Dasha Zhukova Niarchos Joins VeLa on $211M Ray Nashville

A New York-based jet-setter who divorced a Russian billionaire, married an heir to a Greek shipping tycoon, runs a museum and edits an arts magazine has added a 32-story residential development in Nashville to her portfolio.

Dasha Zhukova Niarchos and her RAY LLC have assumed a role in the $211 million, 575,000-square-foot project that’s been renamed “Ray Nashville,” the Nashville Business Journal reported.

Zhukova Niarchos’ firm will work with Kansas City-based VeLa Development on the project at 601 Lafayette Street in the Pie Town neighborhood south of downtown. The project has financing from J.P. Morgan and Monroe Capital, through Walker & Dunlop.

Plans for the residential tower call for 367 residential units from studios to three-bedroom layouts, with various high-end amenities.

A street-level exhibition space planned for the Ray Nashville will focus on works by local artists — a component that reflects Zhukova Niarchos’ status as a patron and participant in the arts. She has risen in such circles thanks in part to her long-held standing in the global upper crust, evidenced by her professional and personal real estate deals, a seat on the board of the toney SoHo House and a profile last year in the New York Times. Besides that, her mother, Elena Zhukova, just married media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

The Ray Nashville development is set for an acre of land that’s currently a surface parking lot. VeLa bought the parcel for $19 million two years ago, and initially planned “VeLa Pietown,” without Ray LLC in the picture.

Zhukova and her company are involved in three other projects, ranging from Phoenix to Philadelphia and Harlem in New York. Ray LLC is working with VeLa on Ray Phoenix, where they recently broke ground.

Nashville’s Pie Town neighborhood is about a mile south of downtown, with the recently hot Gulch neighborhood to its east.

Nashville real estate investors that include Bryan Fort of CBRE and Taylor Preston, principal of the Natchez Group, have been snapping up Pie Town properties lately, the outlet reported. They reportedly paid $21 million last year for the City Winery property adjacent to the Ray Nashville site, where an antique automobile and guitar store is expected to open soon.