This thread is limited to pictures of current tower crane construction sites in and near DT Nashville (DT, Gulch, SoBro, near Vanderbilt).  These photos were taken Sunday, December 1 and Monday, December 2.  Both days were overcast so they look like the same day, with the exception of about 30 minutes of sunshine on Dec. 1.  

 

Crane #1:

 

Crane #2:

 

Cranes #3 & #4, old convention center site:

 

Another shot of cranes #3 & #4:

 

Crane #5:

 

Crane #6:

 

Another view of Crane #6:

 

Another view of Crane #6:

 

Another view of Crane #6:

 

Crane #7:

 

Another view of Crane #7:

 

Another view of Crane #7:

 

Crane #8:

 

Crane #6:

 

Cranes #9, #10, #11, #12:

 

I think that's #1 over on the right:

 

Another view of #1:

 

#6 on the right:

 

#12, #13, and #1:

 

Crane #14:

 

#12 & #13:

 

Crane #15:

 

Cranes #15 & #16:

 

Cranes #17 & #18, with Crane #8 in the distance:

 

Crane #1:

 

Cranes #19 & #20:

 

Crane just disassembled!

 

Cranes #9 & 10:

 

Another view of Cranes #19 & #20:

 

Cranes #9 & 10 again:

 

Cranes #9 & 10:

 

Cranes #19 & #20 up close:

 

Crane #21:

 

Crane #21:

 

Crane #21:

 

Cranes #22, #23, #24, & #25.  This is the former West End Summit location that was abandoned in the 2008-09 recession.

 

More:

 

More of #22-25:

 

#26 & #27 - the first Amazon office building:

 

#28 & #29, with #1 in the middle:

 

#28 & #29:

 

#28 & #29:

 

#27:

 

#1 at left, #29 at right:

 

#1:

 

#28 & #29 at center; #27 at right:

 

#26 furthest to right:

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 20195 yr by jmecklenborg

What can I say except I'm jealous...

Mehhh, honestly one of my least favorite cities and I love country music.

1 minute ago, wpcc88 said:

Mehhh, honestly one of my least favorite cities and I love country music.

In was there in early 2016, it was alright, I liked the Memphis leg of that tour I took better... was def amazed by all the new DT developments, but I'd take cle/cincy/Cbus/ n detroit over it any day... no country music for me!

 

What is exactly driving all of this developement aside from the popularity in county music? I understand Atlanta, Charlotte, Austin, etc...cities that are hubs for jobs in various sectors..but what is Nashville bringing job wise and what sector? 

 

It's not like it has LA climate, or even has half the culture of NYC or even Atlanta. 

Edited December 4, 20195 yr by troeros

The utter lack of even a medium size city in reasonable proximity gets my vote, followed closely by ‘Nashville’ the meme and the lesser presence of industrial revolution residue in need of redevelopment. Nashville folk are just Cincy folk who say “eww” more often and are proud of it. 

Edited December 4, 20195 yr by Pdrome513

30 cranes is impressive for a city of that size.  Seems to be status quo for the past 10 years or so though for Nashville.

The level of development is impressive, while the quality of architecture (subjective, I know) is much less impressive. Many of the hotel towers, such as the Cambria or the Holiday Inn above, look like they have the potential to age very poorly. 

I just went through this again and realized that the crane I had identified as #30 was in fact a duplicate of #26.  I edited the captions.  However, there is a 30th crane nearby on Charlotte Ave. that I didn't take any photos of, so there still are 30 cranes in the immediate downtown area. 

Wow, that is surprising.  I saw about a dozen cranes in downtown San Diego when I was there recently, but that was not a surprise.  Hopefully we will see lots of cranes in downtown Cleveland in the next couple years.

 

9 hours ago, TwoStickney419 said:

In was there in early 2016, it was alright, I liked the Memphis leg of that tour I took better... was def amazed by all the new DT developments, but I'd take cle/cincy/Cbus/ n detroit over it any day... no country music for me!

 

You have  lot of capital chasing Nashville. It has an international reputation with the country music side of things so the city is well known around the world. You have a ton of institutional capital that comes in and throws money at project after project regardless of the success. The key is the capital. You can go to NYC and see a new tower being built because someone has the money to make it happen. Some of the new towers are huge successes, others fail miserably and are picked up a few years later for pennies on the dollar and the new owner makes a killing on them. At the end of the day, you have a gleaming tower whether successful or not and that is all people see.

40 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

I just went through this again and realized that the crane I had identified as #30 was in fact a duplicate of #26.  I edited the captions.  However, there is a 30th crane nearby on Charlotte Ave. that I didn't take any photos of, so there still are 30 cranes in the immediate downtown area. 

How many are in downtown cincy now? I thought there were 4 but I think they are down to 2 or 3 now with the Kroger building being completed.

 

It looked like some of that area was in the Gulch? I would equate that area almost to Clifton or Covington when comparing it to downtown.

10 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

This thread is limited to pictures of current tower crane construction sites in and near DT Nashville (DT, Gulch, SoBro, near Vanderbilt).  These photos were taken Sunday, December 1 and Monday, December 2.  Both days were overcast so they look like the same day, with the exception of about 30 minutes of sunshine on Dec. 1.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

This photo is my favorite with 6+ cranes in the photo.  Almost looks Seattle-esque from a couple years ago. 

Edited December 4, 20195 yr by MuRrAy HiLL

1 hour ago, cbussoccer said:

The level of development is impressive, while the quality of architecture (subjective, I know) is much less impressive. Many of the hotel towers, such as the Cambria or the Holiday Inn above, look like they have the potential to age very poorly. 

 

Agreed - I'm happy for the people of Nashville - but cannot help but think many of these buildings belong in suburban industrial parkways, not a CBD

I don't know...maybe because it is winter?-but much of that is not nearly as impressive as I thought it would be.  There is just something off-putting about much of it. 

9 hours ago, troeros said:

What is exactly driving all of this developement aside from the popularity in county music? I understand Atlanta, Charlotte, Austin, etc...cities that are hubs for jobs in various sectors..but what is Nashville bringing job wise and what sector? 

 

It's not like it has LA climate, or even has half the culture of NYC or even Atlanta. 

 

What's interesting about Nashville, is that most of its growth is occurring outside of its core city and county, which are merged.  For all that construction, city population growth is relatively slower than most of its Sun Belt counterparts.  Since its county/city are merged, the growth is even that much more unimpressive.

 

Here would be the average annual core city growth of some metros with 1.5-2.5 million people if they were all merged with their counties.

Las Vegas: 35,047

San Antonio: 33,910

Austin: 28,060

Orlando: 25,377

Charlotte: 21,784

San Jose: 19,491

Columbus: 18,361

Sacramento: 15,273

Jacksonville: 10,740

Portland: 9,568

Nashville: 8,238

Indianapolis: 6,410

 

Nashville's growth represents only 19% of the whole metro's increase.  Meanwhile just the city of Columbus, for example, not including the rest of Franklin County, represents 51.6% of the metro's growth.  If there was a city-county merger like in Nashville, that would jump to 71.8%.  It's a vastly different growth pattern.  Yet by all accounts Nashville is seeing significantly more downtown and urban development than Columbus.  It doesn't make much sense to me.  The only thing that could explain it is that Nashville has a more well-known reputation.

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 20195 yr by jonoh81

16 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

 

What's interesting about Nashville, is that most of its growth is occurring outside of its core city and county, which are merged.  For all that construction, city population growth is relatively slower than most of its Sun Belt counterparts.  Since its county/city are merged, the growth is even that much more unimpressive.

 

Here would be the average annual core city growth of some metros with 1.5-2.5 million people if they were all merged with their counties.

Las Vegas: 35,047

San Antonio: 33,910

Austin: 28,060

Orlando: 25,377

Charlotte: 21,784

San Jose: 19,491

Columbus: 18,361

Sacramento: 15,273

Jacksonville: 10,740

Portland: 9,568

Nashville: 8,238

Indianapolis: 6,410

 

Nashville's growth represents only 19% of the whole metro's increase.  Meanwhile just the city of Columbus, for example, not including the rest of Franklin County, represents 51.6% of the metro's growth.  If there was a city-county merger like in Nashville, that would jump to 71.8%.  It's a vastly different growth pattern.  Yet by all accounts Nashville is seeing significantly more downtown and urban development than Columbus.  It doesn't make much sense to me.  The only thing that could explain it is that Nashville has a more well-known reputation.

 

 

 

It is access to capital. If you notice most of those are apartment buildings. Nashville is an institutional money market. Columbus is not (neither is Cleveland or Cincinnati). all the major New York, California, and even international real estate financers are players in Nashville. They are not playing in Ohio. IT means that there is a lot more cheap money flowing to Nashville to gamble on more speculative projects because the theory is there will always be another institutional investor behind them to cash out to when the project is complete.

 

12 minutes ago, jonoh81 said:

 

What's interesting about Nashville, is that most of its growth is occurring outside of its core city and county, which are merged.  For all that construction, city population growth is relatively slower than most of its Sun Belt counterparts.  Since its county/city are merged, the growth is even that much more unimpressive.

 

Here would be the average annual core city growth of some metros with 1.5-2.5 million people if they were all merged with their counties.

Las Vegas: 35,047

San Antonio: 33,910

Austin: 28,060

Orlando: 25,377

Charlotte: 21,784

San Jose: 19,491

Columbus: 18,361

Sacramento: 15,273

Jacksonville: 10,740

Portland: 9,568

Nashville: 8,238

Indianapolis: 6,410

 

Nashville's growth represents only 19% of the whole metro's increase.  Meanwhile just the city of Columbus, for example, not including the rest of Franklin County, represents 51.6% of the metro's growth.  If there was a city-county merger like in Nashville, that would jump to 71.8%.  It's a vastly different growth pattern.  Yet by all accounts Nashville is seeing significantly more downtown and urban development than Columbus.  It doesn't make much sense to me.  The only thing that could explain it is that Nashville has a more well-known reputation.

 

 

 

 

Look at the nature of Nashville's developments. Many of the new towers are hotels. Those aren't going to increase population. Many other towers are high-end apartments/condos. Given Nashville's nature, many of these are likely not filled by actual residents of the city. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of "rental properties" being used as AirBnBs, and others are probably second (or 3rd or 4th) homes for musicians. These also would not increase population. 

 

@Brutus_buckeye covered how these projects are happening from a business standpoint, but the above is how I believe they are happening without causing the expected bump in population. 

41 minutes ago, Toddguy said:

I don't know...maybe because it is winter?-but much of that is not nearly as impressive as I thought it would be.  There is just something off-putting about much of it. 

 

The whole layout of the place lacks a traditional logic.  It looks pretty orderly on a traditional map or on Google Maps but on the ground the place is very disjointed.  

 

It seems that the original concept back in the 1700s was to put the state capitol up on the bluff.  Beyond that, Broadway was laid out in its weird gully so as to meet the river at its lowest point, where there was a landing and presumably ferries to the other side, but no street continues on the other side.  No bridge was built in line with Broadway because it would have obstructed steamboat stacks.  Instead the bridges...are back up on the bluff, away from commercial activity.  So cross-river traffic has to turn from super-wide Broadway onto the super-narrow city streets to get to the bridges.  

 

Beyond that, the railroads + I-40 create parallel gulches, with a strange 2-block strip between them that was occupied by car dealerships for the past 75 years.  The interstate overpasses are nondescript and the older viaducts over the railroad gulch similarly lack any attitude.  

 

Here you can see the weird 2x10 block strip that lies between the railroad gulch and I-40:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nashville,+TN/@36.156614,-86.7883239,1107m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x8864ec3213eb903d:0x7d3fb9d0a1e9daa0!8m2!3d36.1626638!4d-86.7816016

 

Also, the Beaman family's many car dealerships stubbornly remain on the now very, very prime real estate to either side of Broadway between I-40 and the 21st Ave. split.  Allegedly old man Beaman was a central figure in the fight against the 2018 transit tax that would have built a light rail network that would have converged in a downtown subway with 3 underground stations.  

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

How many are in downtown cincy now? I thought there were 4 but I think they are down to 2 or 3 now with the Kroger building being completed.

 

It looked like some of that area was in the Gulch? I would equate that area almost to Clifton or Covington when comparing it to downtown.

 

There are 2 tower cranes downtown right now. The one at 8th and Main was just taken down a few weeks ago and the other two are for 4th and Race.

 

Regarding Nashville: I used to get pretty upset about how much growth was happening there compared to Cincinnati but was reminded that a lot of development in Cincinnati is happening, its just as visible because its more likely to be a historic rehab than new construction. We have a ton of things going on in the core but they are things like turning exiting towers into hotels and apartments or rehabbing blocks of old italianates around Findley Market. The Charles Street (1118 Sycamore) and Milhaus (Pete Rose Way) developments are also significant in size and density (any maybe they will have tower cranes). 

 

In a way Cincinnati and Columbus are better positioned than Nashville. Its economy is not as diverse and is more reliant on entertainment (hence the NashVegas reputation) which means its more vulnerable to a recession whenever one comes. Cincinnati is a sleeper hit and Columbus is booming. Nashville might be great in time. We'll see.

22 hours ago, cbussoccer said:

 

Look at the nature of Nashville's developments. Many of the new towers are hotels. Those aren't going to increase population. Many other towers are high-end apartments/condos. Given Nashville's nature, many of these are likely not filled by actual residents of the city. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of "rental properties" being used as AirBnBs, and others are probably second (or 3rd or 4th) homes for musicians. These also would not increase population. 

 

@Brutus_buckeye covered how these projects are happening from a business standpoint, but the above is how I believe they are happening without causing the expected bump in population. 

In the apartment sector as well as most other real estate sector there are 6-10 big institutional companies that sit there and trade properties amongst themselves. It does not mean that outsiders cant play in the business and cant buy, but ultimately, if 3-4 of these players choose to enter a market, they know there is an exit strategy when they look to sell, and will just pass the properties around to each other. Right now, these companies are playing in Nashville.

^What's really weird right now is the development is leapfrogging holdouts.  So aside from the downtown, gulch, and near Vanderbilt, there are big urban-style apartment buildings (100+ units) going up in pretty random locations.  So even though they look urban, it is definitely drive-to urbanism.  There is very little pedestrian activity outside of the tourist areas and near Vanderbilt.  

 

However, if the current pace of construction continues, in 15-20 years it'll be a forest of Dallas Donut drive-to urbanist apartment blocks and absolutely impossible to drive anywhere.  Meanwhile, people still won't walk very much, since everyone moving in will have a car.  

19 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

^What's really weird right now is the development is leapfrogging holdouts.  So aside from the downtown, gulch, and near Vanderbilt, there are big urban-style apartment buildings (100+ units) going up in pretty random locations.  So even though they look urban, it is definitely drive-to urbanism.  There is very little pedestrian activity outside of the tourist areas and near Vanderbilt.  

 

However, if the current pace of construction continues, in 15-20 years it'll be a forest of Dallas Donut drive-to urbanist apartment blocks and absolutely impossible to drive anywhere.  Meanwhile, people still won't walk very much, since everyone moving in will have a car.  

 

Sounds like paradise ?

On 12/5/2019 at 11:58 AM, jmecklenborg said:

However, if the current pace of construction continues, in 15-20 years it'll be a forest of Dallas Donut drive-to urbanist apartment blocks and absolutely impossible to drive anywhere.  Meanwhile, people still won't walk very much, since everyone moving in will have a car.  

 

It's already getting close to being impossible to drive anywhere.   A couple accidents on a rainy night in Nashville and gridlock ensues.  

On 12/4/2019 at 12:04 AM, jmecklenborg said:

Crane #21:

 

Crane #21:

 

This is impressive. What project is this?

1 hour ago, seicer said:

 

This is impressive. What project is this?

 

Graduate Hotel:

https://www.graduatehotels.com/nashville/

 

Per the website it is now open.  The cheapest rooms are generally $200 during the spring and $300+ over the summer. 

On 12/4/2019 at 1:06 AM, troeros said:

What is exactly driving all of this developement aside from the popularity in county music? I understand Atlanta, Charlotte, Austin, etc...cities that are hubs for jobs in various sectors..but what is Nashville bringing job wise and what sector? 

 

It's not like it has LA climate, or even has half the culture of NYC or even Atlanta. 

 

Honestly? I'm late to the party here, but I'd say the driving factor is the lively bar scene there (or was pre-Covid-19).

 

It's on a whole different level than other cities its size... I was there on a Wednesday night in mid-May and every one of its ~50-ish bars was huge and had a line out the door. It was insane! And honestly a lot of fun.

The "country music / sterotypical 'southern' (gross... sorry I couldn't help but interject my opinion)" popularity factors in too to make some people more comfortable with going to city bars... but the way I see it, the guarantee of a lively night any night of the week, like a Las Vegas or NYC type of party atmosphere, will keep the development rolling in as long as they can keep it up.

 

I'd look to Miami as an example of how Nashville may look in ~30 years. It'll still be lively, but a bit cooled.

 

I wouldn't bet on Nashville resuming its 2015-2019 momentum after the 2020 virus shut-down.  All developers and business owners are going to lose a ton of money during Q2 and many will fail.  Some who fail will see their lives ruined and will move out of town.  The energy will be different when the people come back in 2021 and there won't be as many of them.