Why This One Submarket Stands Out

ATLANTA—Two hundred-fifty miles from where you are sitting, Crescent Communities is about to break ground on a project called Two Greenway Centre. The development is located in the Cool Springs commercial district.

Two Greenway is Crescent's tenth project in the area. The firm already amassed 1.4 million square feet of office space and 680-plus multifamily units in the submarket. It's an attractive area due to its location in affluent Williamson county, the 21st wealthiest county in the country and home to some of the best schools in the nation.

GlobeSt.com caught up with Brian Leary, president of the commercial and mixed-use division at Crescent, to gets his thoughts on the state of the Nashville market. We also asked him why his firm is so keen on the Cool Springs submarket.

GlobeSt.com: What's the state of the office market in Nashville? 

Leary: Could “state of euphoria” be an overstatement? Nashville's fundamentals are rock solid and with the region's superlatives piling up like the autumn leaves, vacancy rates are at historic lows and rents are at historic highs.

GlobeSt.com: Crescent has a strong presence in Nashville, having already developed nine commercial and two multifamily properties here. Why does Crescent view Nashville—and more specifically the Cool Springs submarket—as a good market for investment? 

Leary: Independent of the feel good story powering the “Music City's” unmistakable glow, Nashville's capital city status along with its burgeoning technology scene, critical mass of higher-education offerings and more than 200,000 jobs in the health care industry provides a long-term hedge to shorter real estate cycles.

The Cool Springs submarket—Franklin, Tennessee's de facto central business district—is the epicenter for greater Nashville's quality-of-life value proposition with an attractive, low-cost playing field—no state income tax, right-to-work contracting, et cetera—one of the best county school systems in the United States and number one in Tennessee, and a concentration of well-paying, stable jobs with companies from Nissan's North American headquarters to Community Health Systems, the largest publicly traded hospital company in the United States, to Verizon Wireless with more than 1,000 employees.

Because of this, the vacancy rate for class A office space is less than 1%—one of the absolute lowest in the nation. The best and brightest individuals and companies are investing their hard-earned dollars in Franklin and Cool Springs and we're just smart enough to follow their lead.