Rendering of the proposed Nashville Yards project. (Photo Credit: Southwest Value Partners)
AEG’s plans for a mixed-use entertainment destination in downtown Nashville will fit right in with existing offerings and will create a new niche, capacity-wise, with its 4,000-seat music venue, said AEG Presents Senior VP Ali Harnell.
“That capacity range is underserved in this part of Nashville,” Harnell said, mentioning the iconic Ryman Auditorium, which housed the Grand Ole Opry in its heyday and still features special Grand Ole Opry shows. “The Ryman is always going to be the Ryman. People are always going to want to play there. It’s 2,400 (seats). Then you go up to the Municipal Auditorium and Bridgestone Arena and Ascend Amphitheater. Those are 6,000 and more. This is the perfect stepping stone, the perfect size.”
Earlier this week, AEG and San Diego-based developer Southwest Value Partners (SWVP) announced that AEG had purchased 4 acres of property in downtown Nashville known as Nashville Yards with plans for a mixed-use entertainment district, not unlike other well-known AEG brand destinations such as L.A. LIVE, Los Angeles, The O2, London and Mercedes-Benz Platz, currently under construction in Berlin, Germany.
In addition to the 4,000-seat music venue, AEG’s plans also include a luxury, flagship Regal Cinemas theater complex; a 600-700-capacity live entertainment club; an approximately 240-room boutique hotel and a variety of additional entertainment, food and beverage options.
“For several years, AEG has been looking for the right venue development opportunity in Nashville, one of the fastest-growing cities in the country,” said Jay Marciano, CEO of AEG and chairman and CEO of AEG Presents, in a press release. “A development offering like this has to not just be special, but be remarkable.”
Plans for developing the area began in late 2015 when SWVP purchased the nearly 15-acre campus of LifeWay Christian Resources for a reported $125 million in cash to create a multi-phase office, retail, hospitality, entertainment and residential space in the western edge of downtown Nashville. The complex will span from Broadway, downtown’s showcase street featuring iconic tourist attractions such as Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, past Church Street.
Nashville Yards will be in walking distance to the Music City Center, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Bridgestone Arena, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and the Johnny Cash Museum, among other attractions.
The developer plans to open a full-service, 591-room Hyatt Regency on the property in 2020, featuring more than 65,000 square feet of meeting space, a spa and “culinary experiences,” according to a press release. The Hyatt Regency will anchor the northwest corner of Broadway and 10th Avenue.
Ground will be broken on AEG’s parcel in the near future, Harnell said, although she could not pinpoint a time. She also stated that 2019 would be the earliest that any of AEG’s venues or attractions are completed, but that 2020 is a more likely target date. AEG’s entertainment complex does not have a name yet, she added, and she anticipates that a naming rights sponsor will be sought.
“It’s important that it stays locally grounded, but naming rights sponsors are part of the game,” she said.
News of AEG’s plans were welcomed by some other venues in town. “I’m pretty excited about it,” said Sean Henry, president and CEO of the Nashville Predators National Hockey League franchise, the primary tenant of Bridgestone Arena. “I’m a big believer in the more venues we have in the city, the better it is for all venues. I think it fills a nice void. You’ve got clubs in that area that seat in the 200-range right up to stadiums that could do 60,000.”
The 69,000-seat Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, is a five-minute drive across the Cumberland River from the lower Broadway area of downtown Nashville. Bridgestone Arena’s capacity is about 20,000 for concerts, depending on the configuration, and 17,200 for hockey games, Henry said. The area should be able to handle additional foot and car traffic as well, Henry added. “It’s incredible — we just hosted the Stanley Cup during the same week we had the CMA Music Festival. We had 100,000 outside watching, 18,000 inside watching, and 45,000 at the stadium. You die for those things.”
A more direct competitor would be Nashville Municipal Auditorium, which hosts concerts that generally seat about 7,500 fans, said general manager Bob Skoney. Live shows at the venue have been boosted in the past year by a new five-year agreement with Live Nation, which now hosts several — but not all — concerts at the Municipal Auditorium, Skoney said.
“There will be competition,” he added. “We’ve got a little more head room if the act skews bigger. But if it’s toward a lower capacity, that would be a different type of fit. So I would say it will be competition in some regard.”
Municipal Auditorium has hosted about 20 concerts in the year since the Live Nation agreement took effect, with acts including Sting, Boston, The Chainsmokers, Pretty Lights and The 1975, with Slayer and Mary J. Blige slated to perform concerts later this summer. The concert schedule has slowed a bit because of improvements that are being made to the venue, including a $1.5 million project to turn two large dressing rooms into five plush dressing rooms and a $1.8 million seat upgrade.
“The auditorium has been around for 55 years and we’ve weathered a lot of different new venues over the years,” Skoney said. “We kind of carve our own niche. We’re not strictly concerts. We book a lot of conferences, religious meetings and different types of public gatherings, circuses and basketball games. We’re a little broader with a multipurpose building.”
A press release stated that AEG and SWVP will work closely together to integrate all aspects of the entertainment district development, including infrastructure, architecture and pedestrian connectivity. Nashville’s population has been on the upswing, seeing a nearly 10 percent increase in residents between 2010 and 2016, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. “I’m not overly concerned, but we have a traffic issue building in town because of our explosive growth in the past five years,” Skoney said. “But with them being inside the beltway and with plenty of infrastructure to support something like that, and it will be in the evening hours most of the time, I think it will be fine.”