Huge lease propels Emery to kickstart another Cool Springs office building

July 14, 2016

Nashville Business Journal
by Adam Sichko

The legacy office developer in Cool Springs is accelerating work on another building, on the heels of signing Schneider Electric to a huge lease within the same Franklin Park development.

David Wells, vice president at Spectrum | Emery, said Three Franklin Park will be at least 10 stories tall and contain at least 280,000 square feet, making it slightly larger than Two Franklin Park and its predecessor, One Franklin Park.

Two tenants — Schneider, which is a French manufacturer, and CKE Restaurants Inc., the parent of fast-food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. — have claimed 81 percent of the 272,000-square-feet within Two Franklin Park. That leaves 52,000 square feet still up for grabs.

The 10-story building is the second of five buildings that Spectrum | Emery Inc. plans within its 71-acre development at exit 67 of Interstate 65, which also includes an amphitheater and an apartment complex. at ground zero of a multibillion-dollar building boom remaking what is the region’s mainstay headquarters hub.

The fact Spectrum | Emery is this far along with leasing, nine months before the building will open, speaks to the historic shortfall of available top-grade Class A office space in Cool Springs. The official figure is 1 percent, via brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield. That deficit constrains companies trying to grow and expand in what is the fastest-growing county in the state, and the county adding jobs faster than any in the nation.

“It would have been extremely ambitious to have assumed we would be 81 percent pre-leased by mid-July. With this (Schneider Electric) announcement … that means our process starts right now. We’ll immediately release our architects to begin schematic designs,” Wells told me.

Spectrum | Emery is already done with site planning for Three Franklin Park, since it will sit right next to Two Franklin Park. Spectrum | Emery will use the same design firm as before, Duda Paine Architects, of Durham, N.C.

At this pace, Three Franklin Park could open in mid- to late 2018.

Two Franklin Park, which will open in March 2017, cost $70 million to create. Emery’s longtime financier, J.P. Morgan, is funding the Franklin Park development.

“We’ve been in front of the market and have been ever since we started Franklin Park. This will cement that position, in the sense that it’s perfect timing,” Wells said.

Even with Two Franklin Park filling up fast, Wells said he will not raise his asking rent of $35 per square foot — a record-high rate for Cool Springs. That rate, which includes parking costs, is roughly $10 per square foot less than what downtown’s newest office buildings are renting for, if you factor in parking costs there as well.

“I was very confident Two (Franklin Park) would lease faster than the first one, mainly due to the fact that customers can come out here and kick the tires now. We aren’t having to promise a vision,” Wells said.