Nashville’s largest bank had been a symbol of the city’s growing skyline.
As the Music City’s building boom kicked off at the end of the aughts, Pinnacle Financial put its sign atop Symphony Place, a gleaming new 29-story glass skyscraper that opened downtown in 2010.
But by 2021 Pinnacle announced it would be relocating to Nashville Yards, the $1 billion mega-development on the outskirts of the traditional business center that had attracted Amazon to the city.
The whiplash is emblematic of Nashville’s rise over the past 15 years. To take advantage of the opportunities in the Sun Belt city, where a low cost of living and lack of state income tax have boosted the population, the real estate industry has had to adapt to the shifts.
Now, as the city prepares for a new phase of growth, both commercial and multifamily builders are getting ready to pivot again.
Companies are now expanding the geography of Nashville’s business district farther beyond the frenetic downtown, with its noisy Honky Tonk bars and bachelorette party-toting Cinderella carriages.
Oracle just received approval to build an enormous headquarters on the opposite side of the Cumberland River, opening up vast development opportunities on its east bank.
“Things move pretty fast,” said Andrew Donchez of SomeraRoad, which is building a $1 billion mixed-use project in the city. “What worked five years ago isn’t necessarily going to work today, and that remains the same for five years from now.”
Music City-plus
In 2018, New York-based investment firm Alliance Bernstein announced it would be relocating its headquarters to Nashville. Like Pinnacle’s sign, the move declared that the metro was a place for business. This was the moment when those outside Nashville started to pay attention.
That included Amazon: Amid its search for a second headquarters location in 2018, the e-commerce behemoth announced it would open an East Coast hub at Nashville Yards.
Today, the 3 million-square-foot office, residential and retail campus is bustling with Amazon’s first tower open. The second is preparing to welcome employees.
Oracle’s story was more dramatic. In 2021, Larry Ellison’s company said it would open its own hub in Nashville but three years later, it relocated its headquarters to the city, just four years after moving from California to Austin.
Nashville’s Metro Council last month gave the approval for the company’s multi-billion-dollar campus, which will include 2 million square feet of office space, retail and a Nobu-branded hotel sprawling across 75 acres.
Plans for the project show a lush green park with a winding stream and a lake. The scene made the project, and its location, coherent for Jacob Kupin, the local district member. “In my mind, I was probably picturing just some other office park and high rise, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it really is spectacular,” he told Nashville’s News Channel 5. “It looks like you’re out in the woods.”
If commercial developments continue to land in unusual places, Donchez of SomeraRoad will be ready.
His Paseo project in the South Gulch, a fast-booming neighborhood southeast of downtown, includes a 278-unit rental building and a Pendry Hotel-branded condo tower with 180 hotel rooms and 146 condos.
But it also has a site zoned for commercial use. Donchez said the company is focused right now on the residential and hospitality developments, but that it’s keeping the commercial side “active and adaptable” as firm leaders watch where the office market is moving.
“We have our zoning and approvals, but we’re remaining measured and deliberate about what comes next,” he said.
Multi mania
Multifamily developers’ pivot has been less about location and more about property type. Nashville, like many other Sun Belt cities, is dealing with a glut of new rental apartments, and so the city’s developers have begun converting them into condos.
Germantown, a neighborhood of old industrial buildings in the north part of the city, far removed from the hustle and bustle of Broadway, is across the river from where Oracle plans to build its campus; a pedestrian bridge will connect the two sides. It seems that nearly every block of Germantown is sprouting up new apartment buildings, a challenge for developers who had hoped for rent growth.
But there’s an opening in the condo market.
Much of the condo product today is high-priced luxury units in branded buildings, according to Maranda Blanton, a managing director with Redeavor who’s overseeing sales at the 210-unit Rome apartment building conversion in Germantown.
The rental conversions yield condos that meet demand for mid-priced apartments, which hadn’t really existed.
While some of the rental conversions are already built to condo standards, others have to make upgrades. The Rome, currently being rebranded as the Fulton, upgraded its appliances packages.
A deep pipeline of new rental apartments could create more opportunities for conversions, Blanton said.
“I think next year will be really telling,” said Blanton, who is also leading sales at SomeraRoad’s Pendry. “A lot of these developers are on the fence. Switching from apartments to condos is a lot riskier, and many have never done condos before.”
Tony Giarratana, known as “Tony G,” is converting the 38-story Prime Tower near Nashville Yards. He had launched pre-leasing for rentals in 2024, but by this summer Giarratana decided to go condo.
Another one making the switch is the Pullman at Gulch Union, part of a three-tower mixed-use project by Endeavor Real Estate.
The company started construction on the 38-story, 300-unit tower in 2022. But by the next year before construction had wrapped up, Endeavor decided to sell the apartments as condos.
“We’ve been watching the Nashville high-rise condo market closely for nearly a decade and have seen a real shortage of supply here relative to other cities of the same caliber,” Endeavor managing principal Jamil Alam told CityNowNext.com.