The Gulch, for Franklin: Developer unveils $100M project at major crossroads

October 21, 2016

The Nashville Business Journal
by Adam Sichko

For about 20 years, the wooded land at the northeast corner of Carothers Parkway and McEwen Drive seemed destined for an office building or two. Nothing more, nothing less — which makes sense, given Cool Springs’ stature as the region’s established corporate hub.

Now, the Charlotte developer who owns the land is pursuing a $100 million mixed-use development featuring about 300,000 square feet of office space and a whole lot more: 340 apartments and town homes, a 180-room hotel, several restaurants and acres of public green space and walking trails.

The shift speaks to how Williamson County is changing, as a result of a population growing faster than anywhere in the state and job growth that outpaces every other county in the nation, according to the latest data. Seeking to recruit and retain talent, the executives generating those jobs increasingly want to be surrounded by more than just other office buildings — in other words, they want a more urban, walkable environment in a suburban, affluent county. It’s a point best illustrated by the neighbors at this same intersection, which is the epicenter of a several billion-dollar development boom playing out on our Williamson Watch development map (updated to reflect the news in this story).

“What the Gulch did for in-town Nashville, we believe this could be that special place, at a smaller scale, for Franklin and Williamson County. It just doesn’t exist today but for downtown Franklin, which is pretty built-out,” said Brian Leary, president of the commercial and mixed use division at Crescent Communities LLC, of Charlotte.

To that end, Crescent has retained Earl Swensson Associates to master-plan the project. Leary said he admired the work the company did on the Gulch Crossing office building, which opened last year.

Crescent managed to hold on to this land through the Great Recession, which revealed that Crescent had too much debt and forced the company into bankruptcy to restructure. Crescent’s then-leader, veteran office developer Pat Emery, joined a competitor and bought 71 acres of land from Crescent on the other side of Carothers Parkway.

Emery is under construction on the second of five office buildings planned on that land, for his Franklin Park office campus. Across McEwen Drive from the Crescent property is Ovation, a massive proposed development that could hold 1.4 million square feet of office space, almost 500,000 square feet of retail space and 950 residential units. Add in Crescent’s newly unveiled project, and you’ve got roughly $1.5 billion of construction poised for that intersection.

“For years, this has been a legacy office site. With the way trends are going, what we’re hearing from tenants we’re talking to across the country, this is just such an ideal opportunity for a mix of uses,” Leary said.

“First and foremost, it won’t be just another office park. It won’t be named with some kind of obvious and deliberate reference to Nashville. It will really be about Franklin,” Leary said, alluding to a coming rebranding of the site (now dubbed Resource Centre).

“Ovation will be a wonderful project, but this might be the counter to that. Smaller in scale, more boutique, more local, more Franklin. That’s our ideal,” Leary added. “We won’t go try to recruit some national, 7,000-square-foot restaurant. That’s not what we’re looking to do here.”

City officials are vetting a proposed zoning change that Crescent needs in order to be able to build what it’s aspiring to do. Construction could start in summer or fall of 2017, pending financing.

“In many ways, the capital and debt markets are trying to figure out how they can get into this part of the market,” Leary said. He noted that Crescent raised the equity and debt needed to finance a roughly $30 million office building behind this site. It’s a “speculative” build, which is a riskier proposition because construction starts without tenants in hand (and, generally, that approach can make it harder to raise money).

That office building, named Two Greenway Centre, mirrors its sibling next-door, which Crescent built and which serves as a regional headquarters for Jackson National Life Insurance Co. Surrounding that, Crescent has developed 677 apartments on a couple of sites.

“On this corner, we’ve already created mixed-use. This is literally the town center that it’s been waiting for,” Leary said.