Mystery Office Tenant Eyes 500K sf in Nashville

A mystery tenant is on the prowl for a massive chunk of office space in the Music City.

The undisclosed financial firm wants to lease roughly 500,000 square feet, which would mark the third-largest office lease in Nashville over the past decade, the Nashville Business Journal reported.

A few other cities are purportedly in the running to land what would become a prized tenant, especially given the beleaguered state of the office sector, as remote-work trends continue to wreak havoc on landlords across the country.

Since 2014, the only leases to top 500,000 square feet have come from Amazon and phone insurance provider Asurion. Amazon has leased just over 1 million square feet at the forthcoming Nashville Yards, and Asurion leased 550,000 square feet at 1100 Broadway in 2018.

No other Nashville lease has approached 500,000 square feet over the past decade, with the next largest deal coming in at 263,000 square feet. Landmark Recovery signed that lease, at 701 Cool Springs, in 2022.

Over 2 million square feet of office space is under construction in Nashville, with more than one-third already pre-leased, the outlet reported, citing JLL.

Potential sites for the mystery tenant include Southwest Value Partners’ Nashville Yards, where nearly 800,000 square feet of office space is slated for delivery this year. Other options include Germantown’s Neuhoff District, which is undergoing a $550 million redevelopment, and the Pinnacle at Symphony Place in SoBro, where occupancy stands at 90 percent.

If the existing options do not meet the firm’s requirements, there are several potential candidates in Nashville’s development pipeline. Among them are GBT Realty and Monarch Alternative Capital’s MidCity Nashville, a seven-tower development on the former Beaman Midtown site. Other possibilities include Hines’ Midtown mixed-use development, and RMR Group’s Station East, an 18-acre project that’s offering 1.2 million square feet of office space.

Nashville’s office vacancy rate was a tick below 17 percent in the first quarter, down from the national average of 20.2 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

—Quinn Donoghue