Not even a great location is any guarantee of success. Ultimately, a real estate site is only as good as what gets built there. And this is precisely what one development partnership is looking to demonstrate in the Nashville, Tenn., neighborhood of Bellevue. A mall that once stood there was closed down in 2008 and has since been razed, to be replaced next year with a mixed-used development containing a host of retail. What happened? “It never popped,” said Tony Vaughn, a partner and an executive vice president at the Nashville office of Colliers International. “We have the Green Hills Mall and CoolSprings mall, which cater to wealthier demographics and are part of the same trade area.”
Charlotte, N.C.–based Crosland Southeast and partner Atlanta-based Branch Properties acquired the property last year.
“This area is a good, solid, middle-class community,” said Tim Sittema, a managing partner of Crosland Southeast. Sittema says he considered the site a “hidden gem,” an in-fill location surrounded by fully developed communities and seated at the important intersection of Interstate 40 and U.S. Highway 70. “It had fantastic access, with five traffic lights, and at 87 acres it was large enough to do something transformative,” Sittema said.
In some ways, argues Vaughn, Bellevue has been underserved. “There are two Publix stores and two Krogers in the area, but there has been limited QSR [quick-serve restaurants] and limited casual dining,” he said. “The Carmike Cinema was old and dated.” Indeed, that may be why the movie house will migrate about a mile down the road to One Bellevue Place, as the new development is called.
One Bellevue Place will comprise some 375,000 square feet of retail plus roughly 300 apartments and a 100-room Suites by Hilton hotel. The second phase will add office and medical space and more entertainment. There is a Publix on the site, though it is not part of the redevelopment, which will get a new Sprouts grocery store as an anchor. (Three Sprouts are in development now in Nashville, so this will be one of the chain’s first for the metro.) About 90 percent of the retail tenants already have leases or letters of intent. “We are well ahead of schedule,” said Sittema. The retail tenants will include Burlington Coat Factory, HomeGoods, Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse and PetSmart. Among the food tenants will be Panera Bread and Chili’s Grill & Bar.
The key to the success of the redevelopment was making the site a public-private partnership, Sittema says. “These types of developments cannot get done without a municipality partnership,” he said. “For this site, we have tax-increment financing that we negotiated with the city of Nashville for extraordinary expenses such as demolition and infrastructure work.” A more practical impetus, he notes, “is that any site we look at for redevelopment has to be able to support retail.”
The first walls of the Sprouts were erected just this summer. “The rest of retail is falling right behind,” said Sittema. “We are hoping to get the Sprouts open by May 2017, and the other retail will be coming on-line shortly thereafter.”