Bank loan kickstarts $100M mixed-use development by West End, I-440
Real estate developer George Tomlin has corralled all the money needed to propel a mixed-use development in Nashville, featuring luxury apartments and a pair of hotels from one of the region’s dominant hospitality companies.
Tomlin’s Brentwood-based GBT Realty Corp. is starting construction on Parke West, in partnership with Franklin-based Chartwell Hospitality, the companies announced first to the Business Journal on Tuesday. A pair of buildings at 3419 Murphy Road will rise about 15 or 16 stories each, on a 1.5-acre site between West End Avenue and Interstate 440.
The start of the $100 million-plus Parke West project, fueled by $87 million of construction loans from First Horizon Bank (NYSE: FHN), sends another signal that the area’s commercial real estate market — which was revved up when the Covid-19 pandemic struck — is beginning to get its bearings again. For real estate pros, coronavirus has raised vexing questions that have no obvious answers, yet GBT and Chartwell are examples of a growing crop of developers counting on a clearer outlook by the time their buildings open (in this case, the year 2022).
One building in Parke West will include 210 luxury apartments, “with larger floorplans geared toward a more mature rental audience,” said a project spokesman.
The other building will contain 172 hotel rooms; the majority will be branded as a Hilton Garden Inn, with the rest under the Home2 Suites flag. Chartwell will develop and manage the two hotels, adding to a regional portfolio that will reach the brink of 3,000 rooms next month, when the company opens its Hampton Inn & Suites at downtown’s Capitol View development.
A courtyard between the two Parke West buildings will provide access to 11,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space. The two buildings will have a total of three outdoor amenity spaces. Metro’s Greenway walking/biking path is accessible via sidewalks connecting to the other side of the Murphy Road interstate bridge.
GBT won Metro approval for the project in April 2019, after rounds of contentious negotiations with neighborhood groups. Among other changes, GBT shortened the heights of the buildings and erased 250,000 square feet of planned office space, reducing the project’s traffic impact.
“We’ve put a tremendous amount of pre-development work into Parke West to ensure it is an exceptional project that will enhance the community by increasing walkability, providing neighbor amenities and promoting connectivity and ease of access for all visitors, residents and guests,” Tomlin said in a statement.
Hoar Construction will lead the work, and is using this dedicated website for project updates.
A former Fifth Third Bank branch on-site has been demolished. Fifth Third sold the property to Tomlin in 2019 for more than $7 million.
While building this project, GBT also is under construction on a 24-story tower at 1221 Broadway, which entails 365,000 square feet of office space. The project is backed by the real estate arm of Koch Industries and a $141 million construction loan — furthering Tomlin’s efforts to create an urban mixed-use division within his longtime retail development company.