Nashville Mixed-Use Property Secures $135M Refi
The historic structure is located in the city's Gulch district.
DZL Management has obtained $135 million in refinancing in the form of a five-year, fixed-rate loan for Cummins Station, a 408,000-square-foot historic mixed-use asset in Nashville. The property is situated in the Gulch district, near the city’s downtown.
JLL Capital Markets led the financing efforts for Cummins Station on behalf of the owner, Nashville-based DZL. Despite the challenging macroeconomic climate and headwinds facing the office sector, a pool of liquidity for office assets in good locations with strong tenancy still exists, according to JLL, which declined to name the lenders involved in the deal.
Cummins Station ab adaptive reuse project on the site of an historic warehouse and is a mix of retail, restaurant and office space. Retail tenants include Morning Glory Deli, Pullman Standard and Wild Wasabi, with Starbucks and fitness studio Lagree Nash recently joining the roster. Office tenants include Clark Construction, Gibson Brands, ad agency GS&F, Eventbrite, Civic Financial Service and Serendipity Labs, a coworking space.
The four-story concrete and masonry project was built in 1906 as a wholesale warehouse building servicing railroad lines that ran through the area near Union Station and was the largest reinforced concrete warehouse in the world at the time of its development.
Until its initial redevelopment in the 1990s, it was used continuously as a warehouse space, and retains many of its original design elements. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In October, Nashville-based DZL hired Avison Young to provide advisory services regarding the entire Station District, which includes Cummins Station, but also the 61,000-square-foot office and retail Baggage Building, the 58,000-square-foot Cannery Hall event space, and more than 12.4 acres of developable land.
DZL, which assembled the portfolio over the last 20 years, is reportedly open to a sale, joint venture, or other opportunities for the Station District.
Nashville retail hot, office less so
Downtown and Midtown Nashville experienced more than half, or 58 percent, of all office leasing activity in the first quarter of 2024, mostly at mixed-use projects and on Music Row, which indicates that flight-to-quality includes in-building and neighborhood amenities, according to JLL. Overall, however, there was negative net absorption of 371,000 square feet of office space in Nashville in Q1 2024 as demand lags.
On the retail side, by contrast, Nashville has been a boomtown in recent years. The metro area’s population surged near 25 percent from 2011 to 2021 and currently sees nearly 100 new residents per day move there each day, according to Census Bureau data.
