BridgeInvest Backs Nashville Equinox Hotel Project

Dean Stratouly’s latest SoBro play just landed out-of-state financial backing.

Miami-based BridgeInvest provided a $25 million loan to support pre-development work on Park Place Nashville, a triple-tower project from Stratouly’s Congress Group and Taurus Investment Holdings, the Nashville Business Journal reported.

The mixed-use development is set to include a luxury apartment tower, a for-sale condo building and a 36-story hotel under the Equinox Hotels brand.

The funding marks BridgeInvest’s second deal in Nashville and its first bet on the city’s high-end hospitality market.

“We try to do business in Nashville quite often,” BridgeInvest partner Jon Gitman told the outlet. “It’s a market that we really like, and we’d like to be more active in it.”

BridgeInvest was drawn in part by the Equinox brand, a rare hotel partner in a market increasingly defined by luxury flagships. Gitman said the brand’s wellness-first lifestyle offering helped it stand out among better-known names like Four Seasons and Pendry, which have recently launched or announced condo-hotel projects downtown.

“I don’t want to live in a Bentley. I want to drive a Bentley,” Gitman said, contrasting Equinox’s fitness-driven brand identity with Miami’s recent boom of luxury car–branded residential buildings. “When I think about my lifestyle, I think about having something where I’m exercising and living well.”

Equinox is owned by Miami-based real estate development heavy-hitter Related Companies.

Construction on the Equinox Hotel is expected to begin next year, with the rest of the towers rolling out in phases. The full Park Place buildout will bring hundreds of residential units to the fast-growing South of Broadway neighborhood, a former industrial zone that’s become a hotbed of luxury development.

Stratouly, who previously developed Nashville’s Four Seasons Hotel and Residences, is one of several developers pushing high-end projects in the area.

Other recent entries include a planned St. Regis tower from the JW Marriott developer and SomeraRoad’s Pendry Nashville condo-hotel in Paseo South Gulch, which is also set to include an Equinox fitness club.

BridgeInvest beat out institutional lenders to fund the Park Place site.

“Quite frankly, to the city’s credit, there’s been a lot of institutional investors who have really favored Nashville,” Gitman said. “It makes our job difficult to find deals that we like, but also hit our return thresholds, because a lot of these larger institutional players have a cheaper source of capital.”

— Judah Duke