Nolensville’s surging population sparks a jolt of retail
March 18, 2016
Nashville Business Journal
by Adam Sichko
The common saying in real estate is that retail follows rooftops. If that holds true, you can expect to see more projects like this headed to Nolensville.
Developers from Brentwood, Nashville and Atlanta are combining for a mixed-use project on Nolensville Pike that will include $48 million worth of residential development and $9 million of retail. Put another way, it’ll be 200 housing units (mainly town homes, but also a few dozen condos) as well as 36,000 square feet of retail.
The Census Bureau says Middle Tennessee is seeing, on average, a net gain of almost 100 people every day, including newborns and people relocating here. Increasingly, those moving vans are heading to places like Nolensville — which has quickly emerged as a lower-cost alternative to Brentwood and Franklin. The town’s population has grown roughly 25 percent since 2010, to about 7,500 people. That population is projected to double by 2025, which is why the town has three schools under construction ( as seen on our Williamson Watch map). The town is in a great location, basically halfway between Interstates 65 and 24, and it’s just about the same drive to downtown as it is to hit State Rte. 840.
Enter Brentwood-based PGM Properties LLC, which is overseeing the retail piece of the proposed Shoppes at Burkitt Place, at 7022 Nolensville Pike. PGM is teaming with Atlanta-based Coro Realty Advisors on its piece of the 22-acre site.Regent Homes, one of Nashville’s largest homebuilders, is spearheading the residential piece.
The project has all the necessary zoning. Site work is expected to start in June, the month after PGM is scheduled to close on its purchase contract for the property. PGM will then sell most of the land to Regent Homes.
“That area is just exploding. It is coming into its own, particularly with the growth of Nashville. We see a significant retail need there,” said John McReynolds, a principal of Brentwood-based PGM Properties.
PGM primarily builds shopping centers anchored by grocery stores. That won’t be the case here, with a Publix and Kroger nearby. McReynolds said to expect to see many of the services and amenities a growing population would want: restaurants, medical uses (such as a dentist), a wine and liquor store, a bank and others.
“We’re being inundated with restaurant interest, and to be honest, we probably won’t be able to fit them all in there,” McReynolds said.
PGM is in talks with a few prospective lenders to finance its part of construction, McReynolds said.
Dave McGowan, chief of Regent Homes, said the forthcoming town homes will be priced between $230,000 to $300,000. The condos will range in size from 1,100-1,400 square feet, costing anywhere from $170,000 to just more than $200,000.
“You would not believe how fast this stuff’s moving right now,” McGowan said.
You might not also believe that McGowan expects millennials — you know, the ones described in broad stokes as desiring the urban core (even with its surging rent) — to be his primary buyer. McGowan said that’s the case at the three other residential projects Regent Homes is doing in Nolensville.
“The central portion of the town, especially, is ripe for similar development. More mixed-use proposals have been floated with office, retail and high-end condo arrangements,” said Ken McLawhon, Nolensville town administrator. “But of all the ones we’re talking about, this is the one that’s actually moving forward toward construction.”
Smith Gee Studio is designing the project, and Civil Site Design Group is handling the engineering.