The firm of legendary investor Carl Icahn is auctioning a 45-acre site in Nashville that could hardly be better located — near a planned NFL stadium and fronting the Cumberland River in the emerging East River district — but it has a few problems.
The land held SA Recycling, a scrap metal plant owned by Icahn Enterprises, for decades. When the plant closed, Icahn appeared to be hanging onto the land. But it is being auctioned next month via CBRE, with Byran Fort, Frank Thomasson and Ryan Coulter handling the sale, the Nashville Business Journal reported. A reserve price wasn’t disclosed, and the auction listing isn’t publicly available.
A potential buyer of the parcel, located at 710 South First Street, would face environmental cleanup costs and uncertainty around infrastructure and zoning, the outlet reported.
Environmental remediation is a critical factor. For years, concerns over contamination at the scrapyard cast doubt on redevelopment viability. But cleanup is likely manageable, said David Jackson, an environmental consultant not directly involved with the property.
It would require a Brownfield Voluntary Agreement with the state for a potential buyer to remediate environmental pollution.
“I can say with certainty that almost any of these new buildings that you see in downtown Nashville, those properties were bought and built under a brownfield agreement. Otherwise, nobody would touch them,” Jackson told the outlet.
The contamination would be easier to address compared to a chemical plant or refinery, but cleanup costs would still add to the buyer’s financial considerations.
The East Bank’s transformation has accelerated with high-profile projects like Oracle’s tech campus and the Tennessee Titans’ planned stadium. The city has a master plan for the area that includes construction of the East Bank Boulevard, a proposed 140-foot-wide roadway stretching 3 miles through the area where there is no road now. The city has taken steps to acquire some land for the road, but it remains an unknown factor for a potential buyer.
The city recently expanded its zoning code to allow 40-story buildings in specific East Bank sectors, but it doesn’t reach the scrapyard site, which adds another hurdle.
Fort, the lead broker in the auction, anticipates diverse interest from large institutional buyers to family offices.
“Given the interest of the East Bank and everything the area has going on right now, we felt now was the time to push the property into the market,” he said.
—Rachel Stone
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