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Eakin buys Nashville office site with billionaire, Pinnacle backing him

One of Nashville's largest office developers paid $9.4 million on Jan. 17 for his newest project, staked by money from a billionaire and the city's largest homegrown bank.

Eakin Partners now owns a 2.8-acre parking lot at a newly emerging southern gateway into downtown, company chairman and co-founder John Eakin said in an email to the Nashville Business Journal.

Eakin disclosed that Pinnacle Bank (Nasdaq: PNFP) is providing a construction loan for the $90 million development. Eakin has said that his equity investors in the project include billionaire Gaylon Lawrence Jr., who also invested in Eakin's 1201 Demonbreun building that opened in the Gulch in 2016. Eakin also is tapping his firm's Fund III, which is comprised of local investors and businesspeople, Eakin said.

Eakin also is receiving $7.9 million of public aid from the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, which sold Eakin the site along Hermitage Avenue, adjacent to the brick one-story Trolley Barns — best known for tenants such as Pinewood Social and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. Most of that taxpayer aid will finance the cost of replacing the 165 parking spaces that will be lost during construction, and also creating a public park as part of the project.

Eakin noted that he is using the same core team of Pinnacle Bank, contractor Brasfield & Gorrie and Hastings Architecture Associates. Those three companies have helped Eakin build and open much of his existing 1.6 million-square-foot portfolio in Middle Tennessee.

Construction will begin in March, with or without tenants, Eakin reiterated. The building will include a coffee shop, bank branch and a full-service restaurant, Eakin said.

"We will have people typing at their desks by July 1, 2020," Eakin said.

Eakin has to get going on the project because Nashville condo developer Ray Hensler has to wait for Eakin to finish before he can begin developing a residential high-rise and a larger Trolley Barns parking lot. Eakin and Hensler made a joint bid to MDHA for the Trolley Barns sites in 2016, beating eight competing teams. Hensler must hang tight until Eakin finishes because of the way parking is being shuffled around the property to try to minimize disruption for Trolley Barns tenants.

Hensler's originally planned 20-story residential high-rise is surrounded by a series of retail and restaurant spaces, all on the part of the site closest to Ascend Amphiteater. Combined, the two developments could cost $265 million or more, according to Eakin's and Hensler's previous projections.

MDHA and Hensler have negotiated terms of a development agreement for the 4.6-acre parking lot Hensler would buy from MDHA. MDHA's board of directors was set to authorize leadership to finalize that deal at its scheduled Jan. 16 meeting, which was canceled because of the bad weather.

That meeting should be rescheduled for next week, said Joe Cain, MDHA's director of development. A copy of the agreement with Hensler has not yet been made public.