Auction Buyer Snaps Up Developable Downtown Parcels For $9M

Developable land is fairly rare in Downtown Nashville, so the rush was on last week among the 30 attendees of an auction in Nashville to sell two adjacent parcels on the James Robertson Parkway. The land is especially attractive because it is zoned for a variety of uses. In the end, the roughly two acres sold for nearly $9M.

The winning bidder will be disclosed after closing of the sale, probably in early August. The seller was the State of Tennessee, which used the auction to dispose of surplus land in a way that would take advantage of the brisk demand for developable sites in Nashville. 

The sale actually offered two parcels, though they are adjoining: the vacant 0.9-acre 450 James Robertson Parkway and the 1.2-acre 460 James Robertson Parkway, which also includes a 45K SF office building. The auction was structured so the parcels could be sold separately or together.

"Comparables in the area have been all over the place," said Compass Auctions & Real Estate Vice President of National Development Justin Ochs, who oversaw the auction. "So the auction was a way to determine what the value of the properties was." 

The sale attracted a lot of attention nationally, Ochs said, which was partly a function of Nashville being so well known now as a hot market.

"There were 68 direct requests for due diligence documents from a wide gamut of interested parties. That was because [the] market itself is growing by 100 people a day, but also because that much developable land Downtown is hard to come by."

The location is zoned to encourage a mix of compatible land uses, Ochs said, though it is too early to know what the buyer plans to do with the site.

"It's about three blocks from the LifeWay redevelopment, so there's a lot going on in the area."