the information on to the codes department.

“Trying to do it manually becomes near impossible, especially with the number of sites that there are now — it’s not just Airbnb or VRBO,” says Graeme Dempster, director of sales for Granicus. “There’s hundreds of different platforms and the market itself is very dynamic. Trying to have individual code enforcement officers online searching for different properties in their jurisdiction — it’s very time consuming, labor intensive and costly.”

Granicus also manages a hotline that received 86 calls during a recent 30-day period.

The most common complaints are suspicions that someone is operating without an appropriate permit (which the caller could check via an online database) and advertising for more occupants than is legal (up to 12 in Nashville), says Dempster. There are also complaints about noise, parking and trash. Granicus contacts the operator or the property manager directly to address the complaints.

“The intent is to make the operators responsible for any of their guests’ issues before having code enforcement or the police get involved,” he says. “It enables Codes to focus on the entirety of their job, not just responding to shortterm rental complaints on a Friday night.”

The market is very transient, Dempster adds, and the list of properties that receive the most complaints changes year to year.

Allen says she would like to see enforcement improve and the Metro Nashville Police Department get more involved.

“I think there are a number of these properties that are obeying the rules and are not being a burden on the neighborhood, and there’s a small number that are disregarding the rules and they’re wreaking havoc on what should be a peaceful neighborhood,” Allen says. “I think that in some cases, we may be able to make better use of the ability the Metro Police has to enforce. Sometimes just

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having a police officer knock on your door and say, ‘you’re disturbing your neighbors, you need to be quiet,’ will at least put an end to it in that immediate instance.”

Revoking a license can be a challenge, however, McBroom says. The state stepped in at least twice in the past several years to protect short-term rental owners. Metro has had a three-strike policy in place for violating short-term rental ordinances since 2015, which Codes took into account when renewing permits. In May 2018, the state passed a law that raised the bar, requiring an arrest, conviction and exhaustion of the court appeals process to administer a strike on a landlord that could prevent them from renewing.

Codes has not issued a strike since, and does not use Granicus hotline complaints in renewal decisions.

“All we can do is tell [the landlords] we got the complaint,” McBroom says. “We can’t really go further than that.”

In 2022, shortly after the policy change halting new non-owner-occupied short-term rentals in residential areas, a state House sub-

committee voted to advance a bill that would have taken away local control over owner-occupied short-term rental permits, though the measure ultimately failed.

In addition, New Orleans had a similar policy to Nashville on non-owner-occupied rentals, but in 2022 the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that it “discriminates against interstate commerce” by allowing only those who live in the area to enter the market for short-term rentals.

Allen hopes the management of shortterm rentals stays with Metro, but since the units are governed by different rules based on when the landlord secured the permit, it’s difficult to limit them retroactively.

“I think if we only had one per street we would never have ended up with an entire block of party houses,” Allen says. “It just happened at the same time as the pedal taverns arrived and we became the party capital of the country. I don’t know that anyone could have foreseen that but certainly, in hindsight, we say, that is not what the goal was.”

Bonell McBroom III

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In plain sight These prominent parcels offer no buildings — to Nashville’s detriment

3910 West End Ave.

BY WILLIAM WILLIAMS

ashville continues to see many prime sites be reinvented with interesting buildings — which, upon their construction completion, instantly reshape their surroundings in a dynamic manner.

Some examples of these sites are obvious, such as those home to the Music City Center in SoBro (due to the site’s massive footprint) and the two-tower Broadwest (located at the high-profile split of Broadway and West End).

Other sites that have been developed recently were perhaps not originally viewed as distinctive but were subsequently considered, after taking stock of the finished product, highly suitable for new usage. Examples include the postage-size footprint on which rises Giarratana’s Alcove apartment tower on Church Street downtown and the geographically elevated site from which soars residential high-rise Albion in The Gulch.

Obviously, Nashville offers many undeveloped sites that could yield eye-catching buildings. Some of those have been slated for projects, including Midtown properties at the West End Avenue and Elliston Place split (slated for mixed-use tower The Sinclair) and at the Broadway and West End spilt adjacent to the Orbison Building (and also eyed for a N

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mixed-use high-rise).

But other potentially prime sites continue to sit under the radar, despite their highly visible locations. It’s easy for many Nashvillians — perhaps after having driven or walked past these parcels so many times — to fail to see the desirability of these properties. Let’s take a look at five of those parcels.

0 Harding Pike

Few pieces of raw land are as unusual as this one.

First, the 5.1-acre property has had only one owner, H.G. Hill Realty, since 1927.

Second, the parcel is surrounded by the Hillwood Boulevard viaduct, a CSX railroad track and both Richland and Sugartree creeks.

Lastly, because it sits within both a floodway and the city limits of Belle Meade (which allows essentially only single-family residential construction), the land’s usage options are extremely limited.

And that is unfortunate, given the property is a gateway into urban Nashville, of sorts, for motorists heading east on Harding Pike from Hillwood, West Meade and Bellevue.

However, and despite the property’s appealing “welcome to Nashville” component,

its traffic-heavy surroundings, proximity to noisy trains and exposure to flooding render it undesirable for those seeking a grand Belle Meade-style home.

Jimmy Granbery, Hill Realty CEO, says the company years ago offered to donate the property to the City of Belle Meade. The city declined.

Wooded and verdant, the oddly configured property was last appraised (in 2021) for a mere $22,200. That figure means Hill Realty avoids paying a large annual tax bill.

But the company does incur some costs to cut the grass.

Granbery says Hill Realty has pondered what few options are available — including, for example, public art.

But the most realistic scenario is that the property in the future will be much like its present and past: untouched.

424 Lafayette St.

Metro Government owns this odd-shaped SoBro parcel, for which city records date to 1939.

Located at the intersection of Lafayette Street and Rep. John Lewis Way (Fifth Avenue) and offering alley access, the 0.79-acre property

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would be well suited for a flatiron building — were Metro willing to sell it to a company that could handle such development.

City officials in the past have noted the raw land might be suitable either for a WeGo transit stop (bus or rail) or a facility related to (or supplementing) the Music City Center.

Brenda Sanderson and Ruble Sanderson — who own multiple Lower Broad businesses (including Legends Corner, The Stage and Second Fiddle) via Broadway Entertainment — once owned the property. The couple paid $675,000 for it in 2005, according to Metro records, before selling it for $1 million in 2014 to Brentwood investor Rakesh Aggarwal. He later transferred ownership to Metro in 2017.

2722 Jefferson St.

Felicia Pratt and Myles Owens III own this four-parcel property, located at the car-heavy intersection of Jefferson Street and Ed Temple Boulevard (28th Avenue North).

The raw land sits near the entrance to Tennessee State University at what is arguably one of North Nashville’s most visible and wellknown intersections.

Pratt, who could not be reached for comment, founded Nashville nonprofit Pink Christmas in 2009 to honor the memory of her late mother, Mattie Pearl Howse-Pratt.

The latter died in 2007 at age 60 of breast cancer, The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee notes on its website.

Jefferson Street has landed various new buildings and businesses since the turn of the century. Whether this high-profile parcel ever is so fortunate remains to be determined.

1015 Clearview Ave.

This Five Points property in East Nashville serves as a surface parking lot — a usage urban placemaking enthusiasts would contend is detrimental to a physical setting that offers such a distinctive visual.

The ownership of the 0.13-acre property — which sits adjacent to the property accommodating the Red Door Saloon East building — is unclear.

With three streets converging, Five Points offers five properties on its periphery. All but one — yes, 1015 Clearview Ave. — offers a building (though only one of those four sites is home to a structure positioned fully at the sidewalk and in an urban manner).

The one building sited at the sidewalk — a brick structure from which since-closed neighborhood watering hole 3 Crow Bar operated for 19 years — recently sold for $5.2 million.

That property offers addresses of 1020 and 1024 Woodland St. Some U.S. cities of note with a Five Points

include Atlanta, Birmingham, Denver, Huntsville, Indianapolis, Jacksonville and Raleigh, among others. Most of those, as the Post has observed, offer a more appealing form and function than Nashville’s.

3910 West End Ave.

Metro records show Westminster Presbyterian Church has owned this 1.69-acre property, used for surface parking, since 1945.

Because West End Avenue ranks among Nashville’s most prominent streets — with its grand free-standing homes and large-scale multi-residential buildings — driving or walking past the church parking lot (whether filled with parked cars or not) can be jarring.

Westminster Presbyterian Church purchased the adjacent property — with an address of 3900 West End Ave. and on which its soaring-steepled religious building is framed by two massive trees — in 1936.

More than 20 years ago, the well-used parking lot was sandwiched by the existing church and, to the immediate west, a smaller house of worship that long-time West Nashvillians will recall as Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church. Highlighted by its fire-engine red door, that religious building offered an address of 4000 West End Ave., a property that has accommodated the Jacksonian Condominiums building since 2002.

1015 Clearview Ave.

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Marathon pace Marathon Village area sees multiple residential buildings under construction

BY WILLIAM WILLIAMS The Chartwell at Marathon

arathon Village ranks among Nashville’s more distinctive urban nodes.

And for good reason.

First, the anchors of the district are just as much buildings as they are, as is often the case with pockets of urbanity, businesses. In addition, some of the buildings were previously used to house automobile manufacturing.

Specifically, 1889-founded Southern Engine and Boiler Works (which made industrial engines and boilers in Jackson, Tenn.) manufactured the Marathon automobile at the site from 1909 to 1914.

Second, Marathon Village — at least compared to Nashville’s other popular and bustling urban districts such as Five Points, Germantown, Wedgewood-Houston and The Nations — is geographically small. The bulk of the district fits within a roughly three-block-bythree-block square, with Herman Street on the north, 12th Avenue North on the east, Jo Johnston Avenue on the south and 16th Avenue on the west. Running through the gut of this square are Clinton Street and a rail line.

Third, Marathon Village is bordered on three sides by elements that, one could argue, are not conventional for urban placemaking – the interestate, the suburban-style John Henry Hale Apartments and the old-school Andrew Jackson Courts – leaving little room for organic growth.

Lastly, Marathon Village, until recently, offered only a modest level of newer multi-unit residential buildings, the type of structures that fuel the pedestrian energy needed for safe and economically vibrant pockets of urbanity.

Add to this distinctive nature the fact that Marathon Village is located a mere one block west of Capitol View, which is a part of downtown Nashville, and it is clear why the area is M

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Apex

considered attractive for development. In fact, six large-scale mixed-use and/or residential-only projects are planned, are under construction or were recently completed. For such a small geographic area, that number is noteworthy, according to Mark Hollingsworth, president of the local chapter of online city planning message board Urban Planet.

Hollingsworth says that during the last 15 years, there have been 1,079 residential units (primarily apartments) added within four blocks in any direction of Marathon Village. And there are another 1,388 either under construction or proposed to be built in the next five years.

To the immediate south of Marathon Village are found several parcels that are used for surface parking and that could be reinvented with mixed-use buildings, he adds.

Hollingsworth says the Marathon Village area — the broader area is often called Watkins Park — “has some great history” and the

potential for more than its primarily retail shops, restaurants and bars.

“I see similarities for the Marathon Village district that would be similar to Automobile Alley in Oklahoma City, the neighborhood of the Chattanooga Choo Choo (Southside), the Strip District in Pittsburgh and the River North (RiNo) Arts District around Coors Field in Denver when thinking about how Marathon Village could eventually fulfill its [potential and capacity for additional buildings],” he says.

Local developer John Eldridge saw potential in the general area in 2016, a bit ahead of the curve, when he updated existing residential buildings at what is now called Vibe at Marathon Village. The 87 residences are located at 1601-1603 Herman St. It took a few more years after Eldridge completed his renovation project, but starting in about 2020, the general Marathon Village area started to pop.

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1301 Herman St.

Any unannounced buildings will join the following: The Chartwell at Marathon. Nashville-

based development company Chartwell Residential is undertaking the development of a site at 800 14th Ave. N. and at 801 12th Ave. N. with this mixed-use project.

With a price tag of about $85 million, The Chartwell at Marathon (it had been called Union Brick) will include 388 apartment units (of which 24 will be live-work residences), 4,000 square feet of retail space and 10 townhomes. Construction is fully underway.

The Scottie. Atlanta-based RangeWater Real

Estate is underway at 806 16th Ave. N. with this 320-residence apartment building.

RangeWater purchased the property in late 2021 for $10.25 million from Chicago-based Leftbank Holdings, which previously sold an accompanying property at 804 14th Ave. for $3 million to Nashville-based M Cubed Development. Construction is fully underway.

Apex. Leftbank Holdings, in a joint venture

with Alpha Capital Partners of Pittsburgh, developed the 2.7-acre site with a 300-unit, four-story apartment building. The address is 1501 Herman St. That building is now open.

14th Avenue Lofts. Nashville-based M

Cubed Developments is developing this 804 14th Ave. N. site with a four-story building offering 72 residential units and a retail/restaurant space. It includes a clubhouse, a fitness facility and a swimming pool. 14th Avenue Lofts acts as a combination of a conventional hotel and

an apartment building. Construction is fully underway and is estimated to be completed by the third quarter of 2024, M Cubed says.

1301 Herman. Leftbank Holdings and fellow Chicago company CRG will undertake the development of this 2.1-acre site at 1301 Herman St. with one building of up to five stories and another with up to seven. The project will have a collective 445 residential units and some retail space. Construction has yet to start.

1300 Herman and 915 12th Ave. N. Left-

bank Holdings recently paid $4.6 million for the two parcels, on which it is planning a fivestory residential building at 1300 Herman St. The future building will offer 200 residential units and a primarily wrapped parking structure.

Lastly, Brentwood-based Ireland Street Partners is eyeing a 24-unit townhome development at 915 12th Ave. N. Construction has yet to start.

Mark McGinley, a partner with M Cubed Developments, says the Marathon Village area reminds him, on a much smaller scale, of Denver’s RiNo District.

“What we’re seeing in terms of an area going from virtually zero density to significant density — and with all that density being built concurrently — might be unprecedented in Nashville,” McGinley says. “And I think the situation is made even rarer considering that all of this development is being done by different development companies with no significant past relationships or mutual histories.”

Ben Kriger, a Leftbank co-principal with Chris Lefkovitz, says the various residential

developments in Marathon Village are “removing industrial sites and creating homes where none existed, helping to meet the high demand for housing in and around Marathon Village and the downtown core.”

As such, he notes, each project has yielded, or will do so, a public benefit.

Kriger says the Metro Planning Department staff recommended and supported the change from industrial to residential, with input that followed an overlay for the area and adopted by the mayor’s office and Metro Council.

“We were fortunate to partner with the Nashville Parks Foundation to make a donation to improve nearby Watkins Park,” Kriger says. “The Marathon sites include pedestrianfriendly streetscapes and open spaces that will enhance life for residents and neighbors.

The height and density of the new buildings respect the industrial architecture that gave Marathon Village its name, including the historic Marathon Motor Works building.”

Gary Gaston, CEO of Nashville’s Civic Design Center, says the general area offers an “energy” created by the architecturally significant Marathon Village buildings. He recalls the days — about 20 years ago — when the complex was in its early stages of evolution and the general area (and Nashville overall) was not ready for the type of urban development now being seen.

Gaston says the general Marathon Village/ Watkins Park area eventually could be similar to Germantown’s Neuhoff and Werthan complexes, with thousands of future residential units and additional retail.

“The developers are tapping into the residential demand being produced by the excitement of the existing Marathon Village,” he says.

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On track Community leaders see a future for more transit-oriented development along the WeGo Star route

BY NICOLLE S. PRAINO

ays after being sworn in, Mayor Freddie O’Connell expressed support for expanded frequency and hours — and maybe even additional stops — on the WeGo Star, the region’s only commuter rail line. That lines up with some regional work already being done along the Star’s route that connects downtown Nashville to Lebanon.

And it could mean more transit-oriented mixed-use development situated near train or other transit stations, which has largely eluded the region to date.

“We are excited about transporting people back and forth to work, but our other dreams have been to work towards reverse commuting for people to travel out to Wilson County,” says Wilson County Mayor Randall Hutto, chair of the Regional Transit Authority. “We also have really tried to concentrate on developments around the stations.”

The Star, commonly referred to as the Music City Star, opened in 2006 and currently has stops downtown and in Donelson, Hermitage, Mt. Juliet, Martha, Hamilton Springs and Lebanon.

Hutto says Wilson County has identified about 30 acres of available land along the rail route as potential private-sector development sites. One goal is to prioritize housing for seniors along the transit route.

Lebanon Mayor Rick Bell touts Hamilton Springs in Lebanon as “the first ever transitoriented development along a Star station.”

“We had this concept of a mixed-use, walkable community,” he says. “Then the Star came and we were right next to the track and we thought, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’”

Bell acknowledges that transit-oriented development can be a “chicken or the egg” situation.

“Does the ridership come first? Does the D

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train come first? Does development come first?” he asks.

Now more community leaders are looking to what can be done along the route. Next to the Donelson station, a mixed-use building is planned for an adjacent property. Former District 15 Metro Councilmember Jeff Syracuse says H.G. Hill Realty Company is currently negotiating with WeGo on that project. While he says he’s happy he left that project with a vision in place, it’s important for others to look at growing sustainably across Middle Tennessee.

“I really do think that the Star highlights the need for more coordinated regional land use planning,” Syracuse says. “As we look at growing sustainably across Middle Tennessee, how do we utilize the Star to the highest and best use?”

Jim McAteer, director of transit and planning for Fairpointe Planning, and Dave Genova, director of transit advisory services for consulting firm Hatch LTK, are helping to lead an RTA study to answer that question.

“We talk oftentimes that one of our objectives of the project is to optimize the operations of the WeGo Star and at the same time optimize the operations of the freight network,” Genova says. “So we’re really trying to look for joint benefits for the stakeholders that are engaged in this.”

The ongoing WeGo Star study shows com-

munity support for more evening and event service. Part of the process for the study is not just public engagement but also modeling scenarios of different kinds of services to simulate what it would take for WeGo leadership to take the findings and put them into practice.

WeGo Star ridership overall is down significantly since before the pandemic. October 2019 saw more than 27,000 riders overall, but in October 2022 fewer than 8,000 people rode the Star. The most significant change can be seen in ridership at the Riverfront station with about a 10,000-rider decrease. Overall, there is about a 60 to 75 percent decrease in riders getting both on and off at each stop.

“We’re seeing pretty much the same thing across North America … the change in commuter habits with hybrid work and remote work – so just about every transit agency has really experienced some negative downsides of this,” Genova says.

That decrease in ridership hasn’t turned public officials or the community away from the idea of expansion and new types of future uses.

“We know that ridership for employment is one thing, but we think there’s other opportunities,” Hutto says.

Trains for weekend trips and entertainment are among the possibilities highlighted by the Wilson County mayor.

“We need to be looking at potential new

HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

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like to see around the station areas themselves so that they become more of an integral part of the community?”

Overwhelmingly, he says they are hearing more about retail, activities, parks and day care.

“I think transit-oriented development is the future and making sure that growth is going to benefit everybody,” Syracuse says.

“That’s what I’ve been focused on in and around Donelson station.”

Lebanon’s Bell says the ongoing study and future development are running on parallel tracks.

“It will show that if people have convenient access to the Star, then they’re more likely to ride it,” the mayor says. “And also, if there are amenities near the stations, then people will ride the train to get to those amenities. I think the study will provide us with a positive path forward and I think what we’re talking about, development around the stations, is going to be a part of that.”

stations between Riverfront and Donelson, especially as that area grows and the Star goes right through it,” Syracuse adds.

McAteer says his team is hearing people ask for a stop between Donelson and downtown as well as another one in Lebanon that extends to the Wilson County Fair Grounds area, which Hutto also noted. Another early idea was extending the service to Geodis Park for soccer games. O’Connell has mentioned the possibility of running a Star route north to Clarksville.

“All of those ideas fit into the long-term bucket,” Genova says. “[They] would require significant steps, but we’re going to model those and see what the results tell us.”

There’s also a short-term bucket, Genova says, including seven quick fixes that could be made within existing constraints.

One of the questions the study team is asking, according to McAteer: “What would you

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Complete campus Architect discusses challenges, successes of new James Lawson High School

BY HANNAH HERNER

communication, business and hospitality, engineering and health sciences. The health sciences program is a first for MNPS, and construction workers craned in an ambulance for students to practice with.

The topography was a challenge.

ashville’s newest high school sits on N a sprawling 275-acre former church site in Bellevue, complete with a 300,000-square-foot building; six courtyards; football, baseball, soccer and softball fields; theater facilities; picture windows and beautiful views. One might assume it is a high-tuition private school.

When Hastings Architecture partnered with Metro Nashville Public Schools starting six years ago, that was the goal — to create stateof-the art, enviable facilities to replace an aging Hillwood High School. This fall, James Lawson High School welcomed its first students.

“Not every school has the entire program that Lawson has,” says architect David Bailey.

“As they evolve over years and decades, like the original Hillwood did, programs are added, programs go away, things change. It’s phenomenal to start with the full program.”

Bailey, who also worked on the Thompson Hotel, Vanderbilt University’s E. Bronson Ingram residential college and River North, reflects on the most challenging and rewarding parts of the construction.

Bailey says Hastings had a goal of not removing or bringing in any dirt, in an effort to save money. Despite such a large area to work with, the hills, bike trails, walking trails and wetlands limited the land on which the school could be built. “We had to find the right approach to layer things into this very hilly site,” he says. “At the same time we knew that this was such a beautiful place that if we could figure out the right way to address it, it would just create an astounding campus that would be unique throughout the state and beyond.”

The commons is what he is most proud of.

Serving as the “spine” of the building, the commons connects each of the academic wings and is anchored by the library and floor-to-ceiling windows. Underneath the cafeteria and an outdoor terrace, it offers a fellowship space for students and faculty, he says.

“Students get to see each other, hang out and get to look out from this big glass wall

to the campus beyond and the hills beyond. I think it’s a really enjoyable and dynamic part of the school,” Bailey says.

Hastings wanted to connect students to nature right outside their window, while protecting green spaces.

The architecture team situated the school and its ceilings and windows to allow as much natural light as possible — something that is good for the students’ wellbeing, Bailey says.

In addition, the school uses geothermal energy harvested from beneath the football and soccer fields to heat and cool the school, as well as collected rainwater to flush the toilets. The school is pursuing a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

“The design concepts behind the overall building relate to the bluffs along the river at this site but also are intertwined with the movement of a river and the experience of a student going from freshman to sophomore to junior and senior years,” Bailey says. “We were able to have a lot of fun with this and we think we’ve created an environment that reflects what students go through in that process of maturing through the high school years and hopefully helps provide an environment that makes the high school years easier and more fun and enhances the learning experience.”

The sprawling campus is more accessible, he says.

“The previous one, a lot of it was designed before ADA even existed, which came into play in the ’90s,” Bailey says. “In Lawson, we have created accessibility throughout the entire school structure, but also with accessible connections to all the athletic field areas.

That was very carefully planned.”

The school is an embodiment of MNPS’ career-readiness programming.

The school has five wings, one for the freshman academy and one for each of four different areas of career focus: art, design and

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Background noise How two developers are turning low-end hotels into attainable long-term housing

BY HANNAH HERNER Graham Waks

busy Friday night doesn’t have to mean yelling to have a conversation. Sound engineers like Graham Waks can apply the skills they use to improve acoustic quality in music studios to restaurants and bars.

Music City Acoustics has worked with area establishments including Crema, Noko, Jane’s Hideaway, Hathorne, Five Points Pizza and Roze Pony.

Waks, founder and owner of the company, tells the Post that he wants to see area business owners and designers consider acoustics as they develop their properties.

A

Acoustics can be measured before a space is built.

“When they’re thinking about how they want the restaurant to look and feel, rarely do people think about how it is going to sound,” he says.

Acoustics are measured by reverb time, or

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echoes. The goal is always to keep the reverb time to under one second, Waks says.

“With restaurants, we know that if the space has a one-and-a-half second reverb time, it’s going to be really loud and uncomfortable for people in there,” he says. “It’s going to be hard to communicate, to hear the people at their table or their servers, and then the overall volume level will rise.”

Music City Acoustics can calculate the reverb time in an empty room or before the room is built using the square footage of the space compared to the amount of sound-absorbing materials, he says.

Design choices can make or break acoustic quality.

Industrial aesthetics are popular these days, featuring expansive glass windows, concrete floors, wooden panels and flat ceilings. These

are all things that create a high reverb time, Waks says. To counteract this, Waks and his staff install upholstered panels.

“Industrial spaces are full of really hard reflective surfaces,” he says. “A lot of older restaurants had a lot of softer surfaces, like tablecloths and heavier upholstered seating and those things that naturally helped. More industrial-looking spaces and a lot of exposed metal ceilings — those kinds of spaces are really loud.”

Owners do not have to sacrifice a buzzy atmosphere.

“I think they like the feeling of it being this buzzing energetic space, but it doesn’t have to be loud or hard to communicate to accomplish that,” he says. “You can accomplish both, it can be loud and exciting and still controlled and comfortable.”

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