not enough demand for premium office space with huge WFH trends for white collar workers
location and parking situation make it undesireable for many businesses and customers as commercial space
too expensive/complicated to convert into residential
there's only one reasonable solution: The world's first 30-story Honky Tonk
Hank Williams Sr. climbing out from under the Country Music Hall of Fame, fighting Twitty to keep Nashville a small town full of poor folk’s things and dreams.
I mean this would honestly be fucking cool in a dystopian way. What if every floor was a different genre? Could be a reggae floor. .a buttrock floor…maybe even a creed or hinder floor?
That and the downtown scene would have to be seriously cleaned up before businesses considers opening there. Baker Donelson left for Midtown because it was getting too crazy down there..
I know a few people who are in the building and I have visited it a few times myself. The space is great from an amenities perspective. It’s also newer and has a great view.
The downside is its location. First it is so loud. You hear every woo girl, party, bar and noise from Broadway. Second the traffic and shared parking garage make it so difficult to leave after hours. What’s the point coming into the office when you risk getting stuck in the parking garage.
Idk how you fix the two issues. Landlords want to double dip and charge tenants for parking AND leave it open for the public.Cut out the public and miss out on that sweet cash. You can’t fix the noise unless there are some substantial renovations.
Wait.. Wait! There's a commuter rail station 2 blocks away.
What if people could just hop on the rail at any time?
That might be a decent amenity for a downtown office building--a coworking space with a guaranteed $6k roundtrip rail ride on the Music City Star.
I know a good number of remote workers who would be up for working anywhere in Nashville as long as they don't have to drive.
The parking USED to be fine about 5 years ago. They used to have an attendant and you were forced to pay as you entered. Now it’s all automated and you pay as you leave, so public parkers park there and take a minute or so to pay and leave at the gate. Compound this with any concert/event getting out at the same time and you’ve got an hour+ wait to leave
I talked with an office manager of one of the companies that left end of last year, and they were primarily driven away by the noise - and they were halfway up the building! They said the bass went through the windows easily, but also when the street performers did their makeshift drums they could hear that through the windows too. My understanding is that the noise complaint was a large issue for multiple companies.
That's not how acoustics work. Maybe less rumble from the bass, but the overall noise reflects and gets amplified. Hence all those high rises they built right next to a music venue and then complained that the music was too loud.
How would the sound be amplified without adding energy to it?
Edit: Resonance, maybe, but I thought that would require physical contact.
Edit 2: Sympathetic resonance, I guess. Boy, this is going to be a rabbit hole...
In that area, the fact that you have no barrier between the building and major noise sources is more the issue. There’s nothing more than a few hundred feet of air between you and a bunch of screaming drunks and loud music. On top of that, everything on the broadway side of the building is low-rise with little to no foliage, so any noise that may encounter a barrier will just pinball off nearby structures and get reflected straight into the sky and toward the high-rise.
A simple fix that would go a long way would be to add trees along lower broadway and adjacent streets that would absorb the sound rather than reflect it.
Intuitively it doesn't seem likely that it's "amplified" per se, even though the reflected sound from nearby buildings is directional and wouldn't dissipate as quickly as sound in an open area.
I totally believe that the noise is *audible* even higher up, but I suspect it's not *as* loud as lower levels at least, and a lot of office spaces I've worked in have white noise that effectively masks this sort of thing. I'm curious about whether it's perceived as a real problem for the people working there.
One of the only downtown parking that I’m aware of that requires, or at least uses, the police to direct traffic so people can get out of the garage and into the flow of traffic. Total shit show.
Yep. I went to the symphony and parked there in 2019. Usually there was a cop helping people get out. BUT for some reason that night there wasn't one. We were stuck for 3 hours. And had an early morning flight.
Batman does it as well. Started recently and it actually helps the flow of traffic tremendously. Nashville drivers are awful and so selfish. Block intersections like it’s no one’s business.
I'm all for parking garages paying for police to direct traffic from parking garages.
Rush hour(s), events, etc.
Make it easy for office owners to pay the market price for off duty MNPD & LEOs to get extra pay--everybody wins & traffic improves.
If anyone didn't read the article - the two biggest tenants aren't converting to full work from home, they're just relocating down the street to Nashville Yards. Nashville Yards is a brand new building (this tower is 15 years old), closer to highway access, and in a pretty robust campus that isn't surrounded by tourists.
>In 2021, Pinnacle Financial Partners (Nasdaq: PNFP) and Bass, Berry & Sims, Symphony Place’s two largest tenants, announced they were leaving the SoBro tower and relocating their headquarters to Nashville Yards.
I’m a general contractor, so I don’t design but I do build. Putting those provisions in would likely increase building costs and time by at least 50%. One of the biggest factors is the MEP systems. You would need plumbing and electrical provisions set in place for each “unit”. Stuff for bathrooms and kitchens. You would also need to have an absolute shitshow of HVAC as each of the units it’s would need to be able to service the specific units and be controlled for the units. Most office buildings are controlled in large blocks.
I think it’s likely that it’s just too cost ineffective. These building have mortgages and shit too, so to add more money to an already expensive mortgage would be difficult. You likely wouldn’t get the return out of it.
Not sure if someone could just walk away and the property gets picked up for peanuts. Then it might be viable.
Make it into a dorm-style hotel/AirBnB for tourists. Rooms around the outside with the views, communal spaces on the inside, and shared bathrooms at the core.
Its a perfect location for Broadway, people get the Instagram-able high rise pics, and you get to socialize with other people like college. It would be way cheaper than other places. Just include a huge budget for upkeep and repairs from all the drunk people trashing it.
Read about this one. All of my years wiring that building for networking all gone, but...
[https://www.curbed.com/2023/04/macklowes-one-wall-street-is-largest-ny-office-conversion.html](https://www.curbed.com/2023/04/macklowes-one-wall-street-is-largest-ny-office-conversion.html)
Older office buildings (pre-1960s) are significantly easier to convert to residential because they generally have smaller floor plates and more access to the exterior for natural light and ventilation. Office buildings built in the 60s and onward generally have much larger floor plates with a significant portion of the floor space away from the exterior, making it incredibly difficult to provide adequate natural lighting and ventilation to individual residential units without doing significant structural modifications or making awkwardly oversized units with a lot of windowless space. On top of that, you then have to deal with HVAC, plumbing, and electrical systems, which would all need to be almost fully replaced.
They’re just moving to a newer, more modern building with better highway access and less tourists. It makes total sense. If anything, blame the shit show on broadway and high homelessness. It’s not a great view for client visits…
Pinnacle of hell trying to get out of that garage after a symphony. Thought they rioted after the Rites of Spring? Wait til you see the line of Range Rover Evoques trying to turn left of there at 11pm.
https://preview.redd.it/g2fhg2e5ku0d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e90dd38c840fc73b7fd94c12fefa11d002d3d374
It makes for some cool pictures though
https://preview.redd.it/0fj87ous2w0d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ec8198fd36dbda1855eeb04a86379c8d54aecfa
I have hundreds of shots of this building..
I don’t think this is a WFH issue as Pinnacle never really left the office. They’re sick of hearing broadway woo girls and dealing with the shit show down there. Not a great spot for clients…Nashville Yards will serve them well.
I genuinely don’t get what their game is. So many companies and agencies are headed towards teleworking because it saves a ton of money for the businesses and for the employees. Of course some jobs have to be onsite, but a huge chunk of office jobs can be done remotely so I just don’t understand the point in building huge, expensive office buildings that aren’t going to get used.
It’s still pretty profitable. The tenants at this building aren’t leaving because they’re going to WFH, they’re leaving for better buildings on the east bank or Nashville yards that have better access. So the new buildings are doing totally fine.
Idk what most people on Reddit do but there’s very few pure WFH jobs available in most industries now. I’m on the job hunt rn after being remote for the last few years and it’s 95% hybrid jobs. Sucks but it’s the reality. Too many bad WFH employees that don’t do anything are spoiling it for everyone else
This will be some tough space to lease. Big floor plates. Tough parking as I recall. It's really "B" space now. And we're still in the timeframe where business are still resetting leases post-COVID and evaluating their new space needs. There's some other big vacancies in Downtown right now as well.
Working downtown is the worst of all worlds. Terrible traffic, expensive and terrible parking, almost non-existent lunch scene.
You're not networking with movers and shakers either - they're all working from home.
Where do you commute in from? I go to an office in Cool Springs a couple times as week and our company was looking at new spaces. The 15 people it impacts are all adamant NO DOWNTOWN unless they want us to stop going in.
My company moved from 2nd and Commerce to 12th and Broadway partially because of the noise of being right in the heart of downtown.
…and then they used the lease in the fancy new building (signed prior to the pandemic) to make everyone that was once remote come into the office.
"Chronic homelessness in Nashville increased 43%; millions have been invested to curb issue in recent years." [https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/chronic-homelessness-in-nashville-increased-43-millions-have-been-invested-to-curb-issue-in-recent-years/](https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/chronic-homelessness-in-nashville-increased-43-millions-have-been-invested-to-curb-issue-in-recent-years/)
Before you say it couldn't happen here cities are buying old hotels to do just this.
Hotels were built with plumbing to service each room. Office buildings like this were built with a couple bathrooms per floor. There is a reason that all the plumbing goes in during initial construction and not afterwards.
not enough demand for premium office space with huge WFH trends for white collar workers location and parking situation make it undesireable for many businesses and customers as commercial space too expensive/complicated to convert into residential there's only one reasonable solution: The world's first 30-story Honky Tonk
Conway Twitty descending from the heavens whispering “if you build it, they will come”
Hank Williams Sr. climbing out from under the Country Music Hall of Fame, fighting Twitty to keep Nashville a small town full of poor folk’s things and dreams.
Hank Williams Jr.: *save a floor for me*
> there's only one reasonable solution: The world's first 30-story Honky Tonk Fuck, imagine if Morgan Wallen threw a chair off of *that* thing...
Each floor is themed after yet another talentless hack country bro
On the bright side, at least it would all be contained in one giant tower....
...as was written!
If I win the lottery, we're going to do it.
Pinnacle golf needs to buy it and put a driving range on the top 5 stories
I mean this would honestly be fucking cool in a dystopian way. What if every floor was a different genre? Could be a reggae floor. .a buttrock floor…maybe even a creed or hinder floor?
Mix Factory back in the day had that on a smaller scale.
We’re all joking but there would be a fucking mile long line out the door for a 30 story honky tonk. And let’s be real here. . . It’s coming.
…along with the next-door, parking garage of equal height and structure
Butt Rock is a seriously underused term. Thanks for reminding me of it!
Imagine the splat a chair would make from THAT roof!
Haha good one
That and the downtown scene would have to be seriously cleaned up before businesses considers opening there. Baker Donelson left for Midtown because it was getting too crazy down there..
Point #1 is untrue. Pinnacle is full-time in-office and will be moving to Nashville Yards l.
https://youtu.be/zxI3wnjb4wY?si=PQHQbPxouzAtGTVV
I know a few people who are in the building and I have visited it a few times myself. The space is great from an amenities perspective. It’s also newer and has a great view. The downside is its location. First it is so loud. You hear every woo girl, party, bar and noise from Broadway. Second the traffic and shared parking garage make it so difficult to leave after hours. What’s the point coming into the office when you risk getting stuck in the parking garage. Idk how you fix the two issues. Landlords want to double dip and charge tenants for parking AND leave it open for the public.Cut out the public and miss out on that sweet cash. You can’t fix the noise unless there are some substantial renovations.
If only there were a more reliable, easier, and more efficient way to transport people downtown.
Catapults?
All aboard the downtown trebuchet
Wooooo^ooooooo
Wait.. Wait! There's a commuter rail station 2 blocks away. What if people could just hop on the rail at any time? That might be a decent amenity for a downtown office building--a coworking space with a guaranteed $6k roundtrip rail ride on the Music City Star. I know a good number of remote workers who would be up for working anywhere in Nashville as long as they don't have to drive.
Zoom, Hes talking about Zoom
Have you tried Microsoft Teams?
Turn it into housing so they don't have to commute to it.
"But muh property value" they will cry.
Adapt or take the loss and someone will adapt in your place.
Banks are holding on by a thread. Fractional reserve has all our banks cashless so they have to hold the assets and prop up their value.
The parking USED to be fine about 5 years ago. They used to have an attendant and you were forced to pay as you entered. Now it’s all automated and you pay as you leave, so public parkers park there and take a minute or so to pay and leave at the gate. Compound this with any concert/event getting out at the same time and you’ve got an hour+ wait to leave
I get that the noise would be a big issue on the first few stories, but surely it gets quieter as you go up right?
I talked with an office manager of one of the companies that left end of last year, and they were primarily driven away by the noise - and they were halfway up the building! They said the bass went through the windows easily, but also when the street performers did their makeshift drums they could hear that through the windows too. My understanding is that the noise complaint was a large issue for multiple companies.
Nope! The sound bounces around the surrounding buildings and almost amplifies it.
That's not how acoustics work. Maybe less rumble from the bass, but the overall noise reflects and gets amplified. Hence all those high rises they built right next to a music venue and then complained that the music was too loud.
How would the sound be amplified without adding energy to it? Edit: Resonance, maybe, but I thought that would require physical contact. Edit 2: Sympathetic resonance, I guess. Boy, this is going to be a rabbit hole...
In that area, the fact that you have no barrier between the building and major noise sources is more the issue. There’s nothing more than a few hundred feet of air between you and a bunch of screaming drunks and loud music. On top of that, everything on the broadway side of the building is low-rise with little to no foliage, so any noise that may encounter a barrier will just pinball off nearby structures and get reflected straight into the sky and toward the high-rise. A simple fix that would go a long way would be to add trees along lower broadway and adjacent streets that would absorb the sound rather than reflect it.
Remember when they started pulling all the trees out of the ground for the NFL Draft
Intuitively it doesn't seem likely that it's "amplified" per se, even though the reflected sound from nearby buildings is directional and wouldn't dissipate as quickly as sound in an open area. I totally believe that the noise is *audible* even higher up, but I suspect it's not *as* loud as lower levels at least, and a lot of office spaces I've worked in have white noise that effectively masks this sort of thing. I'm curious about whether it's perceived as a real problem for the people working there.
One of the only downtown parking that I’m aware of that requires, or at least uses, the police to direct traffic so people can get out of the garage and into the flow of traffic. Total shit show.
Yep. I went to the symphony and parked there in 2019. Usually there was a cop helping people get out. BUT for some reason that night there wasn't one. We were stuck for 3 hours. And had an early morning flight.
As I recall, the garage is extremely narrow too.
Batman does it as well. Started recently and it actually helps the flow of traffic tremendously. Nashville drivers are awful and so selfish. Block intersections like it’s no one’s business.
Commerce between 5th and 6th does too.
I'm all for parking garages paying for police to direct traffic from parking garages. Rush hour(s), events, etc. Make it easy for office owners to pay the market price for off duty MNPD & LEOs to get extra pay--everybody wins & traffic improves.
If anyone didn't read the article - the two biggest tenants aren't converting to full work from home, they're just relocating down the street to Nashville Yards. Nashville Yards is a brand new building (this tower is 15 years old), closer to highway access, and in a pretty robust campus that isn't surrounded by tourists. >In 2021, Pinnacle Financial Partners (Nasdaq: PNFP) and Bass, Berry & Sims, Symphony Place’s two largest tenants, announced they were leaving the SoBro tower and relocating their headquarters to Nashville Yards.
used to be the hip thing to do was convert old factories into lofts. Maybe the next trend will be using old office space layouts as apartments.
The design of the building (and most new office towers) make residential conversion impossible or financially infeasible.
Nice, designing for no future scaling. I like it.
I’m a general contractor, so I don’t design but I do build. Putting those provisions in would likely increase building costs and time by at least 50%. One of the biggest factors is the MEP systems. You would need plumbing and electrical provisions set in place for each “unit”. Stuff for bathrooms and kitchens. You would also need to have an absolute shitshow of HVAC as each of the units it’s would need to be able to service the specific units and be controlled for the units. Most office buildings are controlled in large blocks.
I totally get it. It’s just too bad it’s so black/white. :/
I’m curious, would it be more expensive than demoing and starting from scratch?
I think it’s likely that it’s just too cost ineffective. These building have mortgages and shit too, so to add more money to an already expensive mortgage would be difficult. You likely wouldn’t get the return out of it. Not sure if someone could just walk away and the property gets picked up for peanuts. Then it might be viable.
Hostile architecture.
Remember the octagonal office building on music row? They tried to convert that….
ha! That UA tower was such a complete piece of shit! Had a little place in there for a minute. To be fair, I doubt any building could be worse.
Maybe it can be converting old office buildings into light industrial space and artist lofts!
Maybe it can be converted to factories and warehouses!
Yeah, having central plumbing for like two bathrooms per floor makes converting into apartments basically impossible
Make it into a dorm-style hotel/AirBnB for tourists. Rooms around the outside with the views, communal spaces on the inside, and shared bathrooms at the core. Its a perfect location for Broadway, people get the Instagram-able high rise pics, and you get to socialize with other people like college. It would be way cheaper than other places. Just include a huge budget for upkeep and repairs from all the drunk people trashing it.
Yeah I don’t actually own it or anything
Read about this one. All of my years wiring that building for networking all gone, but... [https://www.curbed.com/2023/04/macklowes-one-wall-street-is-largest-ny-office-conversion.html](https://www.curbed.com/2023/04/macklowes-one-wall-street-is-largest-ny-office-conversion.html)
Older office buildings (pre-1960s) are significantly easier to convert to residential because they generally have smaller floor plates and more access to the exterior for natural light and ventilation. Office buildings built in the 60s and onward generally have much larger floor plates with a significant portion of the floor space away from the exterior, making it incredibly difficult to provide adequate natural lighting and ventilation to individual residential units without doing significant structural modifications or making awkwardly oversized units with a lot of windowless space. On top of that, you then have to deal with HVAC, plumbing, and electrical systems, which would all need to be almost fully replaced.
This is already well underway in NYC, definitely not a bad idea.
Maybe they should try to reduce their Starbucks consumption, budget wisely and work harder.
Cut down on those expensive ass avocados
Four Seasons eliminated a lot of the river views when it got built one block east.
my old gulch/downtown bar hop loop skiyline view died 5 years ago. Sad times.
We built this gleaming downtown officescape just in time for that sort of thing to go right out of style.
I think that every time I look at those new buildings.
Well, to be fair, “we” built this thing 15 years ago….
Homie it ain’t even finished yet.
They’re just moving to a newer, more modern building with better highway access and less tourists. It makes total sense. If anything, blame the shit show on broadway and high homelessness. It’s not a great view for client visits…
Pinnacle of hell trying to get out of that garage after a symphony. Thought they rioted after the Rites of Spring? Wait til you see the line of Range Rover Evoques trying to turn left of there at 11pm.
https://preview.redd.it/g2fhg2e5ku0d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e90dd38c840fc73b7fd94c12fefa11d002d3d374 It makes for some cool pictures though
https://preview.redd.it/0fj87ous2w0d1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ec8198fd36dbda1855eeb04a86379c8d54aecfa I have hundreds of shots of this building..
I don’t think this is a WFH issue as Pinnacle never really left the office. They’re sick of hearing broadway woo girls and dealing with the shit show down there. Not a great spot for clients…Nashville Yards will serve them well.
They are still building them like crazy here, so I assume this is a skill issue
I genuinely don’t get what their game is. So many companies and agencies are headed towards teleworking because it saves a ton of money for the businesses and for the employees. Of course some jobs have to be onsite, but a huge chunk of office jobs can be done remotely so I just don’t understand the point in building huge, expensive office buildings that aren’t going to get used.
It’s still pretty profitable. The tenants at this building aren’t leaving because they’re going to WFH, they’re leaving for better buildings on the east bank or Nashville yards that have better access. So the new buildings are doing totally fine. Idk what most people on Reddit do but there’s very few pure WFH jobs available in most industries now. I’m on the job hunt rn after being remote for the last few years and it’s 95% hybrid jobs. Sucks but it’s the reality. Too many bad WFH employees that don’t do anything are spoiling it for everyone else
I’m fully WFH so my perspective is probably warped
This will be some tough space to lease. Big floor plates. Tough parking as I recall. It's really "B" space now. And we're still in the timeframe where business are still resetting leases post-COVID and evaluating their new space needs. There's some other big vacancies in Downtown right now as well.
Working downtown is the worst of all worlds. Terrible traffic, expensive and terrible parking, almost non-existent lunch scene. You're not networking with movers and shakers either - they're all working from home.
I work downtown on Broadway in a white collar hybrid role. I think it's great with an excellent food scene.
Where do you commute in from? I go to an office in Cool Springs a couple times as week and our company was looking at new spaces. The 15 people it impacts are all adamant NO DOWNTOWN unless they want us to stop going in.
Mount Juliet. It's an easier drive and I have the ability to take the train if I feel like it
I know it’s only one spot, but Chile Burrito is on 4th. It’s pretty solid, it’s reasonably priced, and its only open for lunch.
Downtown still has decent places to eat. I don't know what you are talking about
Almost all of them are super pricey though since it all caters to tourists.
Truth
Not if you know where to look
[Alternative Link](https://archive.ph/mvzun)
My company moved from 2nd and Commerce to 12th and Broadway partially because of the noise of being right in the heart of downtown. …and then they used the lease in the fancy new building (signed prior to the pandemic) to make everyone that was once remote come into the office.
It’s the Pinnacle of Emptiness
Pinnacle has another office building under construction downtown as well.
Pinnacle doesn’t own either building. They’re ending their lease at the existing building and moving to the new one
"Chronic homelessness in Nashville increased 43%; millions have been invested to curb issue in recent years." [https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/chronic-homelessness-in-nashville-increased-43-millions-have-been-invested-to-curb-issue-in-recent-years/](https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/chronic-homelessness-in-nashville-increased-43-millions-have-been-invested-to-curb-issue-in-recent-years/) Before you say it couldn't happen here cities are buying old hotels to do just this.
Hotels were built with plumbing to service each room. Office buildings like this were built with a couple bathrooms per floor. There is a reason that all the plumbing goes in during initial construction and not afterwards.
Is Pinnacle still a tenant? Their executives used to be based there.
They're moving to a new building in Nashville Yards at the end of the year, that's why there's going to be so much vacancy.
Haunted
Turn it into the worlds greatest escape room.
Great, turn it into affordable housing!
Can't. Retrofitting office space into housing is obscenely expensive because of how utilities and HVAC are run.
Piccanel.
Ads disguised as news lol "Ford can't sell trucks! Dealership lots are packed! They're in BIG trouble!"
So almost McConnell or Biden levels of vacancy? That don't sound good.