boom FALL 2017
room to Live
Apartments analysis and condo design ideas
metro’s priorities
Mayor Barry talks growth pains, transit, YIMBYism
pLAnning it out
Visions for River North, Nolensville corridor
CHANNELING
COMMUNITY
inside the birth oF pLAzA mAriAchi And h o w r e tA i L i s e v o Lv i n g in the AmAzon Age
RACE FOR
ROOFTOPS
Why we aren’t building more and why density is inevitable
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CoNTENTS
14
THREE quESTIONS
John Eakin addresses his company’s approach
52
CHANNELING COmmuNITy
Mark Janbakhsh has created destination retail with Plaza Mariachi
62
RECREATING A CORRIDOR
Conexión, Metro envision a new-look Nolensville Pike
daniel meigs 2 boom
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SmartSpace AND
Donelson Corporate Centre gratefully acknowledge these valued customers and their agents for 17 consecutive years of occupancy exceeding 94 percent annually.
Change Healthcare
Active Network
Barbara Stewart
17 years
17 years
17 years
Jones Lang LaSalle Bo Tyler Tom Hooper
Corporate Real Estate Advisors Tim Stowell
Edward Jones
J.D. Rotero
Strive Collegiate Academy
3 years
3 years
Cushman & Wakefield Frank Thomasson
Southeast Venture J.C. Darby J. Roscoe High
Floyd Shechter, president Anthony Caduff, principal broker 615-251-8900 smart-space.com
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State Farm
Project Transition 2 years Colliers Stephanie Craven
Mid-America Apartment Communities 9 years
Security One 1 year CBRE Sarah Pettigrew Katie James
SMARTSPACE, LLC
SmartSpace has demonstrated its commitment to sustainable economic development in the Donelson area and throughout Middle Tennessee since 1993 through its methodical yet creative approach to the acquisition, construction, leasing, ownership and operation of commercial real estate.
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CoNTENTS
22
ART IN THE PUBLIC EYE
Metro Arts enlivens city as private sector does likewise
DEPARTMENTS
09 YOU SHOULD KNOW
Jeff Estepp makes mark on the west side
10 THE JOURNEY
March Egerton impacts east side
12 NATIVE SON RISINg
Evergreen’s Aaron White grows company in hometown way
13 URBAN NODE FOCUS
Kim Hawkins returns company to east side, looks forward
FEATURES
26 PARTY ON
A rowdy downtown is not limited to hard-drinking tourists
29 TRANSIT MAKEOVERS
A light rail line could transform parts of Gallatin Pike
32 MAKINg IT MODULAR Developers tap unconventional building methods, materials for less-pricey housing
34 PAINS OF gROWTH Mayor Megan Barry discusses city’s dramatic changesy
16 DATA BANK
38 A NEED FOR SPEED
18 CAMERA TECHNOLOgY
39 CIRCULAR REASONINg
A look at some key numbers
Aerial Innovations deploys drones for cutting-edge visuals
Metro’s quick-build program yield infrastructure cheaply, promptly
Nashville’s roundabouts improve traffic flow, spur development
40 STRETCHED THIN Do workforce demands lead to more accidents?
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42 WHITE-HOT COOLINg
66 WHEN PLANS FALL THROUgH
46 INTERIOR MOTIVES
68 ‘A CHALLENgINg SITE’
Nashville hit hard by housing inventory crunch Marcelle Guilbeau knows condos need personality
50 MARKET EVOLUTION
Tracking a summer’s worth of apartment owners’ moves
56 RETAIL REVOLUTION
Off-the-shelf technology returns senior care to the home
58 REVVINg UP RETAIL
Downtown’s newest buildings go big on stores, dining
60 A SUCCESSFUL MODEL
Jimmy Granbery masters formula for boutique developments
64 SMALL-CITY BOOM Murfreesboro seeks reinvented urban core
Spring Hill wrestles with creating town center
T Bone Burnett talks about Cloud Hill, South Nashville’s potential as a hub
72 ROLLINg ON THE RIVER
River North project can take cues from other cities
74 FROM SUBURBAN TO URBAN
Cool Springs transitions to mixeduse, and more dense, model
CLOSE
76 READINg CORNER
‘Nightwalks’ yield big-picture ideas
78 READINg CORNER
Old buildings offer character on which to capitalize
80 THE BIg QUESTION Can we adapt quickly enough?
daniel meigs
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1201 Office Building CONVENIENT. ACCESSIBLE. VISIBLE.
1201 DEMONBREUN STREET
Full Floor 26,000 SF Available
615.250.1800
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www.EakinPartners.com
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EDIToR’S lETTER
editorial
ALL THE PRIORITIES
We send many thanks to our terrific advisory board members for this magazine. Their perspectives and guidance helped us refine and prioritize many of the ideas in this issue. Blaine Bonadies Bonadies Architect David Creed Creed Investment Co. Tarek El-Gammal Southeast Venture Steve Kulinski CBRE Lizabeth Theiss Crain Construction D.J. Wootson Titus Young Real Estate
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What to do? Everything. When to do it? Yesterday. Nearly five years after The New York Times published that story, much has changed for Music City. Our population is swelling, towers of all kinds have risen at a dizzying pace and the tourism sector has grown in ways few could have imagined. It has brought into focus one heck of a priority list topped by more and cheaper housing options, a better transit system and the continued recruitment of jobs. Mayor Megan Barry says she can’t afford to prioritize any one of those over the others. A growing city comes with growing needs, after all. But a booming metropolis also has lots of room for fresh ideas such as the very big River North vision or the tiny roundabouts in our neighborhoods, ideas that feature on some of the pages that follow. Led by a look at the birth of Plaza Mariachi, we’ve spent a lot of time this year looking at retail. Dining and shopping developments both reflect the changes others are creating but, when done well as Mark Janbakhsh and Jimmy Granbery have done, also themselves create and enhance community. We hope you’ll be heartened and inspired by the work they and others are doing. No doubt there will be plenty of new real estate projects and trends for us to assess and analyze come next summer. Between now and then, though, we also have lots of other ground to cover with our magazine series. Next up: Vitals, our annual in-depth look at the ever-evolving health care sector and Greater Nashville’s place in it. Between now and then, we’ll of course continue to prioritize breaking business, political and sports news at nashvillepost.com. See you there soon. geert de Lombaerde, Editor gdelombaerde@nashvillepost.com
EdItOr Geert De Lombaerde MANAgINg EdItOr William Williams CONtrIbutINg EdItOr Nancy Floyd CONtrIbutINg WrItErS Linda Bryant, Stephen Elliott, Cari Wade Gervin, Caroline Leland, Bill Lewis COPy EdItOr Lauren Langston Stewart
art
Art dIrECtOr Christie Passarello StAFF PHOtOgrAPHErS Eric England, Daniel Meigs
production
PrOduCtION COOrdINAtOr Matt Bach grAPHIC dESIgNErS Amy Gomoljak, Abbie Leali, Liz Loewenstein, Melanie Mays
publishing
AdVErtISINg dIrECtOr Heather Cantrell Mullins buSINESS dEVELOPMENt dIrECtOr Jennifer Trsinar ACCOuNt EXECutIVES Maggie Bond, Rachel Dean, Nicole Graham, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Marisa McWilliams, Hilary Parsons, Mike Smith, Stevan Steinhart, Keith Wright SALES OPErAtIONS MANAgEr Chelon Hill Hasty ACCOuNt MANAgErS Gary Minnis, Olivia Moye, Annie Smith
marketing
EVENtS dIrECtOr Lynsie Shackelford PrOMOtIONS MANAgEr Josephine Wood
circulation
SubSCrIPtION MANAgEr Gary Minnis CIrCuLAtION MANAgEr Casey Sanders
SouthComm Chief Executive Officer Chris Ferrell Chief Financial Officer Bob Mahoney Chief Operating Officer Blair Johnson Executive Vice President Mark Bartel Vice President of Production Operations Curt Pordes Vice President of Content/ Communication Patrick Rains Vice President of Marketing/PR Natalie Kilgore Director of Human Resources Becky Turner Creative Director Heather Pierce 210 12TH AVE. S., SUITE 100 NASHVILLE, TN 37203 WWW.NASHVILLEPOST.COM Nashville Post is published quarterly by SouthComm. Advertising deadline for the next issue is Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2017. For advertising and subscription information, call 615-844-9307. Copyright © 2017 SouthComm, LLC.
fall 2017 | NASHVILLEPoST.Com
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PARTNER LETTER
The future of work • The workplace is changing, with more emphasis being placed on community, culture and purpose, and WeWork is helping to accelerate this movement. • WeWork is a global network of workspaces where companies grow together. Transforming buildings into dynamic environments for creativity, focus, and collaboration. • By becoming a WeWork member, you have instant access to a global network of 150,000 members. As 70% of members have collaborated with one another, WeWork is now giving the people of Nashville the opportunity to grow their business and community.
Breaking ground in Nashville • WeWork is excited to capitalize on the energy in Nashville, with two new locations opening at the end of the year. One downtown Nashville at One Nashville Pl. (150 4th Ave N.) and one in East Nashville at 901 Woodland St. • Both spaces will include WeWork’s quintessential design with open common space, private offices with glass walls, comfortable nooks and quiet phone booths. All while lending a nod to Nashville’s heritage and natural beauty. • WeWork’s goal is to fuel Nashville’s entrepreneurial spirit and to provide the community a platform for creatives, small businesses, startups and large corporations. Office solutions for teams of any size • Corporations worldwide are immersing themselves in the WeWork community. WeWork collaborates with both small businesses and industry-leading companies to challenge the idea of traditional workspace. • Members are creators who run the gamut from entrepreneurs, freelancers, and startups, to artists, small businesses, and divisions of large corporations. • WeWork offers a variety of office sizes to accommodate any member’s needs, whether it’s a single desk, private office for a team of four, or dedicated floor for a single company. For more information and to receive early-bird pricing, visit wework.com to book a tour today.
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YOU SHOUlD KNOW
YOU SHOULD KNOW JEFF ESTEPP
REAL EStAtE INVEStOR/dEVELOPER
ERIC ENGLAND
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As a youth, Jeff Estepp often rode his bicycle on the streets of The Nations. Today, the native Nashvillian helps make those streets more lively and attractive with adaptive reuse and builtfrom-scratch projects. “I had countless childhood friends who grew up in The Nations,” Estepp says. Those friends are smiling now. Although Estepp, 49, has been investing in real estate and undertaking boutique development since only 2005, his impact is noteworthy. Working with business partners, Estepp was handling three projects as of this writing. Specifically, Estepp and partner Dave O’Connell completed in mid-summer a mixed-use building located at 704 51st Ave. N., to be home to 51N Taproom and owned and operated by the 12South Taproom team. Estepp also is working with friends Jeremy Palmer and Chad Clifton to retrofit a former church at 1105 51st Ave. N., a project to yield a Corner Pub. In addition, he will update a church on Indiana Avenue with retail space, is developing a building on 51st for a Sherwin-Williams Paints retailer and recently bought a “gateway” parcel at 5100 Delaware Ave. Perhaps no other local boutique developer his helping to transform The Nations more than Estepp, who grew up in nearby Sylvan Park and attended Father Ryan High. The success is particularly impressive considering Estepp in 1996, a mere two years after marrying wife Trina, was a staggering $120,000 in debt. “I was trying to hide it from Trina,” he says. “She found out and wanted to leave.” Then the couple had a child (Will) in 1997, a year before the 1998 tornado blistered the west side. From the stress and the destruction came hope. “Having a child changes everything,” Estepp says. “You can run from your responsibilities — the easy way out — or ‘man up’ to confront the situation you’ve created. I chose the latter. With the tornado damage evident and Estepp armed with a new attitude, long-time friend Greg Hurley introduced him to some folks who needed help with their damaged homes. “Greg pushed me back into the contracting business and encouraged me to keep my focus forward,” Estepp recalls. And that forward focus remains sharp to this day.
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THE JOURNEY
THE JOURNEY MARCH EGERTON REal EstatE iNvEstOR aNd dEvElOPER
East Nashville retailers know that veteran real estate man March Egerton — whether they lease spaces in one of his buildings or not — is a hands-off landlord. Years of experience (he is now 52) have yielded a practical and low-key approach for the affable Egerton. Comments such as “March doesn’t meddle” and “As landlords go, March is easy to work with” are commonly heard. Egerton continues to transition from being an investor/landlord to developing properties such as Walden and the Fluffo site on Main Street. It is a move that is proving successful. Here, he discusses how he got his start and his approach to work since then. I went to Hillsboro High and ran track for a while at the University of North Carolina before dropping out. I eventually graduated, and a couple of years later I ended up in Seattle in a VW bus, which was great except for the gloom. I got a master’s degree in something called American Studies from the University of Hawaii, though I spent most of my time there writing a guidebook on places to eat. Then I moved to Portland, where I bought the house I’d been renting and attempted a laughable renovation. Luckily, the market was strong and I was able to make enough to move back to Nashville and buy a house.
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THE JOURNEY
I have been interested in real estate for a long time. When I was 22, a friend and I bought a duplex, which I lived in for a while. Around that same time, I managed to buy a dilapidated old foursquare on Belmont Boulevard for almost nothing down. Long story, but suffice to say my inexperience and lack of funds yielded a sub-optimum result. It wasn’t until I moved back to Nashville from Portland in late 1997 that I got serious. As to my focus on East Nashville, it was kind of a fluke at first. I was entirely unfamiliar with the area even though I grew up in Nashville. Once I got past how scroungy it was, the bones seemed terrific. And the east side reminded me of Portland. Three months after I bought my first property, the tornado of 1998 hit. After that, I was drunk on the possibilities. Over the last few years, East Nashville has become appealing to apartment developers and smaller companies doing a variety of infill projects. Obviously, location has something to do with that. East Nashville is close to downtown and the interstate. It also has some very worthwhile architecture and, these days especially, lots of terrific food and drink.
oPen
my wife, Alison, I don’t talk shop much. I probably spend an unhealthy amount of time in my own head. I’m mostly a solo operator and so is Dan, but we are occasional partners — currently on the Fluffo project and on one other building. We went to eighth grade together and were not especially good friends back then. Our paths didn’t cross again until 20 years later, when we both returned to Nashville. I was living in Inglewood and he got interested in the area. And a few years after, we bought a couple of small buildings. After two decades, it’s hard to drive around this town without thinking “I should have bought that!” People forget that all of this goes in cycles, and I regret not being better positioned and more fearless during the recession. I tried to find a way to buy Fifth and Main out of receivership, with an eye toward turning it into apartments. Obviously, I didn’t try hard enough. As far as east side projects go, I’m still partial to Fifth and Main’s design elements, which look downright regal compared to most of the stuff being built now — though it has never clicked as a mixed-use project. Also, I like what Hill Realty did with the old Turnip Truck
After two decAdes, it’s hArd to drive Around this town without thinking ‘i should hAve bought thAt!’ In terms of the real estate business, I guess I haven’t had much in the way of mentors. I’ve never worked for anyone else or even taken a business class, for that matter. I’m pretty obsessive about information, though, once I get onto something. Somewhere along the way, I just decided I’d hit it hard and tried to understand at least a little bit about every aspect, from grease traps to tax law to zoning. Consequently, the people I’ve learned the most from are in related fields. And outside of Dan Heller and
building on Woodland Street. Blending old and new construction side-by-side frequently leads to lame results, but that one works. Beyond real estate, I enjoy travel and food, for sure. Ideally, a combination of nice hotels and hole-in-the-wall restaurants. I still play pick-up basketball all over town, usually at least four times a week. It’s hell on my body, but the lone thread to my youth. It’s wild how much more you appreciate little things like that, once the end is clearly in sight.
eric england
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TOUCHING BASE
NATIVE SON RISING Evergreen’s Aaron White grows company in hometown way by William Williams
Aaron White is passionate about Nashville. And now, more than ever, he is having an impact on his hometown. White and long-time friend Hunter Connelly co-founded Evergreen Real Estate in 2011 (White had co-founded Core Development in 2003 before starting Evergreen). They started small, focused on a handful of boutique infill developments and apartment management jobs. But the company would evolve to own and manage about 6,000 apartment units in Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Louisville and Huntsville. The growth forced White to consider change. Earlier this year, he and Connelly merged their property management division with Nashville-based Elmington Property Management. “Elmington provides the infrastructure and support to allow us to continue to provide exceptional service to our management clients while we grow,” White says of perhaps the most significant move in Evergreen’s history. “We have always been impressed with the Elmington team. And after studying their training, marketing and recruiting process and resources, we felt [a merger] was in the best interest of our clients and employees.” The move came as Evergreen was finishing construction of The Jenkins, a 15-townhome project located in Belmont-Hillsboro and named to honor the memory of Mary Jenkins Hardin, a real estate investor and Pilkerton Realtors agent who died in 2015.
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“Our goal in creating The Jenkins was to build a community fixture appropriate to one of the most compelling locations in Nashville,” White says of the T-intersection of Belmont and Blair boulevards. “We are so pleased with the design by Allard Ward Architects and feel that Cory Short and Highland Building Group, our affiliated construction company, have built a keystone that will stand the test of time in Belmont-Hillsboro.” Likewise, Evergreen is finishing Cameron Harbor in downtown Chattanooga. “It’s exciting to build a riverfront neighborhood that is thriving,” he says. To date, Evergreen has completed 235 apartments, 47 cottage homes and 20 loft rehab units that the adaptive reuse of a warehouse yielded. Underway are 54 cottages and townhomes for rent, 112 apartments and about 10,000 square feet of retail. White says Evergreen has contracted with Chattanooga-based The Feed Table & Tavern to create at Cameron Harbor a restaurant to be called Parkway Pourhouse. In addition, Evergreen is completing renovations of apartment buildings in Louisville, Knoxville and Nashville. As to the future, White expects the merger with Elmington, which he calls a “the market leader in the management business” will yield positive results. “We’ve been pleased to create a small portfolio of owned properties. And we will continue to develop in markets where we can create value for neighborhoods, residents and our investors.”
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TOUCHING BASE
URBAN NODE FOCUS
Kim Hawkins returns company to east side while looking forward by William Williams
Long-time local Kim Hartley Hawkins is a committed urbanist. That fact rings more true each year as she helps bolster the résumé of Hawkins Partners, the land planning and architecture company she and husband Gary Hawkins founded in 1986. “We have been very focused on the redevelopment urban nodes in ways that contribute to the life and energy of our communities,” says Hawkins, who gives examples that include Hill Center Brentwood, Station 40 on Charlotte Avenue, 5th & Broad, Wedge-
wood-Houston and the redevelopment at Rolling Mill Hill. “Work on those mixed-use developments — and, in concert, working through critical infrastructure planning such as the Plan To Play and WalknBike master plans — allows us to connect our parks, open spaces, greenways, bikeways and pedestrian infrastructure, which can all contribute to the vision of affordable living by providing people options to individual car ownership. “We are doing work in a number of other markets, but our hearts belong to this region and the three-hour radius of Nashville.”
On that Nashville-centric note, Hawkins is happy to have the company back in East Nashville — working from the Hill Center Five Points building on which it contributed, no less. “We have loved our move to Five Points,” she says. “We started our business 31 years ago in East Nashville, so it feels like coming home. Our whole team feels very rooted here — it’s a little closer to home for many of them — and we enjoy all of the new restaurants, services and art murals popping up every day.” Likewise, she is excited about working on a very large project set to unfold a mere two miles to the west. “Nashville Yards will reintroduce Nashville to a good portion of our downtown that has been invisible yet right before our eyes for many years,” she says. “Its location provides a new gateway to Nashville from the west on Broadway and Church Street. It is a great opportunity to truly integrate
OPEN
housing, office, retail, services and entertainment and a usable, amenitized public space and park within one district in a way that has not yet been done in Nashville and sets a new bar.” As that bar is set, Hawkins looks to the future. “We are getting more opportunities in surrounding markets, and we enjoy exploring new, creative places and people,” she says. “We are beginning our work on leadership transitions within the company and are excited about exploring some of the passions — like innovation centers, trail-oriented development and the creative/maker communities — of our leadership team. “We would also like to continue to explore how to create successful affordable living — not just housing — which includes districts providing a multitude of uses and transportation access. We hope we’re working on a number of transit projects in the next five years.”
WE NEGOTIATE. WE CREATE. WE REDEFINE. WE SPEARHEAD. WE NAVIGATE. FOR OUR CLIENTS. cushmanwakefield.com/action
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THree queSTionS
THREE QUESTIONS JOHN EAKIN EAkIN PArtNErS
John Eakin serves as managing director of development/investment and as chairman for Green Hills-based Eakin Partners, which he co-founded with business partner Barry Smith in 1999. Eakin Partners developed Virginia Way Plaza and oversees the Real Estate Fund, which owns Burton Hills I and II. He also is an owner of Roundabout Plaza, SunTrust Plaza and 1201 Demonbreun (in which the company is headquartered), among other Eakin-developed buildings. The company is also active in tenant representation and corporate real estate consulting. Eakin and Smith rank among the most highly visible duos in Nashville’s ever-growing commercial real estate scene. Following are some of Eakin’s thoughts regarding what works well for the company.
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THREE QUESTIONS
open
Put the KraftCPAs team to work for your business!
Eakin Partners has seemingly mastered a formula that involves developing midsized mixed-use (retail and office) buildings in urban settings and with the assistance of Nashville-based companies. How did this approach evolve? And will you continue to deploy it? Just like the saying goes — “Live Local, Shop Local”— we believe in “Developing Local, Lease Local.” As a native Nashvillian, I am very proud to live in Nashville and am thankful of the opportunity that I have been given to develop some of Nashville’s best office buildings. We always try to work with Nashville companies and have formed a strong development team composed of our highly experienced development associates at Eakin along with Hastings Architecture Associates and Brasfield & Gorrie Contractors. This team recently completed over 1.2 million square feet of Class A office space on time and under budget. This delivery of high-end architecture, on time and on budget, is critical to us performing and providing the best office space to our clients and tenants. We also use all local investor partners to provide the equity and financing to develop our various projects. We have been using this type structure for over 25 years and will continue to do so in the future. We have a longterm view of building and owning buildings for a long time rather than building and immediately selling. We feel this provides better service to our tenants and better returns for our partners. On that theme, the company has two projects planned: one for the West End corridor and another for Rolling Mill Hill. Where do those two projects stand and how might they unfold? We are very excited about these two proposed developments. They are both in distinctive and easily accessible locations.
Vanderbilt Place will be a 195,000square-foot, 12-story building with incredible views and in a very walkable area with easy access to restaurants and retail. The building will be located on the corner of 30th and Vanderbilt Place. It has been 20 years since a speculative office building has been built along the West End corridor. We are in the pre-leasing stage and we are hopeful to start construction in early 2018 and be open first quarter 2020. We are working with two tenants that will kick the building off once we have signed leases. Rolling Mill Hill is one of the most exciting areas of Nashville — next to the Greenway and Cumberland River — with easy walking access to
3. Health care and a true entrepreneurial spirit of creating and growing businesses. 4. Other things like lakes, rivers, greenways, parks and sports have all contributed to the attractiveness of Nashville. 5. Nashville is a fun place to visit, but it is also a great place to live, work and raise a family. I love our four seasons and all the restaurants, activities and events that Nashville has to offer. We have an entertainment city. We all need to focus on having our streets and neighborhoods safe and to have the best education possible. As we grow, we will need to address our infrastructure but those are items that can be fixed.
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downtown, but slightly away from all the downtown traffic congestion. The area will be packed with restaurants and other retail uses. This area will be the next Gulch for our city — with all the mixed uses of residential, office and retail. We are focused on developments in walkable neighborhoods with all the amenities in the area. Like Vanderbilt Place, we are working with tenants to kick off the building in RMH. What are some characteristics of Nashville’s post-2011 boom that you find attractive and helpful and, in contrast, others that you see as the opposite? Nashville has evolved as an incredible city in which to live, work and play. The items that make Nashville unique and special are numerous. But a few are: 1. Our people. Generally speaking, Nashvillians are friendly people 2. The music industry has been great for our city. As our tagline says, “Music City.”
My hope for Nashville is to continue to have balanced, well-planned growth without having the overbuilding that always seems to happen. That is where problems happen and banks foreclose. We all need to be prudent and reasonable with future development. As rents for Class A office space are now at $40 per square foot, we must realize that all companies cannot afford this. This increased rent does not mean that developers are making more money. The reality is [that] with higher land prices and higher costs of construction in both labor and material, this is just where rents have to be to pay operating expenses and debt service to the lenders. Rents for new buildings are based on development costs, interest rates and operating costs to run the completed building. Rents will continue to rise as these three components continue to increase and there is continued demand to pay the rent at these levels. If there is overbuilding, rents will decline and someone will lose money.
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ERIC ENGLAND
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DaTa baNK
PLUSES AND MINUSES middle Tennessee’s boom since the Great Recession has been a blessing for many of its residents. but it’s also become a strain for a growing number of people. We’ve examined some of those issues elsewhere in this issue but here are a few statistics that show where our growth has come from and the deficits it has helped create.
THE NEED FOR GREEN
BEHIND THE JOB NUMBERS
Parks and greenways have become a more important part of Nashville’s development during this boom. And while progress is being made in several parts of the city, a recent ranking of parks systems in the country’s 100 largest cities shows we have a lot of work to do to become a model. Here’s the top 10 as well as Nashville and some of its peer cities.
At the end of June, Nashville’s year-over-year non-farm job growth totaled 34,100 jobs, an increase of 3.6 percent. Here are the top 5 contributors by sector.
6,400
1. minneapolis
PROFESSIONAL AND BUSINESS SERVICES
2. St. Paul
COMING UP SHORT
3. San francisco
At the beginning of this year, Nashville’s housing market was more than 47,000 private housing units short of where it should have been based on its historical growth rate prior to the real estate bust of a decade ago. That massive number is actually an improvement from recent years. Here’s how the crash and recession froze the construction market.
4. Washington, D.C.
(Cumulative unit shortage)
7. New York
0
9. madison, Wisconsin
5. Portland 6. arlington, Virginia
17. St. louis
2008
-20K
35. Raleigh 40. Tampa
-47,129 -52,858 2010
53. Nashville 84. memphis 96. louisville 97. Charlotte
-50K
98. Indianapolis Source: ProTeck aggregation of Federal Reserve of St. Louis data
HOME PRECIOUS HOME Just how hot is Nashville’s housing market? Among the nation’s 50 largest cities, only Charlotte posted bigger real home price gains in the year ended in May.
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EDUCATION AND HEALTH SERVICES
50. atlanta
2014
-40K
4,900
46. austin
2016
-30K
LEISURE AND HOSPITALITy
10. Cincinnati
-9,702 -30,113
-10K
5,200
7. Irvine, California
Source: The Trust for Public Land
4,700
CHARLOTTE
16.5% 14.8%
NASHVILLE
14.6%
SEATTLE
14.2%
TAMPA
13.9%
DENVER 50-CITy AVERAGE
GOVERNMENT
10.2%
Source: First American Financial Corp.
3,700
CONSTRUCTION Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
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We Love Nashville
and everything that makes our city Nashville. Culture. Healthcare. Music. Corporate Headquarters. Tourism. Education.
Friendly people and southern hospitality.
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TECH @WORK AERIAL INNOVATIONS AND DRONES
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Not until a few years ago had both drone and camera technology advanced to the point where it became feasible for the team at Aerial Innovations of Tennessee to use drones for its commercial real estate photography business. The cameras have become smaller and better, their stabilizing devices have improved and the technology used to actually fly the drones has advanced enough to where the Nashville-based company can now produce high-resolution, steady video footage and still photography for its clients, many of whom are in the real estate and construction business. “The quality that our clients look for, especially in real estate, they want to see detail,” says Wendy Whittemore, the 14-year-old company’s president and owner. “They want to see every little piece of land where their building is.” Whittemore and her crew continue to use airplanes and helicopters for much of their photography work — especially at higher altitudes, where drones are less reliable and can be prohibited by law from flying. But drones have opened new doors for the company and the real estate photography business in general: • A client building a high-rise downtown can ask Aerial Innovations to fly a drone to the building’s 13th floor and shoot video of the Nashville skyline, giving potential lessees an exact replication of their future views. • A drone can cruise through an entire mixed-use campus to provide a virtual tour impossible to recreate from the entrance. • A construction firm building a new facility for an international company can commission a drone-filmed video to send to the client’s headquarters an ocean away. But Whittemore says many people still misunderstand drones’ capabilities. They either think too highly or too lowly of their technological capacity. “The perception of the capabilities of drones is a little skewed in either direction,” she says. “Right now, I’m in a very educational stage, trying to tell people what is and isn’t possible.”
courtesy of aerial innovations of tennessee
8/31/17 4:17 PM
TECH @ WORK
NASHVILLEPOST.COM
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INDEX
A-G
Dave LeFeve 53
Jimmy Granbery 36, 60, 80
Parks 13, 15, 42, 53, 69
Eakin Partners 14
JLL 72
Pat Emery 74
2700 Charlotte 51
Earl Swensson Associates 29
John Brittle 42
Peyton Stakes 50
1201 Demonbreun 14, 58
Edsel Charles 42
John Eakin 14
Phil Fawcett 74
222 2nd 58
Ellen Jones Pryor 26
Ken Henley 29
Plaza Mariachi 53
Aaron White 12
Elmington Property Management 12
Kent Campbell 33
Accent 50
Kevin Guenther 64
Adriane Harris 32
Erin Hafkenschiel 38
R-Z
Kevin Triplett 26
Ragan-Smith Associates 64
Aerial Innovations of Tennessee 18
Ethan Link 40
Kim Hawkins 13
Renata Soto 63
Aertson Midtown 50
FBMC Investments 43, 45
Allen Folks 72
Franklin Park 75
L-P
RPM Transportation Consultants 39
Alloy 32
Frank Trefs 53
Ashley Segroves 24
Frist Center for the Visual Arts 26
Associated Builders and Contractors 40 AT&T Building 58
Evergreen Real Estate 12
Greater Nashville Realtors 42
Austin Benedict 56
Gresham Smith and Partners 56
Barnes Housing Trust Fund 33
Gulch Crossing 58
Laborers International Union Local 386 40
SkyHouse 50 Spectrum Emery Properties
March Egerton 10
Stacks on Main 51
MarketGraphics Research Group 42, 44
Steve Johnson 56
H-K
Bob Murphy 39
Hawkins Partners 13
Meridian Cool Springs 74
Boyle 74
Hill Center Acklen 61
Metro Arts Commission 22
Brian Greif 24
Hill Center Five Points 13, 61
Brian King 66
Hill Center Green Hills 60
Metro Planning Department 63
Brian Leary 74
Hill Center Sylvan Heights 51, 61
Broadstone Germantown 50 Butch Spyridon 26 C.B. Ragland 58
Hill Realty Co. 60 Hines 58 Hodgson Douglas 39
Shopping Center Group 56
Marcelle Guilbeau 46
Bigby 74
Barry Smith 14
Shawn Bailes 32, 43, 45
Larry Lipman 44
Mark Janbakhsh 52
Steven Kirkham 57 Stix 24, 39
Megan Barry 23, 29, 33, 35, 63
T Bone Burnett 68 Tennessee Department of Tourist Development 26
Metro Public Works Department 39 Michael Hayes 58 Middle Tennessee State University 39, 64
The Cleo 51 The Gossett 51 The Lipman Group Sotheby’s 44 The Monroe 50 The Wilson Group 43 Thomas Kirschbraun 72
Monroe Investments 72
Toby Compton 40
Morgan Mansa 33
Tom Middleton 68
Music Row Roundabout 39
UBS Tower 58
Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce 24
Vanderbilt Place 15
Jamie Page 66 Jeff Estepp 9
Nashville City Center 58
Corporate Centre 74
Jeff Moats 56
Craig Owensby 63
Jeffrey Hammond 38
Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. 26
Crescent Communities 74
Jennifer Cole 22
Crescent Music Row 50
Jennifer Moody 64
Dan Heller 11
Jim Douglas 39
CBRE 56 Christie Wilson 43 Cloud Hill Partnership 68 Conexión Américas 65 Core Development Services 32
Hunter Connelly 12 IKON Construction 53 International Realty 44
Nashville Yards 13
Walden 10 Waller 53, 57 Wendy Whittemore 18 William Cardenas 40
Nick Mann 53 Octave 50
NASHVILLEPOST.COM
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2 2 2
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FEATURES
aRT
ART IN THE PUBLIC EYE
Arts Commission enlivens city with visuals that supplement privatesector efforts by wILLIAm wILLIAmS
t is not particularly easy to conceptualize public art as an investment. But doing so is important. And Metro understands that. In May, the Metro Arts Commission unveiled a comprehensive plan that positions public art as an investment tool for neighborhood transformation, creative workforce development and equitable practices. Of note, the private sector will be involved. Jennifer Cole, MAC executive director, said the plan looked at how public art can have a city-wide impact. “That means we must look at what Metro Arts can do directly, but we must also support efforts in the private sector,” Cole says. “If you look at the success of efforts like those of the Nashville Walls project, the East Nashville Chamber and others, it is easy to see that the
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Silo mural by Guido van Helten
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private sector is interested in and sees value in public art. That is why our plan calls for us to create some core resources like a Mural Assistance Center and eventually a private developer hub so that Metro Arts can support, with information and technical assistance, direct action in the private sector.” Cole would like to see that effort move beyond murals and toward having more developers integrating public art into design, more hiring of local artists and fabricators, and an overall commitment to art integration similar to Metro’s focus on Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards for both public and private buildings. “The Seattle Office of Arts and Culture is actually advocating for the national development of LEED-type standards for public art, cultural space and artist studio space,” she explains. “If Nashville continues to evolve as a [potentially] world-class city, then the private sector will respond and organically develop more arts integration. I hope that we focus on how that builds jobs and wages for the local creative sector. Because in that nexus, we can both activate a more dynamic public realm and energize the public art field.” Cole’s views are bolstered by the fact that the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates approximately $429.3 million in annual economic activity in Davidson County, according to the Arts & Economic Prosperity 5 national economic impact study released earlier this year. Relatedly, the sector supports about 14,277 full-time equivalent jobs and generates roughly $51.1 million in local and state government revenues, according to the study, which the Tennessee Arts Commission commissioned. Arts & Economic Prosperity 5 is billed as the most comprehensive economic impact study of the nonprofit arts and culture industry ever undertaken in the United States. It was conducted by Americans for the Arts, in partnership with TAC and Metro Arts. On this theme, Metro Arts in June announced it had approved about $2.47 million in community arts investments for the 2018 fiscal year, providing 62 grants to 48 nonprofit organizations. Both Mayor Megan Barry’s proposed Fiscal Year 2018 Metro budget and the Metro Council substitute budget offered $500,000 in funding for Metro Arts programs and public investments. About $275,000 of an approved increase was targeted toward grants funding for 2018, a 12.5 percent increase in available funding for grants compared to the 2017 number.
Mural by Jason Woodside
‘the private sector will respond and o r g a n i c a l ly d e v e l o p m o r e a r t s i n t e g r a t i o n . i hope that we focus on how that builds jobs a n d w a g e s f o r t h e l o c a l c r e a t i v e s e c t o r .’ jennifer cole, metro arts commission
“The grants funding is so,” Cole says. “Our population is growing and, as such, cultural organizations are pressed to provide content — film, dance, music, theater, visual art — to a wider range of residents. Grants help our organizations meet the demand of a changing community and serve more neighborhoods with culturally diverse and quality content.” Cole says the commission has seen a 20 percent increase in requests during the last few years. This year alone, 11 new nonprofits qualified for grants and were awarded investments.
Despite the progress, Cole says many midsized peer cities are investing nearly two to three times what Nashville is in cultural grants and programs. “The cultural community isn’t stagnant and so we must continue to grow resources,” she notes. “We are working with the Nashville Arts Coalition to explore more ways to increase cultural funding over time. “The remaining $225,000 that was not targeted to our public grant investments will be aimed at more temporary public art and creative
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Stix by Christian Moeller
placemaking projects as outlined in our Public Art Plan,” Cole adds. “Diversifying the sources of revenue for public art will allow us to support more local artists with projects and move public art into neighborhoods more quickly. We will increase the budget for the THRIVE microfund (which funds neighborhood placemaking efforts) and lead a second class of the Civic Practice Learning Lab (a program that trains local artists on public art and community art engagement practices).” Cole says Metro Arts also will likely begin planning for the first citywide temporary art installation and will support various temporary initiatives related to transit planning in both Madison and South Nashville (along the Nolensville Road corridor). Cole says public art can spur private development of buildings, lure restaurants and bars and add to the overall economic vibrancy of Nashville. “Art contributes to aesthetics and vibe and sense of place and individuality,” she explains. “That is important. If artists are more involved with developers in not just the ‘making things pretty’ discussion but in the relevance of culture to community discussion, we will have a more vibrant and equitable city.” Coles says she is encouraged that developers are increasingly hiring muralists “However, I’m more excited about what would happen if developers and the city could work together with neighborhoods to ask: How does culture happen here? What could we do
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in this plaza/mixed-used development/affordable housing development/shopping center to support the cultural life that is happening here? How could this development provide studio or production space that is affordable for local artists/makers? How does this development activate retail earning potential of artists and other local small-business owners? What activities could happen in this space that could support the larger cultural fabric of this community? How could hiring local artists, fabricators and makers help build wealth locally while also building social capital?” On the mural theme, Ashley Segroves, a Nashville-based photographer and owner of art gallery Studio 208, says the #muralseast project started when Chamber East, affiliated with the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, sought to serve businesses throughout East Nashville. Since then, murals citywide have become an accessible option for wayfinding, while adding beauty, she says. “The Nashville Walls Project has elevated the mural scene in Nashville by engaging local and international artists to critical acclaim and worldwide publicity,” Segroves notes. In fact, Nashville has the potential to be recognized as a strong art city, she says. “Cities such as Philadelphia (known as the City of Murals), Miami and St. Petersburg, Florida, are leading the public art movement,” Segroves says. “Nashville deserves art everywhere; think piano key crosswalks, bus stop collabora-
tive art installations, brightly colored geometric underpasses and themed electrical boxes.” When the public and private sector meet (or even when not), positive things happen. Local artist Brian Greif teams with Eva Boros to oversee the Nashville Walls Project, a privately funded entity. “Building owners and local businesses pay for the murals,” says Greif, who was a key factor along with Southeast Venture in luring Australia-based Guido Van Helton to town to pain a massive mural on an ex-grain silo in Silo Bend in The Nations. “We receive no tax payer funding for our projects,” he says, adding that Nashville Walls Project would not have evolved without help from private-sector people such as Dan Maddox, Jody Moody, Susan Tinney and companies including Gibson Custom Division, Market Street Enterprises and Southeast Venture. Cole understands the public-private dynamic. Locally, Metro Arts worked with more than 80 nonprofit arts partners to collect data on their economic activities at more than 920 events, exhibits, shows and festivals. And the aforementioned Arts & Economic Prosperity 5 national economic impact study showed that, on average, Nashvillians who attend arts events spend an additional $38.11 on ancillary items like restaurants, transportation and parking. Non-Davidson County residents, including regional visitors and out-of-state tourists, spend on average $55.97. Both figures top the national averages. “[Nashville has] emerged as a global arts powerhouse,” Cole says. “As more private developers reach out to art/artists, it creates demand.” Cole recalls the time that the city’s public art fund (1 percent of the price tag of a Metro-funded project is devoted to art) was threatened, with many questioning its public value. “Now, we see private developers and other organizations leading high-quality public art,” she says. “And it [motivates] community leaders and elected officials to think about ensuring more public art for more residents in more places. We now have more requests from neighborhoods and council districts than we have staff to manage.” Such a “climate of positivity” bolsters the case that Nashville needs to both continue the 1 percent for art effort as well as deeper investments in neighborhood-scale projects and artist training. “You see that borne out in our Fiscal Year 2018 budget allocation,” she says, “which was widely supported by the mayor and the Metro Council.”
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FEATUrES
ToURISTS
PARTY ON
Visitors to Nashville’s rowdy downtown are not limited to hard-drinking tourists by CArI WAdE GErVIN
ake a walk along Broadway on any given weekend and it’s easy to see what a tourist destination Nashville has become. There are the dozens of bachelorette parties, hordes of fans of opposing sports teams who travel for an away football or hockey game and some honky-tonking, and country music enthusiasts who want to drink hard at their favorite star’s bar. Promotional material for conventions touts the boozy fun available as Vegas without the gambling or Bourbon Street sans the strippers — and it sells. Nashville has become a party town, a place to which tourists and conventiongoers come expecting to get smashed, and an alcohol-fueled industry of pedal taverns and the like has sprung up to encourage it. But if you thought that the proliferation of “woo girls” and blasted businessmen might be hurting other aspects of Nashville’s tourism, you’d be wrong. Tourism is flourishing everywhere — in Nashville, in its surrounding counties and statewide. And despite downtown’s alcohol-flavored feel, not all the tourists are here to drink. In 2016, according to statistics from the state and the city, 13.9 million visitors spent almost $6 billion on travel expenditures in Davidson County — a record high and a 45 percent rise in visitors compared to the 2006 figure. “The rise of bachelorette parties has had no effect on any other aspect of the hospitality industry at this point other than there has been more interest in ‘guy trips,’ ” Butch Spyridon, president and CEO of the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp., tells the Post via email. “All sectors of our industry are firing on all cylinders right now,” he adds. “As long as the music is free and the beer is cold, we’ll see the continuation of strong business.”
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According to a study commissioned by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, 40 percent of attendees at arts and cultural events visit from outside the county and 13 percent spend at least one night in a hotel to do so. The Frist Center for the Visual Arts saw 22 percent of its 2016 visitors from outside the state, a 6-percent increase from the 2015 mark. Almost 50 percent of Frist visitors were from outside the county and about 30 percent from outside the surrounding counties, increases of roughly 10 and 7 percent, respectively. In addition, the international visitor figure jumped almost 30 percent. Other cultural institutions report similar figures — noting the uptick isn’t related to would-be partygoers trying to kill time before a boozy brunch. “Bachelorette parties don’t currently seem to factor into our attendance right now,” says Frist Communications Director Ellen Jones Pryor. Kevin Triplett, Tennessee Department of Tourist Development commissioner, says the tremendous tourism growth derives partly from travelers who revisit Nashville. “We are certainly seeing the business perspective of someone who comes for a convention [and returns] for a leisure trip, whether with their friends or their family,” Triplett says. “Our research [shows] that a lot of people are
saying, ‘There’s more to do than we had time to do it,’ which is very important.” Last year, the state generated tax revenues of $1.7 billion via travel, a 6.7-percent increase from the 2015 mark — and despite the devastating fires in Gatlinburg. Triplett sees a trend of visitors, especially those in Nashville, staying longer than otherwise. “They’re venturing out to the surrounding counties on that third or fourth day,” Triplett says. “They’re going to Franklin to shop, or they’re spending time on the lake in Sumner County.” Direct travel expenditures in Williamson County last year rose 4 percent, more than $16 million, versus in 2015, and are up more than $130 million since 2010. Travel expenditures in Cheatham, Rutherford, Wilson and Sumner counties increased about 5 percent each in 2016. Triplett is unsure if now-married bachelorettes are returning to Nashville for tame family weekends with their husbands and kids. But he says the increase in tourism is directly related to Nashville’s booming growth. “A number of people who come here to spend time on vacation — and we are hearing this weekly, mind you — have moved here,” Triplett says. “That’s a great ancillary benefit of tourism. It helps recruit a workforce and businesses.”
daniel meigs
8/31/17 4:20 PM
LEADING
URBAN DEVELOPMENT
IN NASHVILLE FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF MARK DEUTSCHMANN
HILLSBORO VILLAGE 2206 21st avenue south nashville tennessee 37212 615.383.6964
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2 8 2 1 G a l l at i n
At the corner of Gallatin and Dozier Place, this property sits three blocks north of the Margaret Maddox Family YMCA and is within easy walking distance of numerous dining outlets — many of them fast food — as well as other retailers that include big names Dollar General and O’Reilly Auto Parts. For that reason, we focused on packing smaller housing units onto the 0.55-acre lot. We dedicated the back of the parcel to a small parking deck that opens onto Dozier. The only retail in this project is a small coffee shop on the corner.
earl swensson associates
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FEATURES
TRANSIT MAKEOVERS
How a light rail line might bring big changes to parts of Gallatin Pike
ast Nashville’s boom shows few signs of slowing. The revitalization that has been most visible in the area around Five Points and Eastland Avenue is steadily working its way up Gallatin Pike as eager residents looking for housing options they can afford also migrate further north. Mayor Megan Barry’s proposal to install Nashville’s first light rail service along this corridor is likely to prove another development catalyst. To help us envision how some prominent sections of Gallatin could be reinvigorated with the help of that high-profile transit option, we turned to Ken Henley, visualization manager at Earl Swensson Associates, and his team. We identified three corner lots that are either undeveloped or home to unused buildings and thought about how they could be overhauled. Here’s what we came up with.
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About 1.7 miles up the street from Dozier, at the corner of Gallatin and Greenland Avenue, sits an abandoned auto repair shop. It’s two blocks south of the Inglewood branch of the Nashville Public Library, which itself sits near Isaac Litton Middle School. There’s relatively little retail on this stretch of Gallatin — several churches and an assisted-living center are the area’s prominent structures — so we have anchored our redevelopment vision with a large burger restaurant that includes a patio extending from the corner down Greenland. The patio extends over a garage that takes advantage of the downward slope of Greenland as well as the site’s larger 1.1-acre footprint to be a platform for the restaurant and several floors of condo units above. Fronting Gallatin, the floor above the restaurant houses office space.
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FEATURES
1100 Inglewood
Less than a mile north of Greenland — and just steps from the ramps onto and off Briley Parkway — the owners of 1100 Inglewood Drive have had their 0.7-acre property on the market for several months. The corner lot sits across Gallatin from Gallatin Road Baptist Church, is around the corner from a Home Depot store and Regions Bank branch and would be just about on top of the terminus of the light rail line as it’s being contemplated. For that reason, our proposal features an Metropolitan Transit Authority ticketing office and a small lobby/waiting area at the corner of Gallatin and Inglewood. Next door is a convenience store — think the H.G. Hill Urban Market in downtown’s Viridian tower — for commuters looking to grab a snack or an on-the-go lunch. Above the retail-oriented ground floor, we think a full floor of office space could be marketed to companies open to making transit passes a part of their benefits package.
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oPTionS
MAKING IT MODULAR Developers deploy unconventional building methods, materials to yield reasonably priced housing by bILL LEwIS
ousing is a hot commodity in Nashville. And with the average cost of a typical home in the region approaching $300,000 and workforce housing hard to find, two developers are using innovative construction techniques to keep prices within reach of middle-income buyers like teachers, nurses and public servants. At the Tech Hill development located near The Fairgrounds Nashville on the city’s south side, locally
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based Core Development Services is at work on Alloy, being billed as the city’s first condo project to use modular construction techniques. Nearby, on the edge of the WedgewoodHouston neighborhood at 2150 Byrum Ave., FMBC Investments is using repurposed shipping containers to construct 83 studio, oneand two-bedroom residences. That development, named 83 Freight, would be, if standing today, the city’s largest shipping container development. Though new to Nashville, the unconventional approach to residential construction could take root, with its popularity bolstered by similar commercial spaces at the oneC1TY mixed-use development in Midtown and The 404 Hotel and Kitchen in The Gulch. No, the unusual homes will not be cheap — the days of buying a new home in Nashville for less than $150,000 are no more. But they will not be priced starting at the aforementioned $300,000 mark either. At Alloy, prices begin below $200,000. 83 Freight’s prices haven’t been set but will be “affordable,” according to Shawn Bailes, FMBC president and CEO. Indeed, there is a growing need for reasonably priced housing inside the city, says Bailes. Offering such a product can be done only via unconventional materials and methods.
“With land and construction costs climbing every day, more developers need to focus on diverse housing options and not just more of the same. Our studio units fill a need for the person that usually has to go with one or two other people to cram into a house or bigger unit just in order to afford to live within the city. Hospitality workers, struggling artists and people just starting out on their own are just a few of the ‘missing middle’ workforce that we are attempting to serve with inner-city living,” he says. Tech giant Google sees modular construction and industrial materials as part of the solution to the housing crunch in Silicon Valley. The tech giant has ordered 300 modular units from a startup called Factory OS, The Wall Street Journal reports. The modular homes will provide temporary housing for Google employees. The potential benefits have caught the eye of local officials in the mayor’s office, but they say it’s too early to judge whether modular home development is something in which the city should invest public dollars. Federal funding can’t be used to pay for modular construction, which is commonly associated with temporary structures. Private lenders may also have restrictions, says Adriane Harris, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing. “Any time you say ‘modular,’ people go instantly to mobile homes,” she says.
courtesy of smith Gee studio
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OPTIONS
Morgan Mansa, executive director of the Barnes Housing Trust Fund, notes, “It’s not that the mayor’s office is averse to innovation. We want it to be proven” before investing. Mayor Megan Barry has committed $10 million in each of her proposed budgets for the Barnes Fund, which provides funds for nonprofit developers to construct or renovate affordable rental and owner-occupied housing. For the current “innovation round” of funding, developers competing for grants are encouraged to propose creative solutions, such as nontraditional designs and land use. Funding comes from the $11.25 million sale of the nowdemolished Nashville Convention Center, the site of which is being redeveloped as a mixed-use project by San Diego-based Oliver McMillan and Spectrum Emery of Brentwood. Barry has also committed $25 million in general obligation bonds for affordable housing. The funds will be used to acquire and rehabilitate multi-family rental units, to develop housing on city property and to adaptively reuse buildings. The Barnes Fund is seeking a nonprofit partner to operate the city’s first community land trust, which is intended to increase the availability of affordable housing. The trust will retain ownership of land on which private residences are built. If an owner sells, the trust will share in the profits. In addition, the next owner has to be within a certain income range. Despite the strong potential, incorporating modular construction methods and materials will require buy-in from both the Metro Council and the public, says Mansa. But there are local precedents, with modular techniques in full view at Alloy. The building’s oneand two-bedroom “modules” are built in a factory in Pennsylvania and shrink-wrapped for shipment to Tech Hill, where they are stacked
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FEATURES
on the foundation and bolted into place. Alloy will have 82 condos. “Modular construction was the creative solution Core implemented because of Nashville’s rising construction costs, a shortage of labor and a backlog at Metro Codes,” says Vice President Kent Campbell. Alloy’s modules, designed by East Nashville-based EOA Architects, are 80 percent finished when they arrive. Appliances, toilets and sinks are already in place. WedgewoodHouston-based Carter Group, the project’s general contractor, hooks up plumbing and adds exterior balconies and other finishes. “Modular construction is faster, smarter and greener with a stronger, high-quality building at a competitive price,” Campbell says. “Construction time is reduced by one-third to one-half. The modules are built in a factory in a controlled environment [with] no mildew, no sitting in weather. It’s a greener process because it reduces material waste and is less disruptive to the project site and the neighborhood.” Perhaps not surprisingly, Core is considering modular construction for some upcoming projects. Though no decision has been finalized, the company — known for its progressive bent — has decided it likes modular construction. “The condo buyer gets a highquality, better-finished condo, built in climate-controlled setting. They can move in sooner after paying down payment and pricing is more competitive,” says Campbell. Bailes is considering more developments similar to 83 Freight, for which he is using 173 shipping containers to construct the living units and a leasing office. “With shipping containers and other modular techniques, you can … save time,” he says. “Furthermore, if you are building in a controlled environment — [in this case] a factory — there is no time lost to weather. And you could potentially cut down on waste and your quality can improve, too.”
GROW HERE.
8.1 million sq. ft. of office space.
3,836,664 sq. ft. of Class A office space and growing.
1,539,000 total sq. ft. of office space under construction.
NashvilleDowntown.com This space was donated by Pinnacle Financial Partners
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METRO
‘PEOPLE SEE THE OPPORTUNITY’ The mayor talks growth pains, housing supply and how Opportunity NOW will change in Year 2
ith a planned referendum on a funding mechanism for a massive transit plan likely coming next year and a reelection bid the following year, the stakes are high for Mayor Megan Barry. Her ambitious light-rail proposal has grabbed a lot of attention, but the mayor also continues to juggle the less glamorous parts of infrastructure and transit. Those include bus fares and repairs to Interstate 440 as well as the challenges that come with housing the dozens of daily new Nashvillians — as well as those who have been around longer — and attracting new, high-paying jobs to the city. Barry’s first term has featured record-breaking growth, and one of her main tasks is keeping the train on the tracks. Post Editor Geert De Lombaerde and Reporter Stephen Elliott sat down with the mayor this summer to discuss those and other issues. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited for length and clarity.
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Nashville’s growth has been breathtaking at times, but it’s also been concentrated in some ways. How can it be better? Growth and development is good, but it does have to have what we call inclusive prosperity, making sure that everybody sees the benefit. Clearly, some communities have seen it more than others, but that’s part of our opportunity. I’ve talked about this concept and maybe you’ve heard me mention it — YIMBYism: Yes, in my backyard — which is where we all have to be focused because it has to be about that growth with intention that comes with affordable housing in my neighborhood. People who look different than I do. People who speak different languages than I do. Transit in my neighborhood. So the idea is that, as we grow and change, that benefit is all across the county and people are embracing that inclusivity. How do you incentivize people who aren’t naturally incentivized to accept that to do so? With growth comes a lot more folks wanting to come into Nashville. That creates traffic issues. And so having that density where you have affordable housing and transit-oriented development along our major pikes and corridors helps with that YIMBYism. And it helps with this idea of, “What’s it going to do to benefit me?” If you have these highdensity development corridors, you’re going to have less traffic because what you’re going to do is have places where people live and work and play all in the same place.
‘tHere Are stIll A lot of coNversAtIoNs tHAt Are H A r d t o c H A N g e .’ m ay o r m e g a n b a r r y
Are we making enough progress on that front in terms of getting people’s minds changed? It’s always a process, right? Change is probably the hardest part for lots of folks. But the good news for Nashville is that people see the opportunity for how Nashville could be with more transit as a great opportunity for change. But there are still a lot of conversations that [are] hard to change. People want things to change up until the last person who moved into the neighborhood, and then they don’t want it to change anymore.
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I think always the direct questions that people ask is, “How would this impact me? What would be the benefits and what would be the downside?” And that is always up to us with changes coming to make sure that those neighborhood conversations with communities and with Council members are happening so that people can understand what the upsides and downsides are. Are you convinced enough people would actually use alternative transit options? Some will. I think that the reality for Nashville is that we will always be a multi-modal community and that is going to always include cars. It’s not as if cars are going to go away or become obsolete. But it is about creating those modalities where you have multiple choices and then hoping that people will choose to either get on the sidewalk or bike lane or light rail. Is growth in lower-wage hospitality and tourism jobs in Nashville surpassing growth in higher-wage jobs? Actually, no. If you look at the companies that we have recruited to come here or the ones that have expanded here, a lot of them are those back-room jobs that are good jobs. We absolutely have a booming tourism and hospitality market. No lie about that. Those are jobs right now that are really hard to fill because we have so many job options. With those lower-wage jobs, would a higher minimum wage help workers in that sector or hurt them? The state passed a law mandating that no municipality in Tennessee can create a minimum wage higher than federal law. But what I think you see is that the market takes care of that because, if I’m an owner of a business, I need somebody to staff my business. And if I can’t hire them at this price point and keep them, then I’m going to come up in my price point because I want to serve my customers. And I think that’s what you’re seeing. So if you actually had a little bit of conversation about how much people are making in those lower jobs, I think you’re seeing that they’re probably making more than minimum wage. In that same vein: Are there policies, job training or other kinds of grants that you wish you could use more for workforce development? Sure. It’s critical. We can go out and attract companies to come here on the economic development side but unless we continue to have a
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supply of workers for them, they’re not going to be interested. It’s easy to chase any deal with jobs when you have really high unemployment. But when you have really low unemployment, you can really chase highquality jobs.
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Opportunity NOW kind of fits into that. It does. It’s such a great thing. At last count, there were 10,850-plus jobs in the portal for kids 14 to 24. Last I looked, over 8,500 kids had actually applied through the portal. We’ll have the final numbers at the end of summer, but this is a program that didn’t exist last summer. For us to ask, how do we do some heavy lifting for our kids to try to get them engaged in jobs, I think it is a great start. And we’ll learn a lot from this summer. Some of these jobs in the portal will become jobs that you can stay in all year round. The internships are specifically targeted for the summer. What we did find is we had a lot more applicants for kids who are in the 14-to-15 year range because those internships were very focused on ACT prep, mentorship and some other stuff. We had a lot more demand than we had supply for those. Next summer, we’ll definitely expand that for that demographic. Who is Nashville competing with most when recruiting employers here? They’re still the same cities that have traditionally been our peer cities. It’s places like Louisville, Austin, to some degree Cleveland and Cincinnati. But for us, we have a lot more things to offer. Partly because the demographic that seems to want to move here is young and educated and employers know that, so it’s an easy sell not just for the folks who want to bring jobs. We have a good pipeline, and we have really interesting types of companies who are coming. Everything from Lyft bringing 400 jobs out of San Francisco to Houzz. That’s one of my guilty pleasures at night, to look at Houzz. And then the Smile Direct people that do braces, but it’s all online. Who knew these jobs existed? Is it possible for the supply of lower-cost housing to keep up with the demand? One thing that we did is we funded the Barnes Fund, and we put $25 million into it now in the last two years. This year, we have a new tool, which is the $25 million general obligation bonds that we’re going to use to help do some stabilization for folks who are on lower-income housing. Where I see that lower price point that you’re talking about, I can get that as workforce housing for teachers and firefighters and creators and police officers. We have 170 units coming out of the ground at 12th and Wedgewood, which is with a private developer. Last
‘I WOuldN’t WaIt fOr g O v e r N m e N t tO s O lv e [ t h e h O u s I N g ] p r O B l e m .’ M AY O R M E G A N B A R R Y
year, we had 30 Metro pieces of property that we surplussed to create affordable housing. There’s no silver bullet. It’s all these different pieces that you try to create. And we have our program which tries to incentivize developers that are already building units to just carve out a piece and put more affordable or workforce housing into their units and we’ll offset the difference. One of the things we worked on with Jimmy Granbery with his property on Charlotte was to give rent reductions to people who are teachers, firefighters, nurses and police officers. Government has not built these houses. Private developers are going to build them. So, how do we create the ways forward to get the development community to want to engage and help to solve the problem? But government could build those houses, right? We opened 71 units of low-income housing [in July] when we cut the ribbon for the new Barrett Manor. Those are the first new housing units in 18 years, so I wouldn’t wait for government to solve this problem, which is why government should be a partner with private developers to make this happen a lot faster. When developers talk about this, they often mention the prohibitive cost of land and how the only product they can deliver is above a certain price point. Well, you can deliver a product if you want, based on a whole lot of parameters. But to that point, that’s why we did surplus 30 pieces of property from Metro, understanding that land is the most expensive piece. You can also get density bonuses, so there are ways that developers can work with us which actually just makes it market-neutral for them to add these units. There are lots of tools and lots of ways to slice this. [The proposed Greer Stadium redevelopment] is another great example of being able to take a crumbling piece of infrastructure and reclaim it in a way that meets the needs of our community. You’d have green space, you’d have affordable housing, you’d have a gym for that neighborhood. Or it can stay a crumbling, aging stadium that nobody uses. Because we have the land, there’s an opportunity there to help do something creative.
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How do you prioritize where to put your time and your energy and Metro’s money when it comes to these big questions that all are related to each other? It’s all three things: transit, housing and jobs. I wish there was one thing today that we get to work on, but we get to work on all of it all the time. If Nashville were to come up with a creative idea to solve some problem, you might have to worry about the legislature stepping in and putting a stop to it. But in transit, at least, it seems that the legislature bucked that trend? I think so. You can look at the IMPROVE Act as a great example of a lot of different voices coming together to say we understand that infrastructure is critical and we understand that transit is a component of infrastructure. It’s not just roads and bridges. It’s also these more multi-modal opportunities, like light rail. People are commuting into Davidson County and they care just as much about that commute and commute time as people who live in Davidson County. So they’re able to talk to their
legislators to say, “Hey, look, we’ve got to solve this problem.” But Davidson County, we realize we’re going to have to go first on that, and we believe that we have to lead on it. We’re going to go ahead and move on that and then the region, I believe, will come along. If we take some sort of light rail all the way to Clarksville, people in Clarksville are going to want to get on it. How do we make that happen? We’re going down Gallatin Road. If we can take it all the way to Rivergate, then how do we get Gallatin to be included? But we have to move first. It’s just a ton of money to come up with. It is. It’s lot of money, but I also think that it’s one of those moments in time where, if we don’t move on it, it’s not going to get any better. A lot of these roads can’t be widened, so how are you going to get creative about running transit down them? When it comes time to do the messaging for the referendum, you can’t really sell it with
that “If we don’t do it now…” negative message, right? Are people’s mindsets able to catch up, collectively and quickly enough? I think when Nashvillians have been asked to vote on things, they absolutely make the right decision. When we consolidated Metro government, people said yes to that. And we said we want to be a city that’s going to have a major football team. I’m not saying any of these things were easy, but I’m just saying that in the end, Nashvillians have said, “You know what? I’m saying yes to this. I’m saying yes to the NFL. I’m saying yes to a consolidated government. I’m saying yes when we defeated English-only.” There are these moments where Nashvillians are asked to step up, and I think they will. But I agree with you, this has to be about the vision and the excitement around transit and not the mundane details of where the stop is going to be. It’s got to be about the fact that I’m going to have an opportunity to ride transit and my kids are going to have an opportunity to ride it. It’s not going to be a small undertaking.
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mETRo
‘We’ve got so many needs across davidson county that We have t o r e a l ly t r y a n d make some sort of an i m p a c t v e r y q u i c k l y ,’ jeffery hammond, metro public works
A NEED FOR SPEED
Metro’s quick-build program churns out infrastructure cheaply and in a hurry by StEpHEN ELLIott
ith a limited budget and limited man-hours, Metro’s infrastructure builders are turning to new solutions for old problems. As once sparsely populated areas of Nashville fill in with a growing population, gaps and deficiencies in the city’s infrastructure
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become more obvious. One glaring example: bus stops that leave passengers on a road’s unprotected shoulder, separated from a disjointed sidewalk system. Using temporary dividers — think fences and other barriers — Metro Public Works staffers can turn a turn lane by a bus stop into a sidewalk in a day or less. The solution is cheap, too, and can be reversed easily if the turn lane’s loss ends up causing too many problems. “Ideally, we would go out there and see these needs and, instead of using quick build, which is very low cost, we’d go out there and rebuild the road [and] put brand new, nice sidewalks in,” says Jeffrey Hammond, assistant director for transportation at Metro Public Works. “But we just don’t have the budget to do it, and we don’t in a lot of cases feel like we have the time.” And that’s despite the $30 million in this year’s Metro budget for sidewalk construction. Completing sidewalk networks is one way to ensure a planned light-rail system running from Nashville’s outer boroughs into downtown is more fully integrated with other trans-
portation elements, says Erin Hafkenschiel, director of transportation and sustainability in the mayor’s office. It’s part of a plan to think “about the city in a more multimodal way,” she says, and about “how we can make progress in advance of starting construction on a light-rail line so when that light-rail line is up and running people can get to it really easily, and the bus service complements it, and our streets are safer [and] people feel more comfortable walking — all that in tandem.” It’s not just sidewalks, though. The city a year ago used quick-build techniques to conduct a six-week experiment on Lower Broadway. Metro blocked off parking lanes on the busy, pedestrian-filled street for restaurants to use as outdoor seating. “It’s an opportunity to really pilot ideas, a way to get input from stakeholders and change things as you go along before you have to invest in capital construction,” Hafkenschiel says. “Different business owners along that corridor want different things, so we want to try out a couple different things to see what works best.” Nashville officials are looking to cities such as Minneapolis, Denver and Austin for quickbuild inspiration. But the mayor’s transportation director adds a city closer to home — Memphis — “is doing a great job” with quick-build technologies. Metro’s quick-build projects are not intended to be permanent solutions, but rather temporary salves for Nashville’s growing pains. “We’ve got so many needs across Davidson County that we have to really try and make some sort of an impact very quickly,” Hammond says. “At the same time, it allows us to test things. If we put it in and it doesn’t work out, it’s really easy to pull those back out and learn.”
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METRO
FEATURES
CIRCULAR REASONING
Nashville’s roundabouts improve traffic flow, spur development by bILL LEwIS
he shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But — increasingly in Nashville — the fastest way to get across town is to drive in a circle. Traffic circles and roundabouts are being used throughout the city to improve traffic flow at dysfunctional intersections and to create landmarks that spur development. “Roundabouts create a focal point [that says] ‘you are here,’” says Jim Douglas, whose firm, Hodgson Douglas, designed in the late 1990s the streetscape for the city’s first roundabout: the Music Row Roundabout. More may be coming. In hopes of calming traffic and improving safety for motorists and pedestrians, the Metro Public Works Department recently has experimented with temporary traffic circles at the intersection of 10th Avenue South and Lawrence Avenue in 12South and at Elmwood Avenue and 15th Avenue South in Belmont-Hillsboro. Those traffic circles were used for just a few days before being removed. However, based on their success the department is considering permanent traffic circles on 10th Avenue South, says Public Works spokeswoman Kelly Brockman. “In support of our work toward safer streets, MPW is considering circles and roundabouts as part of our improvements toolbox,” she says. They would join the city’s five permanent roundabouts. In addition to Music Row, permanent roundabouts have been installed at the intersection of Korean Veterans Boulevard, Lafayette Street and Eighth Avenue South; at 46th
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Avenue and Murphy Road; and at 15th Avenue South and Acklen Avenue on the campus of Belmont University. A permanent, smaller traffic circle is in use in the Bordeaux neighborhood at the intersection of River Cliff Drive, River Drive and Hailey Avenue. Not everyone is familiar with roundabouts and it’s possible to observe a vehicle complete a circle or two before exiting. But that’s not a problem, says Douglas. “There’s a learning curve and we’re a tourist town. A lot of people have never seen a roundabout before,” he says. At an ordinary intersection, traffic often stacks up behind drivers who are confused about which way to turn. That doesn’t happen in a roundabout. “If you’re not sure, you can keep going around,” says Douglas. A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showed that when roundabouts replace intersections with stop sighs or traffic signals, crashes are reduced by about 75 percent, says Bob Murphy, regional practice leader for Nashville-based RPM Transportation Consultants.
“Roundabouts have far fewer conflict points than traditional intersections and when properly designed have lower entering speeds,” he says. RPM was the primary designer for the roundabouts at 46th and Murphy in Sylvan Park and at Belmont University. The firm assisted with the design of the Music Row Roundabout and designed three roundabouts on the Middle Tennessee State University campus. The central island of a roundabout can create a landmark that encourages development, both Douglas and Murphy say. On Music Row, the roundabout was part of a “new, iconic streetscape” and includes Musica, a sculpture ranking among the city’s most visible public art pieces. The Korean Veterans Boulevard roundabout is anchored by Stix, a collection of 27 multicolored poles standing 70 feet. “In the cases of Music Row and 46th Avenue and Murphy Road, the roundabouts were built as part of overall streetscape improvement projects that have improved aesthetics and provided new opportunities for redevelopment,” says Murphy.
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STRETCHED THIN Do the workforce demands of a construction boom lead to more accidents? by StEpHEN ELLIott
njuries and deaths are part of the construction industry, and it only makes sense that accidents would increase as construction activity booms the way it has the last several years in Nashville. But Ethan Link, assistant business manager for the Laborers International Union Local 386, says more construction activity doesn’t have to mean more accidents.
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“What a lot of people imagine is whenever construction activity picks up, that inevitably there will be more injuries or even deaths,” he says. “That’s just not true. A lot of the injuries aren’t inevitable. A lot of them are preventable.” Link, who is based in Madison, said a combination of skilled workers being recruited to Nashville worksites from other markets and unskilled workers provided by temp agencies “creates a situation where a lot of guys weren’t trained together, they weren’t trained consistently about the same things.” In late July, a worker fell to his death while working on the Solis North Gulch apartment project, and a number of other fatal and nonfatal accidents have been reported recently. But solid statistics with local detail are hard to come by: State-level reports compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics typically arrive with nearly a year’s delay. Residential construction sites are more prone to such dangers than are larger downtown commercial projects, says Link’s union colleague William Cardenas. “In the residential market, you don’t have as much regulation. You don’t have as much over-
sight,” he says. “That’s the area where these guys are pulling day laborers off the street and putting them to work with nobody to say, ‘Hey buddy, put on your hardhat. Where’s your lanyard? Are you hooked up?’ That’s where I’m seeing a lot of injuries, a lot of unsafe conditions.” Toby Compton, president of the Greater Tennessee chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, contends that his member companies, like their union counterparts, value safety above all else, even in boom times like those now underway in Nashville. “Yes, there’s a lot of opportunity in the construction industry, and a lot of opportunity for new people to enter the workforce,” he says. “And it’s incumbent upon us as an association and our member companies to get these people properly trained.” Both Compton and the union officials tout training and apprenticeship programs offered for newcomers to the construction field, including collaboration with state and federal occupational safety and health agencies. “Safety is the most important issue on any job site,” Compton adds.
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NELA NELA
C o n g r a t u l a t i o n s t o t h e 2 0 1 7 N a s h v i l l e E m e r g i n g L e a d e r Aw a r d W i n n e r s !
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Nashville Area Chamber and YP Nashville recognize outstanding area young professionals Ellen Green Hoffman Andrei Javier i n 1 4 i n d u s t r y c l a s s i f i c a t i o n s w h o e xc e l i n t h e i r c a r e e r s a n d m a k e a d i f f e r e n c e i n t h e Associate, Hawkins Partners, Inc. Vice President, Financial Advisor, First Tennessee Post-Doctoral Research Associate, c o m m u n i t y. V i s i t y pFinancial n a s h vServices i l l e . o r g t o l e a r n m o r e a n d gMedical e t i n &v oHealth l v e dCaret oServices d a y. Architecture, Engineering & Construction Nathan Oliver
Architecture, Engineering & Construction Nathan Oliver Arts, Entertainment & Music Business Nathan Oliver Associate, Tim Gray Hawkins Partners, Inc. Associate, Hawkins Partners, Inc. Architecture, Engineering & Construction CEO, Grayscale Entertainment Marketing
Financial Services Ellen Green Hoffman Government & Public Affairs Ellen Green Hoffman Vice President, Financial Advisor, First Tennessee Jennifer Drake-Croft Vice President, Financial Advisor, First Tennessee Financial Services Director of Early Childhood Well-Being,
Nathan Oliver & Music Business Arts, Entertainment Arts, Entertainment & Music Business Associate, Hawkins Partners, Inc. Tim Gray Business Services Tim Gray CEO, Entertainment Marketing John Grayscale Byers CEO, Grayscale Entertainment Marketing Arts, Entertainment & Music Business Vice President, Director of Sales, Aon Risk Solutions
Ellen Green& Hoffman Government Public Affairs Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth Government & Public Affairs Vice President, Financial Advisor, First Tennessee Jennifer Drake-Croft Jennifer Drake-Croft Director of Early Childhood Well-Being, Hospitality & Tourism Director of Early&Childhood Well-Being, Government Public Affairs Tennessee Rachel LaytonCommission on Children and Youth Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth Jennifer Drake-Croft Marketing Director, A. Marshall Family Foods
Tim Gray
Business Services Business Services CEO, Grayscale Entertainment Marketing John Byers Service & Nonprofit Community John Byers Vice President, Director of Sales, Aon Risk Solutions Marielle Cummings Business Services Vice President, Director of Sales, Aon Risk Solutions Zone Director, Martha O’Bryan Center / John Byers
Community Service & Alliance Nonprofit Nashville After Zone (NAZA) Vice President, Director of Sales, Aon Risk Solutions Community Service & Nonprofit Marielle Cummings Marielle Cummings Zone Director, Martha O’Bryan Center / Education Community Service & Nonprofit Zone Director, Martha O’Bryan Center / Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA) Marielle Cummings Allison Buzard Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA) Zone Director,University Martha O’Bryan Center / Family Engagement Manager, Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA) Education Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools Education Allison Buzard Allison Buzard Education University Manager, Family Engagement Family Engagement Allison BuzardUniversity Manager, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools Family Engagement University Manager, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools
Director of Early Childhood Well-Being,
Hospitality & Tourism Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth Hospitality & Tourism Rachel HumanLayton Resources Rachel Layton Marketing A. Marshall Family Foods ErinHospitality DuclosDirector, & Tourism Marketing Director, A. Marshall Family Foods Associate Vice President, Human Resources, Aramark Rachel Layton Human Resources Marketing Director, A. Marshall Family Foods Human Resources Erin LegalDuclos Services Erin Duclos Associate Vice President, Human Resources, Aramark Human Resources Sarah Hannah Associate Vice President, Human Resources, Aramark Erin Duclos Partner / Attorney, Bradley Associate Vice President, Human Resources, Aramark Legal Services Legal Services Sarah Hannah Sarah Hannah Legal Partner /Services Attorney, Bradley Partner Attorney, Bradley Sarah/Hannah Partner / Attorney, Bradley
Vanderbilt University Medical Center Medical & Health Care Services Andrei Javier Andrei Javier Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Public Relations, Advertising & Marketing Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Medical & Health Care Services Julia Bonner Vanderbilt University Medical Center Andrei Javier Founder and President, Pierce Public Relations Post-Doctoral Research Associate, & Marketing Public Relations, Advertising
Public Relations, Advertising & Marketing Vanderbilt University Julia Bonner Real Estate ServicesMedical Center Julia Bonner Founder and President, Pierce Public Relations Josh Anderson Founder and President, Pierce Public Relations Public Relations, Advertising & Marketing Owner and CEO, The Anderson Group Real Julia Bonner
Real Estate Services Estate Services
Founder and President, Real Estate ServicesPierce Public Relations
Josh Anderson Josh Anderson Owner and CEO, The Anderson Group Real Technology Real Estate Owner andServices CEO, The Anderson Group Real Estate Services Megan Long JoshEstate Anderson Services Director Business Operations, Owner and of CEO, The Anderson Group Concept Real Technology Technology, Estate ServicesInc. Technology Megan Long Megan Long Technology Director of Business 2017 Impact Award Operations, Concept Director of Business Operations, Concept Megan Long Technology, Inc. Flood, Bumstead, McCready Mary Ann McCready, Technology, Inc.Operations, Concept Director of Business & McCarthy, Inc. Technology, 2017 ImpactInc. Award 2017 Impact Award Mary Ann McCready, Flood, Bumstead, McCready Mary Ann McCready, Flood, Bumstead, McCready 2017 Impact Award & McCarthy, Inc. McCarthy, Inc.Flood, Bumstead, McCready Mary&Ann McCready, & McCarthy, Inc.
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FEAtUrES
HoUSING
WHITE-HOT COOLING Nashville hit hard by housing inventory crunch by LINdA bryANt
n the surface, it’s been a stellar 2017 for the Nashville real estate market. In fact, the city’s real estate sector could easily be placed in the national “supernova” category. In January, Zillow named Nashville the hottest housing market in the country, citing its 13 percent annual appreciation rate, continued population growth and vibrant job market. Six months later, Ten-X, a nationwide online real estate company, also named the city the nation’s best single-family housing market. Despite the positive press, there are complications hidden ever-so-slightly beneath the surface, concerns that have the potential of intensifying for builders and developers, Realtors, planners, buyers or sellers. Drilling down to the basics: Nashville has a modest housing inventory, a major factor in yielding the city a so-called “seller’s market.” With inventory steadily declining, prices not surprisingly continue to rise. Furthermore, people attempting to purchase housing and raw land located in neighborhoods
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within close proximity of downtown and Midtown Nashville face strong competition and less-than-ideal prices. Similarly, contractors and developers face long waits for permits, escalating labor costs and pricey materials. The challenges are noteworthy. “Some of the builders are just throwing their hands in the air,” says John Brittle, founder of the Infill Nashville Team at Parks. “Recently, I spent four hours, for the first time in 10 years, in Maury, Rutherford and Williamson counties with a builder who has over 50 houses built in Nashville. We are going to see builders leaving because it’s easier to build somewhere else.”
Buying frenzy, bidding wars
The second quarter of this year was the market’s strongest on record, according to the Greater
Nashville Realtors, and there’s a good chance end-of-year totals will equal 2006’s pre-recession record of 40,000 closings, the organization says. Second-quarter closings were 11,155, a 2.8 percent increase from the 10,851 closings reported through the second quarter of 2016. Yearto-date closings were up 5.6 percent, with 19,493 closings at mid-year compared to the 18,452 closings reported through mid-year 2016. But pull back the curtains and there are indications of imperfections, especially regarding available inventory. According to GNR, the June figure was 8,842, down from 9,865 in June 2016. “Home inventory is too low,” says residential real estate veteran Edsel Charles, head of MarketGraphics Research Group. “The market could use over 600 more specs today.”
daniel meigs
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No question, buyers are discouraged by the lack of available options, says long-time Nashville-based Realtor Christie Wilson, president of The Wilson Group. Wilson says many buyers must endure nerve-wracking — and unsuccessful — bidding wars before they finally purchase homes. “The good homes go in three to five days,” Wilson says. “The junky or overpriced stuff goes slower. Homebuyers, especially first-time homebuyers, are having to be very patient. It’s frustrating, but most of them understand what the dynamics are to get into Nashville. Sadly, many typically lose to a multiple-offer situation because people go in so much higher.” If Nashville is the nation’s hottest residential real estate market — and considering its limited inventory — why isn’t the city seeing more homes built? Local industry professionals have multiple theories. “There are a lot of factors at play here,” Brittle says. “Government restrictions and growth have slowed us down a lot. Plus, we don’t have enough homebuilders [in general] and framers, plumbers, electricians, etc. [specifically] to get the job done. So that drives the cost up. “There are too many people moving to Nashville right now for the housing market to handle,” he adds. Brittle, who has been active in Nashville’s residential real estate sector for 30 years, began his specialization in infill properties in 1997 when he subdivided his first city lot. In 2005, he founded Infill Nashville, which identifies properties ripe for small-scale development. A
‘I know people who are pullIng out of the m a r k e t a lt o g e t h e r a n d g o I n g t o p l a c e s frIendlIer to development such as huntsvIlle o r c h a t t a n o o g a .’
Shawn BaileS, FBMC inveStMentS
large portion of these parcels and homes are located in Davidson County — typically lots with homes that can be razed and replaced with more than one unit or with a higher-end singlefamily residence. “I’m seeing some interesting trends,” Brittle says. “We are already seeing an absorption rate that just doesn’t work. There are parts of East
Nashville where no one should be building new houses. They have plenty of inventory. “There are people buying lots where they think they can put two houses but they can only put one,” he adds. “There’s a lot more being built than they think because they don’t study the whole market. The competition is getting really tight, and the developers are willing to go ahead and build and make less per house. That’s going to give us an inventory glut in certain places. “By the end of this year, I believe we’ll see investors losing money on real estate deals in certain areas,” Brittle predicts. “[They will have] paid too much for a lot because construction costs went up too high and because of added costs related to regulations such as Nashville’s new sidewalk bill.”
Can buyers get what they want?
When you dig deeper into Nashville’s dwindling housing inventory trend, there’s a clue for what type of home is in demand, Wilson points out. “Look at inventory numbers through RealTracs and you’ll find that the under $300,000 price point is the biggest market in Middle Tennessee,” she says. “There are a lot of young people moving to Nashville who want to buy a home, and they are making this a strong first-time homebuyers market. But at the same time, we have inventory crisis for the first-time homebuyer. We don’t have the buildable lots [in inner-city neighborhoods] to add that kind of housing.” Like Brittle, Wilson thinks buyers, especially first-time buyers or those in search of homes priced in the $250,000 to $350,000 range, are going to look outside of the city’s fashionable neighborhoods in larger numbers. “The lot cost is so expensive right now in Nashville, and the costs of labor and materials have gone up so much, it’s created a boomtown kind of market,” Wilson says. “Some people are moving farther out to places like White House for mid-range housing options. “No question, the market is screaming that we need affordable housing,” Wilson adds. “We’re talking about housing for the person who makes a normal wage of $50,000 to $60,000 a year. Not everyone is making $150,000 a year. Not everyone has parents who can kick in.” Wilson has a pet peeve about an issue that has been flying under the radar. “Since 2012, we’ve had out-of-town hedge fund-type groups come in and scoop up 100 properties at a time,” Wilson says. “They’ve been holding them as rentals. So the homes don’t reenter the market as they typically would.
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“First-time homebuyers are usually in their homes for three to five years, and then they resell to another first-time homebuyer,” she adds. “That’s not happening right now with these homes. These investors have come in and clogged up the market. They are holding the properties as rentals. It’s forcing a rental market in our community and driving up prices because of supply and demand.” Wilson gets calls “all the time” from out-oftown investors looking to buy a bundle of homes. “I just got a call from someone in L.A. representing a fund,” she says. “They want to scoop up houses to add to their portfolio and find a place to park their money. But they are three years late to the game. The homes just aren’t there for them anymore.” Larry Lipman, president of The Lipman Group Sotheby’s International Realty, says some buyers are growing apprehensive, sensing a housing crisis similar to the one in 2008. “We often hear people saying there is going to be another crash — and rightfully so — because people saw how the market was prior to the [previous] crash, and it seems very similar now,” Lipman says. “However, there are a few factors that are drastically different than what we saw previous to the last crash. First and foremost, lending trends have drastically changed. “Prior to [the Great Recession], money was very easy to acquire,” he continues. “And it was commonly stated that if you could show breath on a mirror, then you could get a loan. In our current market, the loan process is much more complex. Lenders are required to completely document everything and prove that the borrower is able to afford the home they are purchasing.” While other parts of the United States may be vulnerable to housing market volatility, Lipman believes Nashville is protected. “Our job market is very stable, and people and jobs are moving into our area at an all-time high rate,” he says. “We may see prices level out over the next few years. However, I feel we will still see an increase in property values.” Lipman agrees that residential growth and development will inch away from the “it” neighborhoods found on the city’s near north, east and west sides. “Going forward, there is room to building up to the $350,000 range. However, land is coming at a premium, so we most likely will see the more affordable housing options moving farther from the center core of Nashville,” he says. Indeed, many — if not most — of Nashville’s fashionable neighborhoods are now out of reach
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‘ T h e g o o d h o m e s g o i n T h r e e T o f i v e d a y s .’ Christie Wilson, the Wilson Group
for most first-time homebuyers. This even includes districts such as The Nations and Wedgewood-Houston, which only three or four years ago were still somewhat off the radar. With the city’s most popular urban neighborhoods — think Germantown, Five Points, Hillsboro-West End and Belmont-Hillsboro — becoming increasingly prohibitive for even mid-level homebuyers, the question is simple: Where are people going to find homes in relatively nice areas located fairly close to downtown and Midtown? Wilson believes there are still possibilities. “There are still some really interesting parts of Nashville that are affordable, and I’d count Whites Creek as one of them,” Wilson says, noting the north side area’s appealing large lots. Whites Creek is also located closer, at least geographically, to urban Nashville than many folks realize (despite the psychological separation some contend will always exist). Wilson concedes Whites Creek lacks sufficient water and sewer infrastructure to support large-
scale development, while adding many of its residents oppose growth because they want to keep the heavily rural area as scenic as possible. Still, she is bullish on the area. “There are a lot of pieces to puzzle [remaining to be added], but I think we’ll see more happen in Whites Creek in the next five to 10 years.” In contrast, Lipman says Antioch, located south of downtown, could experience a transformation. “With the new announcement of coming businesses, Antioch will become even more advantageous for new homeowners,” he says. “This has traditionally been an area where homes are relatively affordable … and will become even more so the case [compared to the city’s pricey districts].”
‘We need this break’
Charles of the MarketGraphics Research Group offers an optimistic take on the market. He recently stated in a guest post on Southern Land Co.’s blog that the Nashville market is “catching its breath.”
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“We need this break because lot inventory is down, there is a shortage of labor and everything is jumping in price,” Charles wrote. “As an example, in the last couple of years, framing prices have risen by $2 per foot. The greater Nashville market (minus Montgomery County, which is not included because of military personnel moving on and off the base frequently) is returning to a quality pace of a first-class growing housing market. “This translates into fewer starts and sales than we have had in the recent past,” he added. “However, this new pace would be welcomed by just about any other region [as] the developers will still be knocking it out of the park. But this pace reduction will give them a chance to catch their breath as well. We forecast a need for an additional 88,000 lots [in the 11 counties comprising the Greater Nashville housing market] by the end of 2021 just to keep up with the demand.” Although many builders, developers and real estate agents still put a rosy spin on Nashville’s hot market, others aren’t so sure developing new housing in the core of Nashville hasn’t come close to reaching its peak.
Developers face challenges
Shawn Bailes, a Nashville-based investor and developer and president of FBMC Investments, says rezoning and downzoning initiatives spurred by neighborhood groups — coupled with regulations such as Metro Nashville’s new sidewalk ordinance — are slowing housing construction. If not thwarting it altogether. “There just aren’t a whole lot of buildable lots out there, but the difficulties go beyond that,” Bailes says. “It’s getting and more and more difficult to rezone in the inner-city and increasingly there’s blowback from neighborhoods. We want to develop in the places where the infrastructure exists — and where the neighborhoods already exist — and that puts us in direct conflict with people who don’t want any more growth. “What many people don’t understand is that to get to that affordable price point of $300,000 to $350,000, developers have to build smaller [residences] because of the land prices. That usually means rezoning and higher density.” Bailes says small-scale developers, even those with a strong track record in the market, might soon “get pushed out.” “You have bigger money coming into town that can deal with smaller margins, but the smaller developers can’t,” he says bluntly. Bailes is displeased about the city’s recently instituted sidewalk plan. In April, the Metro Council approved an ordinance that eliminated
a loophole that had allowed builders of singlefamily homes and duplexes to avoid installing sidewalks. The newish ordinance doesn’t mandate that new sidewalks be provided on the sites of all future single-family homes and duplexes. However, it does cover the bulk of Davidson County. With the new policy, developers can still (as was originally the case) choose to instead pay Metro an in-lieu fee, money that would go toward a city-wide fund to build sidewalks. However, that option will not be available if there is an existing sidewalk segment spanning the block on which a new home is constructed or if there is an existing sidewalk segment on an adjacent property. In those cases, the developer will have to install a sidewalk. “This bill was an uphill battle for developers,” Bailes says. “We tried to combat it as much as we could, but we weren’t going to be the ones who came out against sidewalks.” Brittle is equally concerned, contending that the added costs are prohibitive for many developers. At the least, they might dissuade builders. Brittle says a developer wanting to construct a home on an empty corner lot that cost, say, $100,000, might need to spend almost half that amount simply for sidewalks (to span both sides of the lot facing the two streets). “The sidewalk bill definitely hurts us,” Brittle says. “It will keep developers from developing where they should be building houses that are really needed.” Bailes and Brittle say every time a neighborhood downzones to prevent denser development (or, more specifically, to prevent duplexes or multi-unit buildings), it pushes affordable housing choices farther out of the city, which, in theory, contributes to traffic gridlock. “There’s an organized effort in Nashville from people who don’t want any more growth — period,” Brittle says. “It’s not just a NIMBY (not in my backyard) thing like in the old days. It’s now ‘not in my town; not in anybody’s back yard.’ We didn’t use to see people from Richland- West End or Cherokee Park come over and fight a development in Green Hills. But now we do.” Bailes adds: “You can say, again and again, that density is one of the keys to meeting the demand for affordable housing. But for some reason, many people just can’t hear that argument. They see developers as the ‘greedy bad guys.’ “It’s very hard from our perspective,” he adds. “I know people who are pulling out of the market altogether and going to places friendlier to development such as Huntsville or Chattanooga.”
LOTS OF GROWTH, BUT NOT WITHOUT GAPS Nashville had 744,743 housing units in 2015, according to research firm BuildZoom. That was up more than 30 percent from 2000, putting Nashville ahead of many of the country’s largest markets — but still a good bit behind many of its peer cities. AUSTIN 58.2% RALEIgH 54.7% ORLANdO 44.7% CHARLOTTE 39.9% ATLANTA 35.7% SAN ANTONIO 34.4% NASHVILLE 30.2% dENVER 28.4% INdIANApOLIS 20.0% METRO AREAS AVERAgE 17.7% MEMpHIS 17.0% LOUISVILLE 15.3% BIRMINgHAM 12.3% CINCINNATI 11.5% ST. LOUIS 10.5% Source: BuildZoom
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INTERIOR MOTIVES
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Marcelle Guilbeau knows condos need personality. The repeat Best of Houzz honoree brings elements of classic, industrial and contemporary design into her residential and commercial work. We asked her to sketch out for us a vision for three types of units at Six10 Merritt, the Wedgewood-Houston project that comprises 14 townhouse-style homes and 12 flats above some commercial space. Here are her recommendations.
MILLENNIAL’S FIRST HOME
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cLIENT: YOUNG MALE ENtrEprENEUr SIzE: 524 SQ FT BUDGET: $15,000
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NEEDS: MULTI-FUNCTIONAL FURNITURE 1. LIVING ROOM Sofa with Brass legs from Lee, $6,000; Auryon Side Table from Uttermost, $200; Area Rug from Surya, $600; Floor Lamp, $400; Eames Eiffel Desk Chair, $72 2. DINING AREA Belafonte Dining Table from Wayfair, $480, Arm Chairs from Lee, $1,800 each 3. BEDROOM Upholstered Platform Bed from Joss & Main, $325; Industrial Style de-lustered steel nightstand, $420; Area Rug from Surya, $600; Goose neck table lamp from Lumens, $370
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EXECUTIVE CRASH PAD cLIENT: traveling businessman 1
SIzE: 733 SQ FT BUDGET: $35,000 NEEDS: FEEL LIKE A HOTEL + QUALITY FURNITURE
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1. LIVING ROOM Nate Sectional with Chaise from Precedent, $6,210; Arden Ottoman from Cisco Brothers, $1,700; Wild Side Rug from Floorz, $1,100; Tiburon Side Table from Moe’s, $500; Modern Upholstered Lounge Chair and Ottoman from Modway, $1,696 2. DINING AREA Sigma Dining Table from Cattelan Italia, $4,533; Tosca Dining Chair from Cattelan Italia, $1,066 each; Meurice Chandelier from Robert Abbey, $1,300 3. BEDROOM Glenn Upholstered Platform Bed from Precedent, $2,575, Lena Nightstand from Made Goods, $1,850 each; Area Rug from Surya, $2,455
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FRIENDLY ABODE cLIENT: TWO YOUNG CAREER WOMEN
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SIzE: 981 SQ FT BUDGET: $30,000 NEEDS: HOME OFFICE + ENTERTAINING AREA
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1. KITcHEN/EATING AREA Arper Dizzie Oval Dining Table from ABC Home, $1,590; Louis Ghost Chairs from Design Within Reach (4), $430 each 2. OFFIcE AREA Henredon Campaign Style Desk, $1,750; Rattan Desk Chair from One King’s Lane, $615 3. LIVING ROOM Katina Gold Leaf Coffee Table from Gabby Home, $992; Elijah Sofa by Precedent customized with Lemon Zest Linen from Pindler Fabrics, $4,249.50; Loughlam Area Rug from All Modern, $649 4. MASTER BEDROOM Tufted Georgia Queen Bed from Lazar, $3,900; Alma 8 Drawer Chest from Interlude, $4,050; Alma Bedside Chest from Interlude, $1,800 each; Silk and Wool Area Rug from Surya, $5,222 5. SEcOND BEDROOM Upholstered Mackenzie Bed from Precedent, $2,370; May Night Stand from Gabby Home, $820 each; Area Rug from Surya, $624
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MARKET EVOLUTION Tracking a summer’s worth of apartment owners’ moves
purred by a seemingly never-ending stream of new arrivals, apartment developers are still active all over Nashville as we begin to think about 2018. And yes, most of those projects are still at a price point that is beyond a large number of residents. At the end of May, we assembled a basket of properties either just completed or under construction to gain a deeper understanding of their price dynamics, which might then also give us a better idea about the strength of demand for them. The short story: Yes, there’s still plenty of demand and prices are on the whole still rising. Here are some snippets from our research: • At the beginning of June, our database contained both the rental rates and square footage for 42 types of units. At those places — which ranged in size from 399 square feet to 2,583 square feet — renters were paying an average of $2.20 per square foot. • By the end of July, eight types of units had been leased up. The remaining 34 were commanding average per-square-foot rents of $2.23, an increase of 1.4 percent from the mark of two months prior. • Seventeen unit types in our universe finished July sporting higher asking rents than they had June 1. Conversely, eight were cheaper.
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• The biggest dollar rise came at Aertson Midtown, where a 704-square-foot cost $1,783 in late July, up $260 from June 1. That also was the largest jump in terms of percentages; the only other properties posting gains of more than 5 percent were The Monroe and Peyton Stakes, both in Germantown. Crescent Music Row’s smallest units — 523 square feet each — were fetching 4.6 percent more by late summer. • On the flip side, the 1,463-square-foot topend unit at Peyton Stakes saw the biggest dollar and percentage decrease during the summer, going from $3,468 per month to $3,200, a 7.7 percent drop.
• Three other types of units fell at least 4 percent in price: A 981-square-foot apartment in Broadstone Germantown posted a 4.5 percentage point drop, which is a bit smaller than the 4.6 percent for a 778-square-foot unit in Accent Bellevue and a 585-square-foot place in SkyHouse. • Nine developments offered incentives at the end of July. The standard was two months of free rent; only Peyton Stakes offered one month. • Two of the properties we tracked bumped up their incentives in June. Octave on Eighth Avenue South went from six weeks of free rent to two months while Broadstone Germantown went from one month of free rent to two.
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SkyHouse
Peyton Stakes
pRIcE RANgE Here’s how the projects in our database stacked up in late July, after a number of types of units — and in some cases, entire buildings — had been fully leased.
Crescent Music Row
Development
neighborhooD
Unit types available
price per sq. ft.
SkyHoUSE
MIdTowN
4
$2.68
cREScENT MUSIc Row
THE gULcH
3
$2.59
AERTSoN MIdTowN
MIdTowN
3
$2.57
BRoAdSToNE
gERMANTowN
4
$2.41
THE goSSETT
THE gULcH
2
$2.24
THE MoNRoE
gERMANTowN
2
$2.23
STAckS oN MAIN
EAST NASHVILLE
2
$2.15
pEyToN STAkES
gERMANTowN
4
$2.14
ocTAVE
EIgHTH AVENUE
2
$2.11
2700 cHARLoTTE
MIdTowN
2
$2.10
HILL cENTER SyLVAN HEIgHTS
wEST NASHVILLE
2
$2.01
THE cLEo
EAST NASHVILLE
1
$1.71
AccENT BELLEVUE
wEST NASHVILLE
3
$1.46 Research by Tommy Boyd
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Mark Janbakhsh
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CHANNELING COMMUNITY O n l i n e s h O p p i n g i s c h a n g i n g r e ta i l . h e r e ’ s h O w O n e e n t r e p r e n e u r h a s c r e at e d a d e s t i n at i O n a n d i s u s i n g f u n tO f i g h t b ac k by stephen elliOtt
t has long been Frank Trefs’ job to make fake look real. He designed and built decorations for Walt Disney theme parks around the world and has done similar work for MGM, Universal and the National Basketball Association. So helping turn an old Kroger store on Nolensville Pike into an indoor market meant to mimic the streets of Latin American cities was really nothing new for the artist and builder. In Trefs’ hands, foam and other artificial materials become ceramic or terra cotta tiles, wood for an oldfashioned sign or almost anything else needed to polish the artifice of the streets of Plaza Mariachi, which opened in May on Nolensville Pike, a few blocks south of Nashville Zoo. “I had a guy come in just today,” Trefs says, sitting in his studio, a former Dollar General adjacent to Plaza Mariachi, a couple months after the market opened. “He brought his mom in; she’s from Cuba. And she sat down on one of the benches and cried. She’s never
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felt as close to home since leaving Cuba as she felt when she was here. It gave that back to her for a minute.” That’s the goal of Plaza Mariachi: create an experience and, in the process, create “sticky,” eager-to-return shoppers who are causing rapid shifts in the retail landscape that are stinging big boxes especially hard. Without some kind of an experience — live bands, acrobats, magicians and jugglers are a near-constant presence at Plaza Mariachi, even on weekdays — plaza developer and owner Mark Janbakhsh says many retail outlets won’t be able to compete with ecommerce in the long run. “You go to the shopping center trade shows in Vegas and they’re all selling fountains and climbing walls, everything to make it more of an interactive experience,” says Janbakhsh, who developed Plaza Mariachi in partnership with his wife, Diane. “Otherwise, they’re just going to die.” Three years ago, Janbakhsh paid nearly $2 million for the building that once housed, among other retailers, Kroger’s produce, dry goods and dairy sections. The structure now is home to nearly a dozen cafés, restaurants and other prepared food options as well as several clothing and gift stores, a full grocery store, a family arcade and professional services providers including a bank, law office and mortgage company. More tenants are on the way.
FEATURES
Looking at the facility today, the transformation from chain grocery to all-around street market feels natural, but it wasn’t always such an obvious endeavor. And it definitely wasn’t easy or cheap: The $18 million, 70,000-square-foot project took more than three years to complete. “There was nothing typical about this,” says Dave LeFeve, president of Plaza Mariachi builder IKON Construction. “I’ve done a lot of renovation projects and a lot of large projects, but this project […] was not really close to any other project that we’ve done.” It took three years in part because of the unique challenge of designing the interior, including adding tenants and concepts progressively as development proceeded. The developers conceived the Latin theme after the project was already underway, adding even more time. “I’ve never never taken on an undertaking like this project, so I had to move slowly as I developed,” Janbakhsh says. Born in Iran, Janbakhsh’s first foray into entrepreneurship was via the Auto Masters Automobile Dealership Group of Middle Tennessee. From there, he expanded into broadcasting and now owns 15 Spanish-language radio stations around the region. He says his lack of experience in construction and real estate development might have led to a better product. “It actually gave me an advantage, in a way,” he says. “Sometimes, not having been conditioned to think a certain way about real estate can help you think outside the box.” The two local radio stations Janbakhsh owns were at the root of his venture into development. Events they hosted attracted thousands of loyal listeners drawn to the chance to be a more active part of a community. “As my radio business developed, I started to think, there’s got to be a better use of having this marketing platform,” he says, noting that the stations have studios in Plaza Mariachi. “If I put the radio stations in the middle of a mercado and I put a stage next to it, that’s a really good insurance policy that can drive people to this market. If I didn’t have the radio stations, I never would have felt comfortable enough to take this kind of risk.” LeFeve, Trefs and Nick Mann, a Waller real estate attorney who has worked on the Plaza Mariachi project, all tout Janbakhsh’s openness to new ideas during the development of his market. “Making a space like that a flexible space requires you to have a flexible mindset, and he has allowed for that,” Mann says. “He’s willing to really entertain a lot of different options,
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‘To be parT of someThing bigger, y o u h a v e T o c r o s s b o u n d a r i e s .’ FRANK TREFS
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and I think that’s really opened Plaza Mariachi up and made it that much more creative.” That openness brought with it some limitations, though. When the plaza opened in May, several tenant spaces remained empty as Janbakhsh and his team hunted for the perfect businesses to fill them. More than 100 groups inquired about leasing space in the weeks after opening — but only a dozen or so were viable prospects, Janbakhsh says. That pickiness and some companies’ reluctance to commit — despite the promise of instant foot traffic, comparatively limited overhead and complementary neighbors — pushed Janbakhsh to take on far more of the concept development. “A lot of the quality business or brands we originally approached didn’t understand the vision,” he says. “Not having access to those quality people that we wanted, I was left with two options: either develop it myself or settle for something that was less of the quality and the vision.” So he developed more than half of the restaurants and retail stores from the ground up to fit his vision for Plaza Mariachi. It wasn’t until the plaza was up and running — with large crowds showing up for Thursday night salsa lessons,
a Peruvian independence celebration and on random weekend afternoons — that more established brands began to take notice. The momentum generated since the spring has led Janbakhsh — who in 2013 started the Hispanic Family Foundation in 2013 with Diane — to think about developing other markets similar to Plaza Mariachi. He thinks the Plaza Mariachi concept can be replicated in large part in other markets and is eyeing expansion in the North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas and Virginia markets where he also owns Spanish-language radio stations. With lessons learned, Janbakhsh estimates it would take just a year and a half to build another similar project. LeFeve estimates it could be done in less than a year the second time around, with significant cost reductions during the design phase. Trefs, the artist and designer, marvels at the potential the concept has to build bridges between different communities in a changing Nashville. “It is all about community,” he says. “In fact, to be part of something bigger, you have to cross boundaries. And that’s what [Janbakhsh] is offering: crossing boundaries by putting his hand out instead of just putting up a fence.”
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COMMITTED TO QUALITY AND CUSTOMER SERVICE.
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RETAIL REVOLUTION Shopping dollars are moving online, so some developers are getting creative with empty big boxes by StEpHEN ELLIott
rick-and-mortar retail is dead, long live brick-andmortar retail. While the rise of e-commerce has purportedly presaged the death knell of in-store sales for years, online shopping still makes up less than 10 percent of retail spending. That number is on the rise though, more than doubling since 2007, with no signs of slowing down. Spending shifts from in-stores to online already has helped lead to the downfall of a number of formerly prominent retailers like RadioShack, hhgregg and Payless ShoeSource. As anchor tenants at
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large commercial centers die off, they leave behind a big box shell, and creative developers are trying to figure out what to do with them. Some, like Mark Janbakhsh, are creating a bigger experience (See page 52). He and his team turned an old Kroger on Nolensville Road into a Latin-themed indoor street market, complete with restaurants, food stands, clothing shops and a number of professional and other services. Live mariachi bands, acrobatic performers and two radio studios in the plaza are meant to draw people in. Once they’re there, the idea goes, they’ll spend money on food and retail goods. In recent years, other local empty shells have taken on nontraditional tenants. Medical clinics, satellite university campuses, call centers, public libraries and more have filled the spaces once lined with shelves of home electronics or designer clothing. “There’s a submarket of creative developers who buy these things and then figure out what to do with them,” says Steve Johnson, executive vice president for corporate and urban design at Gresham Smith and Partners. One prominent local example was Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s decision a decade ago to lease a significant part of 100 Oaks Mall to open a medical office hub, a move Jeff Moats of the Shopping Center Group calls “pioneering.” “Is anybody really that surprised that some of these older legacy retailers that have been struggling for years and years are closing their
doors? No,” Moats adds. He believes that Nashville has fared better than other cities during the most recent retail transformation, in part because the city wasn’t overbuilt in the retail sector and in part because of a solid economic outlook in the city. “There is still an insatiable appetite to grow and find deals in Nashville, to open stores,” he says. “People perform well here. Drive around: There is not a lot of vacancy.” While a number of entities might line up to fill a newly vacant box in the Nashville area, it’s becoming more common to see nontraditional organizations take that space, as Vanderbilt did at 100 Oaks. “From the perspective of a shopping center owner with large boxes that may be going vacant, when they consider how to re-tenant those spaces, it’d be a great idea to focus on retailers whose business models are naturally resistant to online retail competition. Or when looking at non-retail uses, tenants that will drive consistent traffic and sales to the balance of retailers at the shopping center,” says Austin Benedict, a senior associate in CBRE Nashville’s retail services group. Benedict and others say products that are difficult to ship, like furniture and appliances, are more protected from the the impact of online competitors. Also, consumers are more likely to visit a store when they want to try a product out before buying it. Again, think furniture.
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In the non-retail sector, medical centers and satellite university campuses, for instance, encourage visitors to come to a shopping center and then, perhaps, stick around and buy lunch or spend money elsewhere. It’s not a live mariachi band, but it does the trick. Part of the appeal of these retail skeletons is their convenient, accessible locations. “You have these big boxes that used to sell things, and what do you do with them? Many of them are located in really good locations, and there is some residual value of these boxes because of their location,” Gresham’s Johnson says. “You have a big, open, simple box that you can do a lot inside of, and it will often have a big slug of convenient parking, which sometimes has some excess capacity that allows some more development opportunities in the form of outparcels or liner buildings or multi-family housing being able to be dropped into what once was a sea of parking.” “What we are discovering is that there is not a single answer,” he continues. “It is all over the map. It could be anything.”
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‘M ay b e … w e’r e r e v e rt i n g bac k to w h at was More typical for the 100 or 200 years b e f o r e [ M a l l s ] .’
STEVEN KIRKHAM, WALLER
Where once consumers wanted their shopping in one place, their health care in another and their housing in a third, now many are more open to mixed-use living quarters. In fact, a growing number prefer it. Steven Kirkham, co-leader of Waller’s real estate practice group and a former counsel for hhgregg, says retail’s transformation is circular, not linear. “If you really look at the history of large footprint stores, those have only been around for the last maybe 40 or 50 years. So in the annals of history, maybe that was just a fad and we’re reverting back to what was more typical for the 100 or 200 years before that: the smaller store,” he says. But as online shopping takes progressively larger bites out of the brick-and-mortar retail
pie, businesses will have to further evolve, Kirkham adds. “There’s a change in the way people go about obtaining and trading goods,” he says. “It’s gone from the days of bartering to what retail had become, and that’s evolving again at this point. … [Retailers] are trying to figure out how to coexist with the digital market and continuing to have a brick-andmortar presence but scaling that back in a way to try to be efficient in a changing age.” And as they do, those marketing retail spaces had better adapt, too.
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REVVING UP RETAIL
Downtown’s newest buildings go big on stores, dining by GEErt DE LombAErDE
or a quick snapshot of just how much Nashville’s core has changed in a decade, look no further than the ground floor of a number of its newest office towers. In The Gulch, the 1201 Demonbreun tower home to CapStar Bank and Neal & Harwell, among others, features 26,000 square feet of retail space along with its 285,000 of office space. A block down Demonbreun, the Gulch Crossing building has 16,000 square feet of retail and 205,000 square feet of office space. And near the Cumberland River, the 222 2nd tower being developed by Hines and C.B. Ragland sports
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29,000 square feet of retail to go with its 391,000 square feet of office space being leased by Gresham Smith + Partners, Bank of America and others. With 222, Hines and C.B. Ragland are taking advantage of the fact that, in the words of C.B. Ragland President Michael Hayes, “there is no back door” to the building, which is steps away from Ascend Amphitheater, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and Bridgestone Arena as well as Lower Broadway. Hayes and his team, who plan to add three other buildings to the southeastern corner of downtown in the coming years, are focused on foodservice options for now as a way to piggyback on the density that has been created by other additions such as The Diner, The Southern and Etch. “As you think about this quadrant of the neighborhood south of Broadway, you really have some fantastic local operators. This roughly eight-block area has become the go-to spot for pre-event dining and that will only continue,” Hayes says. “We have targeted concepts there are unique to the market and believe [that] with this approach, the tourists will seek out the places locals go.” Combined, 222, Gulch Crossing and 1201 sport a retail-to-office-space ratio of about 8 percent. That’s significantly higher than their peers built from the 1970s to the 1990s — such as the UBS Tower, the Nashville City Center and the AT&T Building — when the market simply didn’t call for as many amenities. An office
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building was simply an office building, downtown didn’t have a residential market to speak of and there wasn’t yet a downtown arena to host hockey games and big concerts. In short, the customers just weren’t there in big enough numbers and those who were around spent their money in The Arcade or on nearby Church Street. That has changed in a big way since — and especially over the past decade. A Music City tourism boom and an apartment and condominium population of more than 10,000 people has created a demand strong enough to have developers commit to as much retail as they can fit into their street-level spaces. And every bit of that space is in high demand: In July, the Nashville Downtown Partnership reported that the vacancy rate for downtown’s 2.9 million square feet of retail space was a microscopic 0.6 percent.
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A SUCCESSFUL MODEL Hill Realty’s Jimmy Granbery has mastered formula for his boutique mixed-use developments by wILLIAm wILLIAmS
immy Granbery is chief executive officer of Nashville-based Hill Realty Co. — and only the fourth person to hold that position during the 120-year history of the company. Granbery was named to the position in 2002 following nine years as its vice president of development, taking the helm three years after the company exited the grocery business in 1999. Combining a no-nonsense approach with a subtle wit, Granbery oversees Hill Realty’s privately held real estate portfolio, which includes more than 2 million square feet. Granbery spoke with Post Managing Editor William Williams about various Hill projects and approaches.
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Ten years have passed since Hill Realty completed Hill Center Green Hills. What are three or four “surprises” that you took from that project — you have said in the past that having a residential component would have been nice — and incorporated into your other developments, whether they are similar or not?
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One thing we’ve learned since developing Green Hills is the importance of adding residential if permitted. True mixed-use developments benefit from having a residential component to support urban density and to lessen sprawl and traffic congestion. Having wider sidewalks and better wayfinding systems are two more areas that we’ve honed in on for projects that followed Green Hills. We’ve learned that both are vital for enhancing and enriching the customer experience. Maybe one day Brentwood will adjust its regulations to permit residential. Hill Realty has a very focused model regarding urban development. The company’s projects are mixed-use and are relatively boutique-y (small scale, pedestrian-friendly, etc.). In addition, the company hires local companies to par-
ticipate with design, engineering, construction, financing, etc. How flexible is that model? The model is very flexible. We approach every deal and lease agreement differently based on the development’s location, which we feel makes each project successful and unique. There is no one-size-fits-all mixed-use model. How “geographically far” from the city’s urban core can you take the model? Could it work, for example, in Murfreesboro or even in a smaller community such as Spring Hill? Yes, this model can work in a variety of communities. Because of our flexible approach and mix of tenants based on community interest and need, we are able to cater to each market and have unique elements for all, especially in a community with higher education.
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Could you “scale the model” to accommodate, say, a 10-story building? Absolutely. If we were developing Green Hills today, it would be entirely different and would max out on residential and be much denser and taller. The data is clear that residential helps traffic rather than adds to it. What has been the single-greatest success or unexpected surprise with the projects? Acceptance by the community where each project is located. When we built Green Hills, people thought we had lost our minds and verbalized their displeasure with no filter. And while not an unexpected surprise, the tremendous success of our tenants has been rewarding to watch unfold. Conversely, what has been the single-greatest frustration or disappointment with the projects? The single greatest frustration is too much dependence on the car, a byproduct of our success. It’s hard to be pedestrian-friendly with lots of cars. It seems that Nashville was late to embrace urban placemaking. The effort as we know it today is not much more than 20 years old, with many peer cities (Charlotte and Austin, in particular) having gotten a jumpstart on us. Thoughts? While some did get a jumpstart on this and had the vision of urban placemaking before us, Nashville is not unlike many cities across the country that are now embracing higher density and changing demographics. Twenty years ago, residential was not allowed in the commercial services zone district. Now it is. In 1998, we worked with Metro to help shape the city’s first
‘THe ReWARD COmeS AFTeR THe FACT WHeN mOST PROjeCTS ARe Well ACCePTeD, WHICH IS CleAR B A S e D O N T H e S U C C e S S O F O U R T e N A N T S .’ j i m m y g r a n b e r y , h i l l r e a lt y c o .
urban design overlay and mixed-use limited zoning categories for Hillsboro Village, which proved to be a model for other areas of the city. There were many folks who voiced concern about Hill’s demolition of the charming and quirky pre-World War II-constructed retail
buildings in Hillsboro Village to make way for Hill Center Acklen. How did you approach/ handle that from a personal perspective? Did the criticism sting? It’s part of the job description. So while I try not to take any criticisms personally, I do actively listen to all perspectives. Ultimately, if I know we are doing the right thing, we just push forward. The reward comes after the fact when most projects are well accepted, which is clear based on the success of our tenants. On a similar theme, Hill saved and improved the little old-school masonry building (home to Burger Up) at Hill Center Five Points. Did keeping that building and juxtaposing it with the new structure you had constructed create certain challenges and/or opportunities? Based on the location and site conditions — and many hours of discussion with our development team — it made sense to keep and enhance the building, which can be easier to do at smaller [than typical] sites. We’re pleased with the results and the community has embraced the project. Hill Center Sylvan Heights seemingly has been very successful. But Charlotte Avenue needs lots more of such projects to truly become an effective linear mixed-use urban district. There is minimal residential on the north side of the segment of the street spanning Interstate 440 on the east and 46th Avenue on the west, thus creating even more “pressure” on the street itself to offer a high level of urbanity. How many years might this require and what will be some keys? The market will dictate how quickly this vision of a linear mixed-use urban district becomes a reality. It may take much more time than we all would like based on many factors — including lease expirations and the political environment. What local non-Hill Realty mixed-use urban project — regardless of scale — has been completed in the last few years and that you admire on various levels? There are many cool projects all over the city that are based on local conditions — politics, topography and existing conditions — that have been very successful. Some are complete and some are in various phases of completion. All said, the non-H.G. Hill Realty project I most admire is Rolling Mill Hill and more specifically, the Trolley Barns. They represent a very cool adaptive reuse.
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POSITIVE PLACEMAKING Picture cities with iconic downtowns. New York City draws visitors across all of lower Manhattan, world-famous for its densely packed attractions: eateries, historical points of interest, public art installations, places to stay and private residences alike. New Orleans is famous for its historical and elegant French Quarter, complete with striking 18th-century architecture, rowdy Bourbon Street, a plethora of art galleries and highly desired second-story homes. Cities such as Baltimore, Seattle and San Francisco are known for their stately structures and scenic downtown waterfronts. The epicenter of Portland offers strong building and people density, while the central cores of Boston and
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Chicago are highlighted by Back Bay and The Loop, respectively. Such vibrant mixed-use urban centers are typical for bigger cities that expect or seek to bring in large numbers of tourists and other visitors. But in Middle Tennessee, even small cities are seeking to create their own urban characteristics. And it’s not just downtowns, either. Outlying areas of Nashville are buzzing with conversations — with residents, activists, government officials, small business owners and developers weighing in — about the specifics of how certain neighborhoods can and should evolve. On the next few pages, the Post offers an overview of some key plans related to these places.
RECREATING A CORRIDOR
Conexion, Metro envision a new-look Nolensville Pike by CAroLINE LELANd
n South Nashville, nonprofit community center Conexión Américas is leading efforts to thoughtfully manage development of the Nolensville Pike corridor — a major artery of the city — in ways that enhance rather than eliminate the neighborhood character. An area that has attracted a strong immigrant population during the last 25 or so years, Nolensville Pike represents a major portion of Nashville’s ethnic diversity. Many restaurants and shops along the corridor — from Dunya Kabob Restaurant to La Hacienda Taquería — are immigrant owned and showcase the cultures of their owners. As Nashville’s overall population grows, and demand increases for housing and retail spaces, community activists are concerned that unchecked de-
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velopment will push out enterprising immigrant residents and their thriving small businesses. This is where Conexión Américas has stepped in. The nonprofit has published two reports — one in June 2016 and one in May 2017 — offering community-based recommendations to Metro Government. The first report is titled “Envision Nolensville Pike: Community, Creativity, and Imagination in Placemaking” and was undertaken via a partnership with the Kresge Foundation, the Nashville Area MPO, Washington, D.C.based nonprofit Transportation for America and the Nashville Civic Design Center. According to the NCDC website, the report “maps out — literally and figuratively — the aspirations and dreams for the Nolensville Pike corridor as expressed by residents and business owners during community gatherings.” The report details the ways Conexión Américas engaged South Nashville residents and business owners for input — after all, the nonprofit sits right on Nolensville Pike, in the center of the area it works to benefit. The report is largely based on residents’ ideas from community forums, an oral history project and suggestions dropped in a comment box. “As evidenced by participation, people are excited,” says Conexión Américas Executive Director Renata Soto. “As with anything, the primary challenges are human capital and financial re-
sources to move the needle as fast as you wish.” But transformations are already underway. In 2015, the Metro Planning Commission adopted a 25-year plan for Nashville’s infrastructure and built environment. Part of the plan identifies Nolensville Pike as an artery in high need of increased public transit and improved pedestrian and bicyclist safety features. Mayor Megan Barry included $1 million in her 2017 budget for the Metro Planning Department — some of which is dedicated to pedestrian and biker safety at five Nolensville Pike intersections. In the 2018 budget, a record $7 million is allocated toward transit. Metro Planning Public Information Officer Craig Owensby says the city spent three years actively gathering public input to develop that 25year plan, and its results largely align with what Conexión Américas is trying to accomplish. “We hope to see those [crosswalk] projects finished by the end of the year,” Soto says. For now, her sights are set on a vision much more significant: a future Nolensville Pike business alliance. This is one of the recommendations put forth in Conexión Américas’ second report on the development of the Nolensville Pike corridor — a report titled “Envision Nolensville Pike II: Recommendations for Achieving Inclusive Development.” “How do we mitigate the risk of displacement of existing businesses?” Soto asks. “Our conver-
sation is about saying, ‘Yes, please improve our infrastructure. Yes, we want better public transit services… more crosswalks, more sidewalks, more green spaces… but how do we do that in a way that doesn’t push out the businesses and residents that have made this neighborhood attractive in the first place?’ ” A business alliance would be a feasible and powerful first step for successfully managing that growth and transition. Its primary function would be to protect the interests and voice the perspectives of the area’s current business owners. Conexión Américas already has a list of local businesses for the alliance. The next move is to bring together the potential alliance founders — small business owners willing to step up and take the lead on the initiative — and craft a mission statement. Soto says she doesn’t have a specific timeline in mind for the project, but she hopes it progresses quickly. “Sooner rather than later — but not tomorrow,” she laughs. That seems to be the pace of much urban and suburban planning. According to the Conexión Américas report, other areas of potential focus include increased connectivity between green spaces, preservation of architecturally significant buildings and finding ways to maintain affordable housing and affordable retail space for current and future low-income residents. Metro also plans to increase mass transit along the corridor. It’s obvious that accomplishing all these goals will require immense and complex stakeholder coordination over many years. Planning’s Owensby says the north segment of Nolensville Pike faces the challenge of a significant number of small, individually owned property parcels. “When you try to do something big, there are a lot of small parcels you have to put together,” Owensby explains. “You’d have to buy several smaller parcels and work something out with several property owners. Assembling the necessary land is a challenge. A lot of it is driven by when private investment is willing to participate.” The business alliance that Conexión Américas is working to form would offer one way to coordinate those property owners for a larger-scale change. “[Our reports are] not just a wish list,” Soto says. “We’re working together, coordinating investments.” In mid-2016, the nonprofit celebrated the opening of a small park, located adjacent to its building, for public use. Victories like these make the larger-scale dreams seem just that much more realistic.
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SMALLCITY BOOM Murfreesboro officials seek to reinvent fast-growing municipality’s urban core by CARoLINE LELANd
urfreesboro city planners are working to prepare for an anticipated doubling of the city’s population over the next 15 to 20 years. As part of its 20-year plan for Rutherford County’s main municipality, city government hired the consulting company Ragan-Smith Associates to produce a proposal
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for a new “arts and entertainment district” in Murfreesboro’s downtown. The goal of the plan, called Historic Bottoms Planning Study and approved by the city council and planning commission, is to “expand the downtown footprint,” according to Kevin Guenther, who was project manager for the Ragan-Smith studies. “The idea is ... a greater mix of uses in a higher density,” he says. “An opportunity to connect pedestrian, bicycle and mass transit options as much as possible. And to celebrate the history and culture that is already here.” Assistant City Manager Jennifer Moody explains further: “We identified that our downtown was in need of a deeper dive for the economic development opportunities there. It’s a small downtown even for today’s population. We have a number of arts and cultural assets, like an art crawl every other month, and retailers downtown. But we don’t have the nightlife that a bigger city might have.” In particular, Murfreesboro wants to better connect its downtown with the Middle Tennessee State University campus, which hosts a population of 30,000 students who might be more
inclined to stay in Murfreesboro after graduation if there were more housing and nightlife opportunities downtown. Those mixed-use ideas for the city’s center are now guiding documents for Murfreesboro, used to set a vision for changes and improvements. But the proposal was adopted by resolution rather than city ordinance, so the “guidelines” are not binding. “When development comes through, the staff will let the planning commission know whether those developments are consistent with the plan,” Moody says. “We would only want to see development that adheres to the plan, unless they can make a very compelling argument otherwise.” According to the Ragan-Smith report, “Much of the downtown space is functionally obsolete or otherwise non-competitive.” The average downtown Murfreesboro building is about 64 years old, compared with the market average of 32 years. The new plan calls for updating many of those older buildings for mixed-use, typically commercial space on the ground floor and housing built into upper floors.
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The planning commission says next steps include the planning director requesting city approval for those new mixed uses. The first visible change Murfreesboro residents will see is daylighting the creek: a process that reroutes water from underground pipes into a visually and audibly pleasing open channel. This creek could be the route of a greenway for walking and could provide an attractive landscape amenity for outdoor seating at restaurants — even serving as an incentive for developers to undertake new buildings for restaurants. Like Conexión Americas and Metro Government in the Nolensville Pike area of South Nashville, Ragan-Smith put an emphasis on gathering input from the public. “We had sit-down interviews with stakeholders and different focus groups at the front end of the study,” Guenther says. At public meetings, Ragan-Smith presented ideas that had surfaced and then used a voting system to establish the community’s priorities. A steering community that included community leaders met five times before the planning com-
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‘Much of downtown [Murfreesboro] i s f u n c t i o n a l ly o b s o l e t e o r o t h e r w i s e n o n - c o M p e t i t i v e .’ R AG A N - S M I T H A S S O C I AT E S A S S E S S M E N T
mission public hearing. Ragan-Smith also managed a Facebook page where anyone could give input. The consultants informally gathered additional data at community events, where residents were posed questions such as: ‘If there’s one thing you want to see downtown, what would it be?’ Guenther says Ragan-Smith took all the public input and feedback seriously, adjusting its plan accordingly. After all, public support is crucial for the success of any project that involves taxpayer dollars. Ragan Smith’s team includes land planners, transportation engineers and landscape architects, but they even brought in subconsul-
tants to contribute to elements like architectural details in the plan. The team also solicited insights from local historians, wanting to respect the area’s socioeconomic history. “Broad Street (a large thoroughfare that crosses the study area) was supposed to bring economic development but instead became a divider,” Guenther says. “Now it should become more of a zipper. Not just a transportation zipper but a cultural one. “We’re excited about it.”
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WHEN PLANS FALL THROUGH
Spring Hill wrestles with creating town center by Caroline leland
ocated a mere 30 miles west of Murfreesboro, the town of Spring Hill can tell you that the kind of project the Rutherford County city is seeking doesn’t always go as planned. Several iterations of a mixed-use “town square” development plan for Spring Hill have been proposed and dropped, and no one seems to know what will happen next. “Spring Hill has not had what you would call a true downtown center in 100 years,” says city of Spring Hill Communications Officer Jamie Page. “We used to have one, but it burned down. In the 1960s, a tornado hit and took down the rest of it. Spring Hill just hasn’t had good luck when it comes to having a central gathering place, a town square. We have what people call a downtown, but it’s definitely not a traditional town square. That’s what the original proposal was going to do.” About three years ago, private developer David Bushman partnered with the Tennessee Children’s Home, which occupies a 103-acre campus at the heart of Spring Hill, and presented a town square proposal for that land to the Spring Hill planning council. The Children’s Home has its sights set on a new property in a different part of the city and can’t relocate until its current property sells. Page says the proposal was “pretty elaborate,” but the council decided the city needed to focus on other expansions instead. “They just decided to build a new larger library, a bigger police center, expanding the city hall,” Page explains. A couple of years later, a different developer proposed a different plan. But this proposal flopped, too. “They were not prepared to submit that kind of proposal,” Page says. “Everything that the planning commission asked of them — like a landscaping buffer and other tweaks — there was a whole list of things, quite
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a few things, a pretty long list — and none of those things were ever corrected. Meeting after meeting, those things were not done by the developer and they just eventually pulled it from the agenda.” Children’s Home President Brian King says the situation is complicated by the fact that the nonprofit needs the money from the property sale up front, so that the organization can build its future facilities on its new property. And the entity can’t move until those new facilities are built, so developers would have to develop the land all around the Home’s core buildings while they were still occupied. The Home borrowed money to purchase the property to which it hopes to relocate. “We’ve got all the plans done for the new campus; we just need a deal on the property,” King says. “This is probably the only place left in Spring Hill that could serve the purpose of a town center. It’s even got a nice area behind us with a big lake that could be a park area. To me, it’s perfect.” But the Children’s Home can do only so much to make that happen. The board is considering selling
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the property in parcels. Already, one historic building on the campus is for sale with a $2 million price tag. A five-acre parcel at the corner of the property is also for sale, yet listed off-market. The total property is listed at $16 million. When asked what he thought would happen next, King says with a sigh that the Children’s Home has been trying to sell its property for more than six years. “I’m about through making predictions,” King says. “I thought this last deal was going to close. I went and told everybody this is a done deal and then it fell through. If we don’t have a contract in the next six to 12 months, we’ll probably have to stay on this campus and build new group homes here. We’ll sell the property we bought, and we’ll sell property on the edge of our
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campus. And we’ll use that to build new group homes.” Page, the Spring Hill communications officer, says any private developer could buy the land and devise a new proposal. “That might not be a town center. It could be anything based on the zoning,” Page says. David Buschmann, the private developer who proposed the first mixed-use development plan for the Children’s Home property, says the city has to genuinely want the town square in order for it to happen. “I was trying to create a point of synergy in the middle of the city that you could put a pin in it and say, ‘This is downtown,’ ” Buschmann says. “They don’t have that central gathering place. “It’s a very unfortunate scenario there.”
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‘WE’VE GOT THE SCALE PRETTY GOOD RIGHT NOW’ T Bone Burnett talks about the inspiration for Cloud Hill and how South Nashville can be a hub for much of the city
n May, Metro officials chose Cloud Hill Partnership — a group comprising developer Bert Mathews, investment banker Tom Middleton and legendary musician and producer T Bone Burnett — to redevelop the former Greer Stadium site near Fort Negley. The Cloud Hill team has proposed a mix of creative spaces, residential units and retailers while converting Greer’s playing field into public green space. Burnett and Middleton sat down with Post Editor Geert De Lombaerde mid-summer, before public opposition to their project began to grow in volume. Here are some edited excerpts from that conversation.
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How did this work even get on your radar? The idea of preserving and redeveloping. BURNETT: I’m a storyteller and I believe in storytelling. ... So I got very interested in storytelling through place. ... I started getting intellectually interested in preservation and started reading Jane Jacobs and William White. The first thing that hit me, you know, I learned everything I needed to know to sustain me through 50 years in music in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. And I started reading about how Jane Jacobs stopped Robert Moses from putting a freeway right through Washington Square Park and destroying Greenwich Village. And then as circumstances come about, I work[ed] at a studio in Los Angeles called Village Studios. And the owner of the studio was feeling like he wanted to get out of it and he started talking to me about buying it. ... It was an old 1924 Masonic Temple that had been broken up over the years. So I started saying, “If we’re going to do this for the 21st century, we have to completely reconfigure this.” He said, “Well, what’ll I do with all the people that are working in there?” ... There are all these composers and producers. ... And I said, “Well, you know, if we take them out, we could build out around the Village and build other producer-composer suites that are more appropriate to the 21st century.” And so, there was a post office next door that was privately owned and leased to the government. And we started talking to the 95-year-old gentleman who owned the post office. ... And then we just started looking, well, what’s this parking lot? And what’s this parking lot? And we discovered it was a distressed 10-acre civic center that was built in the 1950s but it had become derelict. There was a county courthouse
there that was closed. There was a city building that’s in disrepair. There’s a senior center that’s barely used. A library that’s actually functioning. But mostly, there’s an amphitheater that’s hardly used. It’s a terrible concrete amphitheater. It was just bad ’50s top-down [design]. I don’t believe in the top down — I don’t believe in design, really. I believe design is to city planning, you could say, as a degree is to music. Music happens first then people figure out what it is. So good design kind of grows out of the actual realities. It’s on the ground. So we started looking at this whole 10 acres
‘IT’s A CHAllengIng sITe. Anybody In HIs rIgHT mInd w o u l d n o T T A k e T H I s o n .’ t bone burnett
[and] I brought some people together around this idea and we’re still working on it. It’s a very complicated transaction aggregation having to do with private, this federal government with the post office, the state government, the city government, the county government and the courts. So we’ve almost got everybody in line. But I’ve been in this process now for several years and bringing these various transactions — I guess you would call them that — together around a good idea. Which is also the thing I’ve done my whole life. I started realizing if you look at “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” for instance ... What I was able to do there was to take an established but neglected art form and recontextualize it for the present day. I believe that’s an act of preservation. Like, preservation isn’t just sealing something or laminating something, you know? It’s about breathing life into it and helping it to live. So, generally that’s sort of how I got into it. And how did that carry over to Cloud Hill? BURNETT: Tom and I had talked about the site in Los Angeles. And as I was driving from downtown to my studio in Berry Hill, I would pass this place and it nodded at me. There’s this incredible renaissance going on in South Nashville and there are these two spots that are completely distressed: The Fairgrounds and Fort Negley.
So here is an opportunity to tell a story with a place. Nashville has a singular story in the whole country. And I think because of its civil rights history starting here, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the suffrage movement, the lunch counter [protesters], onto the present day. As we worked on it, we started realizing that the main problem for this site is that it’s cut off by two freeways and a railroad track. And as we’ve searched for years now, we’ve not been able to find one park, one successful park in the United States, that has a light industrial warehouse edge, much less a light industrial warehouse edge and a railroad track. So the only chance there is for this to be a successful location or successful public place is to profoundly activate this street and to pull the neighborhoods that have been cut off from this site by these old developments. It’s a challenging site. Anybody in his right mind would not take this on, you know? One of the things we started realizing, if we go over here to Centennial Park which is right about here, then there’s Rose Park here, there’s the Reservoir Park here. And we realized walking right down Edgewood, you could connect all these parks. We could connect Centennial Park, Rose Park, Reservoir Park, Fort Negley, the city, the city cemetery and the Dudley Park. A few months ago, you discussed your vision by saying, ‘I’m going to put a plan together that’s better than the developers could do because they have different priorities.’ I get the sense that everything you’re talking about is neighborhood-oriented and the scale of the project — BURNETT: You know what? We don’t know if we have the scale right. And that’s what I was going to ask you. It’s intentionally a little more neighborhood-y and could be a lot denser, right? BURNETT: First of all, we kept everything below the press box at the current Greer Stadium. Because that just seemed like, if that was the viewshed that had been agreed upon at some point, we were not going to go over that. But then, we took pictures walking around the path and you can barely see any of this from the walking path. You can’t see any of it from south. It’s all under the canopy. So, as we begin to activate this street and activate the site and we will observe, and we will lis-
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ten and observe and watch and we will come to a consensus among the whole community and the whole city about what the right scale is. But the general idea is it will be what’s context-appropriate? BURNETT: You know, I am not a developer. But it’s true – we’re not trying to maximize profits. When I say this is a legacy project, what I mean by that is I have 50 years of experience in music. ... The legacy I’m talking about is a gift. If you look up legacy, that means gift. So as I look at this, this is a gift to the city that’s been so good to me.
‘We’re TrYInG TO dO S O m e T H I n G r e A l lY m O n u m e n T A l H e r e .’ t bone burnett
As far as what the city gets back from this, this place will generate literally billions of dollars of revenue for the city over the life of this place. Literally billions. ... If we get it right ... we’ll be able to help maintain this park. We’ll be able to, you know, [the city] won’t have to keep it up. The city’s getting more and more park space. They just got 40 acres at The Fairgrounds. ... The parks department doesn’t have the money to maintain it or do anything with it. You said you’re not sure if you have the scale just right yet. But percentagewise, how close do you feel like you are to the vision? BURNETT: I really don’t know. I couldn’t put a percentage on it. I know this, I can tell you this, that of this 60 acres ... there’s a very small part of it that’s dedicated to rent and houses and offices and that’s
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what generates the revenue to sustain the rest of it. So there’s a small part back here that’s going to pay for all of the rest. So I would say for that part, we’ve got the scale pretty good right now. I mean, I couldn’t believe how well these guys did at putting this together. You made a point there isn’t a park like this that works anywhere in the country given the geographic constraints. You’ve done your homework and looked around the country. Are there other projects you can point to that are working in terms of the redevelopment angle like this? BURNETT: Yeah, well, we’re working with a guy at the Project for Public Spaces called Fred Kent. ... MIDDLETON: He’s New York-based. BURNETT: But he and his team did Sundance Square in Fort Worth where I’m from. Which is a similar project in that it was two parking lots. Yes, I’ve seen images of that. BURNETT: These are close to me, that’s one and then there’s one in San Antonio called the Pearl Brewery. And Fred Kent did both of those as well as Bryant Park and Union Square Park. He’s working on the High Line now. He did Harvard Square. What I’ve always done is bring the best people to bear and get out of their way. I don’t care if it means going and throwing some grass seed out there, great. But, you know, if that’s what makes it successful, I’m fine with that. I just don’t want a derelict, horrible, dangerous area right in the middle of the city like that. I want something beautiful... The thing about all of these developments or parks I’ve just named is people from every neighborhood use them. Every day and every night. You’ve hinted about activating Chestnut. Obviously, that will involve the southern side of the street as well. Have you started thinking about what that will look like? BURNETT: Well, we’ve gone way beyond starting [to think] about it. And there are a couple of things I can’t really say right now because I don’t have all my ducks in a row, but I can say that 12 acres in here is owned by Vanderbilt and a piece is owned by Scott Chambers. And we’ve spoken in great detail with both of them, and both of them are, I would say, not anxious but ...
MIDDLETON: They both wrote letters of support for our submission. And as neighbors — as opposed to sort of institutions — they’re very interested and excited about what we’re doing. BURNETT: And they have said they will develop this in union with us. Sure. That makes a lot of sense. BURNETT: They’re going to change this all over. There’s going to be housing. They need to change things. Plus, as this [street] turns into Edgehill, it goes right to Vanderbilt. So then you’ve got Centennial Park, Vanderbilt, Music Row, Edgehill — straight shot. And all we have to do is beautify Edgehill so that it’ll draw people right down here. One of the things we’re talking about is having autonomous buses that make the loop from Vanderbilt right down here, right up Sixth, right to the Convention Center. I work in South Nashville and the kids down there — the kids that I work with and the kids at Vui’s and the kids at the coffee shop — they all talk about [how] they want to walk. They want out of cars. They don’t want insurance. They don’t want all that. It’s a completely different and better world. I agree with them. They have my sympathies. So I think this town, because it grew out of buffalo trails, really is going to benefit from having an actual walking district that I think should extend all the way into downtown. I mean, there are already people walking from downtown to Music Row. I see that happening. We see it every day here in The Gulch. It’s night and day compared to five or six years ago. BURNETT: Right. Exactly. MIDDLETON: It’s not an easy town to walk around, you know? And that’s a big personal thing for me, making this a walking town. BURNETT: It’s sort of become my main focus because I started out thinking I was going to give a gift to the city and now, I’m getting all this knowledge in return. Now I care about this city in a way I didn’t ever think I would. And this walking district, it’s become the most important. This is an incredible hub in the city when you look at the potential for opening up the corridors. We’re trying to do something really monumental here. And I hope we can. I pray we can pull it off. And I think we can.
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ROLLING ON THE RIVER
River North project can take cues from other cities by wILLIAm wILLIAmS
ivers are a significant part of geography. So, perhaps, it is apropos that a Chicago-based entity should look to West Coast river towns Portland and Sacramento as it attempts to reinvent a large swath of the Cumberland River’s east bank. The location-themed elements aside, Monroe Investments seeks to radically transform about 125 acres of industrial property, sited north of Jefferson Street, with large-scale office, retail and residential buildings. An ambitious undertaking, River North likely will require at least 20 years to fully evolve.
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The challenges are daunting but Monroe can take cues from the aforementioned California capital city, which sits on the Sacramento River. Allen Folks, a member of the Urban Land Institute, recently was involved in a ULI workshop that assessed what riverfront cities similar in size to Sacramento/West Sacramento have accomplished. “It was tough to find exactly similar conditions to be used as analogs amongst U.S. riverfront cities,” says Folks, director of design and planning at Sacramento-based Ascent. “Did they have two cities and jurisdictions, high water table fluctuations and different political timelines and ambitions?” Folks says the four cities invited (Chattanooga, Louisville, Pittsburgh and Spokane, Washington) did not check all of those boxes but offer commonalities — including the need to mitigate blight and the fostering of private-sector initiatives — that have yielded success. Effectively revitalizing a riverfront often requires establishment of an “umbrella organization” for which the sole mandate is providing a high-quality form and function in concert with the water, Folks notes. Chattanooga-based nonprofit River City Co. can convene multiple stakeholders, oversee planning, seek grant funding, buy property and handle maintenance, he says. “It’s very hard to do that with a planning department staff who have other responsibilities,” Folks says, adding Louisville and Pittsburgh have similar organizations. “The challenge in Sacramento is bringing both [Sacramento and West Sacramento] to see the benefit in one organization and to find a method
for funding the nonprofit in its early years,” he explains. “Government-centric cities like Sacramento lack the same philanthropic institutions and, therefore, are challenged more.” Folks offers two examples of Sacramento’s challenge. “We do not have sustained public walkways along both sides of the Sacramento River, making it tough to do walking loops,” he says. “Nor do we have a large park to celebrate large events like the Fourth of July.” Both Nashville and Sacramento are state capitals but the former, for River North purposes, might be better able to address government-centric challenges, Folks suggests. The other cities provide context. Folks says Volkswagen’s investment in a manufacturing facility in Chattanooga was based, in part, on the perception of a world-class riverfront, yielding a city favorable to commerce. Similarly, he says, much of downtown Louisville is seeing buildings renovated for residential and commercial uses. Pittsburgh is creating an extensive riverfront trail system that has spurred retail and restaurant activity, and Spokane is enjoying new housing and commercial office towers adjacent to its river. Can River North unfold likewise? Thomas Kirschbraun, managing director of Chicago-based JLL (which will handle office and retail leasing for Monroe’s River North commercial buildings), points to both well-established and emerging riverfront developments as models. These include LoDo in Denver, the Riverwalk in Chicago, and the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
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But, he adds, South Waterfront, long underway near downtown Portland, Oregon, might offer the best comparison as, like River North, it anchors a former industrial brownfield site. “South Waterfront is 140 acres and River North is 125 acres,” Kirschbraun says. “South Waterfront is about a mile and a half from the center of Portland’s CBD while River North is 1.2 miles from Nashville’s. The projected density of River North is 10 to 35 stories, which is exactly what you will find in Portland’s South Waterfront. Finally, both sites will deliver a mix of uses: commercial, residential and an abundance of park space and strategically important greenways.” Construction at South Waterfront began in 2004, a sufficiently recent date to yield the project a “tremendous case study” for River North, Kirschbraun says.
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rants and retail — but that is on its way. Other investment is piling in. The owner of a barge construction company recently announced it would develop an additional 33 acres along the riverfront for about 5 million square feet of mixed-use development.” Kirschbraun says that, generally, to transform any raw riverfront land near a central business district requires “complete buy-in and coordination” from both private and public entities, particularly related to connectivity, infrastructure and transportation. “The work is imperative at the front end to ensure the site is successful, accessible and additive to everything around it,” he says. River North can be a catalyst in advancing the onnectivity of Nashville’s core, Kirschbraun says. “Today the River North site is an impediment to the city’s connectivity,” he notes. “If we can get it
‘Nashville has a uNique opportuNity as it has a tremeNdous river that h a s N e v e r b e e N f u l l y e m b r a c e d .’
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THOMAS KIRSCHBRAUN, JLL
Also for comparison, South Waterfront has access to a pedestrian bridge spanning the Willamette River, similar to a bridge proposed to connect River North to Germantown and crossing the Cumberland. Kirschbraun says that, to date, about $2.5 billion worth of construction has unfolded at South Waterfront. “There are now some 4,000 jobs, [a number] expected to grow to 10,000 by 2020,” he says. “There are also about 5,000 condos and apartments. As always, it takes time to create a complete neighborhood from a blank canvas. For example, the project could use more restau-
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activated … suddenly connectivity between East Nashville, Germantown, downtown and North Nashville is completely possible.” Kirschbraun cautiously predicts the project will unfold during multiple economic and development cycles. “South Waterfront stalled during the recent recession,” he says. “But with the right advance planning, good projects pick right up again as the economy recovers. “Nashville has a unique opportunity as it has a tremendous river that has never been fully embraced,” he adds. “River North is that chance.”
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REAL DENSITY COMES TO COOL SPRINGS
New, infill projects increasingly tying together prototypical suburban district by GEERT DE LombAERDE
here’s no denying the key role Cool Springs’ office market has played in Greater Nashville’s growth over the past two decades. Year over year, it seemed, workers would break ground on another 250,000-square-
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foot building to give health care companies, financial services firms and other notable names a top-shelf home within an easy drive from their executives’ homes and downtown Nashville. And year after year, those buildings would rise to six, eight or nine stories and be surrounded by a lake of surface parking. Those years are over. The combination of rising land prices and rents, a supply crunch that dates back to the Great Recession and changing consumer demand is quickly turning parts of Cool Springs — the epitome of mixed-use suburban development in Middle Tennessee, with your retail over here and your office over there — into a smartly designed and betterconnected district. The best example of that trend — and looking around the country, it’s not a fad — comes in the form of Bigby, a $150 million hub at the corner of McEwen Drive and Carothers Parkway. There, Crescent Communities plans to build offices, apartments, retail spaces and a hotel in a way that will tie in its nearby One and Two Greenway office buildings as well as neighboring high-end apartment communities Venue Cool Springs and Cadence Cool Springs. About a mile to the north on Carothers, development firm Boyle several years ago finished building its Meridian project, which includes several office buildings tucked behind dining, retail and hotel structures that front Carothers.
The company also connected the new Meridian site to the One Meridian and Two Meridian office buildings it owns on adjacent sites. There, the Boyle team led by Phil Fawcett has taken the next step toward densifying its holdings: Crain Construction recently topped out an eight-story Hilton hotel building that sits snugly between One Meridian and Two Meridian and includes a 224-space parking garage. The ever more popular concept of live/work/ play — and our blending of them during the course of the day — is at the the heart of such projects. Another factor driving the move toward urban design in suburban settings is an interesting alignment of generational preferences: Brian Leary, Crescent’s president of commercial and mixed-use project, says Baby Boomers looking to downsize from their empty nests and millennials finding their way — and thus maybe still priced out of city centers — are seeking walkable places that integrate their work and leisure lives. Developers are having to adapt quickly: Leary says Crescent’s Two Greenway, a five-story, 155,000-square-foot office building started two years ago, likely is the last “traditional” suburban building his team will develop here. Simply put, customers and prospects are asking for a different product now. “As we were leasing Two Greenway, people kept asking us, ‘What can I walk to? Where is
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the shopping?’” Leary says. “We realized we had to rezone the land we had for Bigby. We had a responsibility to put the ‘there’ there.” At Bigby, “there” is a place that, despite being anchored by a 10-story office tower, creates a walkable, cohesive district that erases the carcentric and long-defined suburban boundaries between uses. Bigby will feature office lofts above stores and restaurants within 30 steps from a hotel and an apartment building. “We want this project to be a little more quiet and connected,” he says. “We don’t want to do 10 more square feet of retail than we have planned.” “Connected” also describes what Boyle has in the works on the other side of Interstate 65 with its Northside at McEwen project. Southside, its sister development across McEwen Drive, is anchored by a Whole Foods store, a 175,000-square-foot office building set back from the road and acres and acres of surface lots. The much larger Northside, though, will hug an extended Aspen Grove Drive with almost 800,000 square feet of office space in seven buildings as well as 580 residential units —
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‘We realized We had to rezone […] We had a responsibility t o p u t t h e ‘ t h e r e ’ t h e r e .’ BRIAN LEARY, CRESCENT COMMUNITIES
while featuring no fewer than five garages with about 4,500 spaces. It will look different, feel different and function differently. Leary sees no reason owners of other complexes wouldn’t follow the example being set by Crescent and Boyle as well as — to a slightly lesser extent — Spectrum|Emery Properties’ Franklin Park project nearby. With rents on the rise — and in some cases rivaling those of downtown Nashville properties — the numbers work better to fill in parking lots and connect buildings now separated by hundreds of yards. “Those buildings with gigantic lawns and huge buffers? For what?” Leary asks. “People
want to be close to the amenities.” So picture this a decade from now: Crescent Centre Drive, the horseshoe road now home to 700,000 square feet of office space and an Embassy Suites hotel, is lined with townhomes and apartments whose first floors are packed with restaurants and other amenities such as gyms or daycare centers. Not long ago, that scenario was fanciful. Today, it feels palpably close.
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Alex S.Palmer & Company • Avison Young • Baker Donelson • Bass Berry & Sims, PLC • Bell & Associates Construction • Boyle Investment Company Brasfield & Gorrie, LLC • CBRE • Chas. Hawkins Co., Inc./CORFAC International • Colliers International • Commonwealth Commercial Cushman & Wakefield • Dickinson Wright, PLLC • Diversified • Doster Construction • DWC Construction Company, Inc. • Eakin Partners, LLC. First Tennessee Bank • Holladay Properties • Jones, Lang, LaSalle • Knoll • MarketStreet Equities • Mayer Electric Supply • Merryman-Farr, LLC NAI Nashville • OakPoint Real Estate • Panattoni Development Company, Inc. • ProLogis • ProVenture • Ragan-Smith Associates, Inc. Sherrard, Roe, Voight & Harbison • Skanska • The Parkes Companies • TMPartners, PLLC Turner • US Bank • Wachter Inc.
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REaDING CoRNER
‘ONE OF THE KEYS TO BIG-PICTURE THINKING IS TO GET RID OF ALL DISTRACTIONS’
An excerpt from the new book ‘One Mile Radius — Building community from the core’ by Mark Deutschmann, the leader of Village Real Estate and Core Development and our 2016 Boom cover story subject
n April 1985, I was completing my MBA and interviewing for positions with international firms when my life took an unexpected turn. My mother called on the morning of April 13 to let me know that my father had died of a heart attack at 54 years of age. It was a great shock for my family and me. My father had been the undisputed patriarch in our family and a pillar in the community. Over the years, I had distanced myself from him to find my own way. Now that he had passed away, my instinctive reaction was that I, as the eldest son, must find my place and begin to assert myself in both my family and in my career. Perhaps my father’s death was part of the catalyst for what would come next. In May, I finished my degree and moved back to Maryland to help my mother sell the family home. That summer I got a call from Joel [Solomon]. Coincidentally, his father had also died, and he was in Nashville settling his family’s estate. I came to Nashville to visit him in October and instantly
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felt an affinity for the community that he’d established. He had a very active household and was engaged in meaningful endeavors. Following the course I’d set years before when I shipwrecked my Zodiac, I made the snap decision to move to Nashville. Joel’s father and family had been shopping mall developers, among other things, and had various real estate assets, so I got a real estate license as soon as I could to help out. Quite a distance from international business and orcas! I was craving both core and community. Perhaps it was my time of life or I was hungry for meaning. I needed to find myself, and for me community was central. Perhaps we come to our greatest achievements, our greatest offers, by offering what we ourselves need. Returning Nashville to its core as a robust, healthy city mirrored my return to my own core. I had also at this time in life become a serious juggler, and I was looking for opportunities to hone my craft. Joel’s dad had an office downtown in the St. Cloud Corner building, at the corner of Fifth and Church. This is the building that now houses Puckett’s Grocery (and is at the corner of two streets where Core Development, my development entity, years later developed four projects). I’d go downtown to work out of the office, even though I didn’t really have a job, and was struck by how cold and empty the streets felt, particularly on nights and weekends. The city’s
policies, which had emphasized the central commercial district at the expense of residential, had taken a toll. This was just a few years before the last retail outlets, such as Cain-Sloan and Castner Knott, closed shop and well before the age of real downtown neighborhoods. On top of that, most of the commercial districts and adjacent neighborhoods were victims of urban flight, including Hillsboro Village, the 12South district, the funky neighborhoods in East Nashville with a mix of races and generations, and corner commercial corridors with unrealized potential to serve the community. Many had become dotted with ugly in-fill duplexes as lots were purchased by absentee landlords after the older homes had collapsed. At this time, the neighborhood commercial districts in our ring neighborhoods were the closest things that we had to a community building core. It would be years before we moved back to fully recapture the heart of our city. At the time, I was not attracted to the commercial sales side of the business, but I loved the neighborhood commercial districts. I was passionate about the older, transitional neighborhoods — such as Hillsboro Village, filled with old homes of character, which had fared better than some of the other less fortunate urban neighborhoods because of its proximity to Vanderbilt. It had a couple of taverns, a pet shop called Fido, a shoe repair shop, Patsy and Fayes,
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and the old Pancake Pantry, but the merchants were not well-organized and didn’t do much to promote themselves. I’m a night owl, and Joel and I often went out late in the evenings for walks. We walked the streets and alleyways, learning about our neighborhood through the lens of the night. […] We called our explorations “nightwalks,” as they gave us the time needed to do some big-picture thinking. One of the keys to big-picture thinking is to get rid of all distractions. In this day and age, that especially means screens (we need to choose our distractions wisely). While I know it sounds extreme, walking in the dark actually spurs incredible creativity. In the dark you have to focus on the next step, and without good vision, brain activity is heightened, allowing for an extraordinary pathway to new ideas and innovation. During these walks, we formulated our philosophies about money and business and came up with concepts such as interdependent independence, how to be attentive but released in relationship to money, and how to find work/life integration. With money, for instance, we asked, how much is enough? Why? What then? Money, when aligned with positive long-term outcomes, could be a force for good. We often thought about the concept of “stepping in front of the parade” and our role in furthering trends in the city. We
Andy Allen and headquartered on Woodland Street in East Nashville. […] During those early years, Andy taught me the joy of helping people find homes while working with them in a more holistic way to enhance their communities. This meant working through the challenge of securing financing for those who had little cash and meeting the challenge of homes that required significant repairs in order to secure bank financing. I relished the challenge, saw many people get homes who had not been able to do so before, and witnessed neighborhoods improving one house at a time. I really came to believe in the American Dream of home ownership, and I could see firsthand how those who own homes generally fare better economically than those who rent. And I saw how pride of ownership effectively altered neighborhoods. You could see change happening home by home and block by block. The often maligned keeping-up-with-the-Joneses syn-
‘The neighborhood commercial disTricTs in our ring neighborhoods were The closesT Things ThaT we had To a communiTy building core. iT would be y e a r s b e f o r e w e m o v e d b a c k T o f u l ly r e c a p T u r e T h e h e a r T o f o u r c i T y .’ imagined the future that we wanted to create, with the quality of positive attitude, and pledged to seek wise counsel and to continue our personal development. These nightwalks were the foundation in developing my own philosophy around what I wanted to bring to the table in real estate, including my value in seeding a vibrant core, central to a city’s health. Around this time, I had a four-year stint with Renaissance Real Estate Company, run by
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drome also created a positive scenario where one home renovation affected an entire street, producing a remarkable transformation. After seeing what had happened in the core of the city, where older homes had fallen apart due to deferred maintenance, this neighborhood transformation was a joy to witness.
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FrOm LaSt yEar’S BOOm ISSuE
WERTHAN’S ‘FAIRLY RELUCTANT’ DEVELOPER A decade ago, few projects opened Nashvillians’ eyes to the concept of urban loft living the way Werthan Lofts did. Here, Mark Deutschmann runs through the process that led him from marketing Row 8.9n across from the Farmers Market to redeveloping the massive former factory.
In the early 2000s, we had started thinking about our multiresidential sales strategy at Village. We didn’t really have any multifamily residential in the city. We had a zoning code downtown that really didn’t allow for the creation of all that. The first project that we got to list after we had that strategy was 8.9. We didn’t have that many agents back then but we sold so many of them in-house and people were attracted to it. Then couple that with the beginnings of the charrettes for the Plan of Nashville. They were holding charrettes around the city and talking about what each neighborhood might become. I went to one on Eighth Avenue and all the neighbors had their maps out. It was an interesting mix; you had neighbors from Hope Gardens and Buena Vista and Germantown. They were circling the assets and at one of the tables, someone said, “Artist block.” And I thought, “Okay, we just sold 8.9, so maybe there really is time to get some true lofts in Nashville. Everybody has been asking about it for 15 years, but nobody built anything.” Then you had people from Jefferson Street saying, “We don’t want to be known as the crime district. We’re interested in some mixed-income housing. We want some investment in our neighborhood.” And Werthan was just sitting there as a big, vacant 400,000-square-foot building. Even then, everybody thought it should be lofts. It’s now 342 residential lofts and it’s a cool place. I was fairly reluctant. I was a reluctant developer because I had my sales thing going and I didn’t know anything about the building trades. But I felt like somebody had to do it and it was a weird combination of relationships with politicians and relationships with MDHA and the Metro Council. And it was like, “Who is going to do this?” I just had to do it. The first phase was a 23-unit phase. The second phase was about 25 units, the third phase 36 units. The fourth phase was 120 units and we were fortunate enough to get it closed in March of 2008. We finished the project and we got about 78 closed before the recession really hit.
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REaDING CoRNER
CHARACTER COUNTS
An excerpt from ‘The Atlas of ReUrbanism’ by the Preservation Green Lab at the National Trust for Historic Preservation
he findings in this report point to the value of older buildings, blocks, and neighborhoods within the urban landscape. These are places where development has occurred incrementally, over many decades, resulting in a texture, richness, and distinctiveness that we call character. Blocks in high Character Score neighborhoods are lined with smaller, mixed-aged buildings with many older structures still in use. This variety of building vintages and types provides space for a diverse and dense mix of residents and uses. Local businesses thrive in these neighborhoods and the streets are full of activity, day and night. There was a time when blocks like these were defined as blighted and even targeted for demolition through urban renewal. The Atlas of ReUrbanism provides the data to show that we can now, finally, rewrite the formulas about what makes a successful city. Instead of fodder for the bulldozer, these blocks of older, smaller buildings should be seen as valuable assets and stewarded carefully. As urban leaders, policy makers, and advocates consider future directions for their cities, the Atlas of ReUrbanism suggests some key implications to consider in guiding changes to urban buildings and blocks.
and Life of Great American Cities, cities need old buildings, in part because they are generally more affordable for residents and businesses. The data in this report regarding affordability, small businesses, new businesses, and women and minority-owned businesses backs up Jacobs’ assertion. Investments in smaller, older buildings require less initial capital, which makes it easier for new ideas and enterprises to get started and grow. Older neighborhoods offer housing diversity as well. Each city has its own historic mix of housing choices, from row houses and tripledeckers to walk-ups and garden courts. This menu of options makes it possible for households of different sizes, ages, and incomes to make their homes in the same neighborhood. This report shows that these traits of affordability and variety in the building stock also support more ethnically and racially diverse populations. In contrast, zoning rules in many newer areas strictly limit building types and discourage social and economic diversity. As older neighborhoods evolve, managing change in ways that retain and build upon the historic mix of building stock will enhance future social and economic diversity as well.
Diversity: a foundation for more inclusive cities
Density: more than tall buildings
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The Atlas of ReUrbanism shows strong correlations between the physical diversity of urban neighborhoods and the social, economic, and cultural diversity that these areas support. As Jane Jacobs famously observed in The Death
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The connections between density and sustainable development are well understood. Too often, however, density is associated only with building size and height. While some cities have areas where lots of people live in tall buildings, the densest neighborhoods overall are almost
always characterized by blocks of older, smaller, low-rise buildings. Developed before the automobile claimed so much of our urban landscape, these areas have a hidden density that is clearly revealed by the data summarized in this report. Not only are residential densities higher in areas with a mix of older, smaller buildings — so are jobs per square foot. There is a density of use in these areas that points to smarter ways to think about the physical assets of our cities. How can we use buildings in a more active way, day and night, seven days a week? How can we create a density of human activity that is the true hallmark of sustainable, vibrant cities? As the technology-enabled sharing economy grows, older neighborhoods provide examples and inspiration for how to get the most from our buildings and blocks.
Distinctiveness: a market advantage
Much of the renewed interest in living and working in cities is focused on older and historic places. Dense, walkable, active, and architecturally rich neighborhoods are attracting new residents and investment. Older buildings with layers of history and flexible floorplans are attracting companies large and small. The ability of cities to attract and retain talented young workers is closely tied to the presence of character-rich places. The value of these areas points to the benefits of preservation advocacy and policies that support good design.
Adaptability: resilience in older neighborhoods
Successful cities are constantly changing and the physical character of urban neighborhoods must change as well. But this can be an evolution, not a revolution. Our older neighborhoods show how buildings, blocks, and neighborhoods can absorb change gradually and incrementally. Made up of many similar, small parts, these neighborhoods can absorb economic or climate shocks and come back again, piece by piece. Adaptability is key to sustainable cities. For more information, go to savingplaces.org/reurbanism.
fall 2017 | NASHVILLEPoST.Com
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The game has changed and is still changing for many in Nashville’s $39 billion health care sector. Vitals will take stock of that continuing evolution, shine a light on new trends and rising players and pulse industry leaders about how they’re preparing for what’s next.
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THE bIG QUESTIoN
CAN WE CHANGE QUICKLY ENOUGH? “
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative,” H.G. Wells wrote some seven decades ago. Keep up with the wider world, change your approach when needed and reap the rewards. Nashville’s tremendous growth spurt coming out of the Great Recession has been fueled by a powerful mix of new arrivals, public investment and smart entrepreneurs. Their chemistry has spawned a Nashville that combines sleek and shiny with authentic and gritty. It also has created a new set of growth and development questions for a city stepping up in the world. The biggest question: Are enough of us Middle Tennesseans able and prepared to adapt to one of the main needs of that Nashville? A growing metro area that will soon hit two million people needs
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a transit system that is more than a light rail or bus rapid transit line here and there. It needs to all but guarantee that a commuter walking out her front door in Antioch can get to her job in Bellevue in — just spitballing here — less than 75 minutes and with at most two changes. It needs a bus system that extends well beyond the city’s arteries and swats away every reasonable resident’s excuse for not getting on board. That’s going to require committing a lot of money for a long, maybe endless, period of time. It will require people across the region being prepared to surrender their car keys most days. And it will require a lot of residents across the city — and beyond in surrounding counties — turning the concept of NIMBY (or Not On My Thoroughfare) on its head and embracing public transit. A 2018 referendum on the first $6 billion slice of a transit network will be here before we know it. A coalition of business, political and community leaders is coalescing to lead the pitch for the need to adapt our thinking and open our wallets. There are comparisons to be drawn with the vote to build what is now Nissan Stadium but
they only go so far: This project will dwarf the dollars voted on in 1996 and, more importantly, will only create tangible change if enough of us follow up our “yes” votes by saying “yes” to actually using the transit options promised us. No more joking about how we’ll vote in favor just to get other people out of their cars. Throughout this magazine, we’ve detailed examples of adaptation on a small scale. Our cover story subject Mark Janbakhsh has reworked a big-box store into an instant-hit shopping and dining destination. As successful as Jimmy Granbery’s Hill Center at Green Hills was, he quickly realized such projects need residential components to work best. And near the Fairgrounds and in Wedgewood-Houston, developers are relying on modular techniques and shipping containers to bring to market housing units at lower price points so many buyers crave. This city can do it. We can adjust to the new reality we have helped create. But we need to do it in a hurry. Just as nature’s imperative is inexorable in Wells’ famous quote, so do the number of days tick down inexorably to that referendum.
fall 2017 | NASHVILLEPoST.Com
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