Nashville companies opt for trendy office space to lure employees
Future of work? Nashville companies trying to attract people back to the office are opting for high-end real estate developments in trendy areas.
- Nashville’s Lower Broadway entertainment district is experiencing record-breaking commercial real estate sales, with prices soaring due to high demand.
- Recent sales, such as Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville for $75 million and a small plot for $16.25 million, highlight the area’s skyrocketing property values.
- While some local investors with significant capital can still compete, the rising costs may price out smaller businesses and long-time residents.
Real estate values in Nashville’s Lower Broadway entertainment district shattered at least two sales records in 2024 and, with the area poised for continued growth, experts expect prices will continue to soar.
“Records that we’re seeing, we never thought were imaginable just a few years back,” Colliers Nashville senior associate Drew Wagner said. “I do think that is a trend that we will continue to see.”
In July 2024, Arizona-based investment firm Fundamental Income bought a slim 0.5-acre plot at 201 Broadway for $16.25 million — a whopping $7,461 per square foot. The property sits beside Bootleggers Inn and currently houses parking spaces where food trucks and other vendors set up on busy Broadway nights. But the company plans to build a honky tonk.
The December sale of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville at 322 Broadway for $75 million — $2,870 per square foot — was another recent Lower Broadway record-breaker. Louisiana-based Raising Cane’s founder and billionaire Todd Graves purchased it from Corner Partnership, which acquired the site in 1991 for just $145,000, according to Metro Nashville records.
Before that, the 2022 sale of Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row at $2,400 per square foot held Broadway’s commercial real estate record high.
So, over the span of three decades, the Margaritaville property’s value increased by over 5,000%.
“You’re going to start seeing a lot of these players that when they make a splash like that, they’re not in for just one property,” Wagner said. “They want to keep growing.”
Graves’s $75 million purchase wasn’t his first investment downtown. It followed the June 2024 opening of Raising Cane’s Broadway restaurant, the company’s fifth flagship with others in New York, Miami and Las Vegas. Graves also paid $15 million for a Four Seasons Nashville penthouse condo.
“The appetite for out-of-town owners certainly seems to be increasing,” Wagner said. “They want to scale their portfolio on the market because they believe in what Nashville has been doing and the trajectory that we’re on, even 2030 and beyond.”
As Lower Broadway prices skyrocket — unrivaled by any other Nashville neighborhood and sometimes even mentioned in the same conversations as Manhattan valuations — non-corporatized local buyers risk being priced out.
“We have a lot of local owners in Nashville that are certainly from old money and can still compete,” Wagner said. “But most of what you’re seeing in terms of these record-setting sales and acquisitions are being done from those that that are new to the market or have only been here for a couple years.
“I think that Nashville can still hold true to its identity and its roots. But there, unfortunately, is no stopping the inevitable change that we’re seeing in terms of the investment in the city and the natural byproduct of rising prices and valuations.”
Hadley Hitson covers business news for The Tennessean. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to The Tennessean.
