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Still in the works The pandemic won’t stop plans to turn more of Cool Springs into a quasi-urban, walkable district BY MATT BLOIS
early a quarter century ago, crops covered an adjacent field as construction started on what is now the Carothers Building. It was the first major office project in Cool Springs and would long house Primus Financial Services. It rose as most of the surrounding land was agricultural and the internet was brand new. A few years later, the dot-com bust slowed down the U.S. economy, but other office buildings were popping up in Cool Springs. The real boom started in 2005 when the Japanese carmaker Nissan decided to build its North American headquarters on Carothers Parkway, paving the way for a string of major corporate headquarters. Nissan finished its offices in 2008. That year, the financial crisis devastated the global economy. By 2009, unemployment in the county climbed to 7.5 percent. However, development in Cool Springs exploded over the next decade. Boyle Investment developed its Meridian complex and Jackson National, Ramsey Solutions, Schneider Electric and Mars Petcare all opened or added to large offices in the area. More recently, medical device manufacturer Medacta, car maker Mitsubishi and Spirit Airlines all announced major office projects. Cool Springs is now in its third recession since transforming into a regional office hub, but developers say the area is poised to weather this one just as it did the others. The COVID-19 pandemic is pushing back construction timelines but could end up making the area even more attractive as companies and employees based in cities look for more space in the suburbs.
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Workers from dense, expensive cities searching for a lower cost of living have been migrating to the Nashville area for a long time. Between 2013 and 2017 alone, more than 2,000 people moved to Williamson County from the Los Angeles, Chicago and Phoenix areas. In the midst of the virus outbreak, several developers are moving forward with projects that promise to further change swaths of Cool Springs into a quasi-urban, walkable business district filled with restaurants, shops and other amenities. Glenn McGehee, president of Franklin developer SouthStar, estimates the coronavirus outbreak has pushed back by about six months the timeline for his company’s Aureum development at the southwest corner of Carothers and McEwen Drive. “We’re very excited about the future. Is it going to happen as fast as we would have told you it was going to happen? … We had hoped to already be moving dirt there,” McGehee says. “That’s just a product of our environment. It’s not because the site’s not a good site.” Aureum will eventually include 480 apartments, 750,000 square feet of office space, 100,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space and 700 hotel rooms. McGehee hopes to start construction by early 2021. He says some tenants are skittish because of the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus but he doesn’t expect
that to last. He sees the pandemic forcing companies in dense cities to reconsider their offices, which could benefit areas like Williamson County — and he’s not alone. “This pandemic is only going to accelerate that trend,” MarketStreet Enterprises Development Director Dirk Melton said. “The population growth of Williamson County is going to be gangbusters. There’s no reason to believe that’s going to be any different today than we thought six months ago. We need to be in a position to respond to that in the development community.” MarketStreet — the master developer of The Gulch neighborhood in downtown Nashville — aims to do that with its East Works District in Cool Springs. The firm plans to build 500,000 square feet of office space, 60,000 square feet of retail and restaurants and 600 hotel rooms around the Carothers Building, the same property that was surrounded by crops in 1994. Melton says MarketStreet hopes to draw on the company’s experience in The Gulch to create a walkable neighborhood packed with restaurants and stores. “People only want to park their car once. They want to have amenities at their doorstep,” he says. “That’s probably the most successful aspects of The Gulch. You’ve got close to 80 different restaurants, retailers and enter-
