Real estate group uses SoBro to unveil inaugural contest

The long-term future of downtown Nashville’s SoBro district may be difficult to predict — even with the eventual addition of the Music City Center conventional facility and its anchor hotel, a Marriott Marquis.

However, the Nashville chapter of the NAIOP (National Association of Industrial and Office Properties) envisions significant future development opportunity. Thursday afternoon, chapter officials honored three groups of young bankers, architects, brokers, financiers and attorneys (all 35 years old or younger) who competed in the group’s inaugural “Music City Real Estate Challenge.”

Two groups — the playfully named Fiesta Mexicana and the equally distinctively monikered Summer Street Sultans — won a “contest” for recommending a development plan for a SoBro site (both chose the southwest corner of Korean Veterans Boulevard and Fourth Avenue South for their hypothetical proposal). The third team called itself the Keystone Group.

Veteran leaders in the Nashville real estate development community mentored the three teams, each of which included six people. Winners receive prize money and claims on the annual NAIOP Cup, according to event organizers.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, speaking before a gathering of about 160 high-profile area industry leaders at the 111 Broadway Building, announced the two winning teams.

“The judges were looking for innovation, and the two teams innovated in different ways,” said Thomas McDaniel, president elect of the NAIOP Nashville chapter.

McDaniel said the Summer Street Sultans proposal was recognized for being sustainable, effectively integrating civic uses and its innovative financing structure. In contrast, Fiesta Mexicana delivered innovation in recognizing property types, recommended a theater and luxury hotel, showed project flexibility related to current economic realities and provided culturally and historically complementary elements when viewed within the existing downtown fabric.

Dirk Melton, director of development for MarketStreet Enterprises (the master developer of the Gulch) and a board member of the NAIOP local chapter, said the three teams demonstrated “a great deal of competence” in understanding future development opportunities to be spurred by the MCC, ground for which is expected to be broken in early 2010.

“We think we can learn a lot from insights [the teams] achieved,” Melton said.

NAIOP comprises 15,000 members in North America and 320 members in Middle Tennessee.