The demand from consumers for mixed-use projects continues to rise. Projects that combine residential, retail, entertainment, office and hospitality are thriving across the Midwest. It’s little surprise, then, that real estate development firm Hines has embraced this concept in its Clari Park development planned for Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Hines has acquired an 11.4-acre land parcel at 2600 Roby Corlew Lane in Murfreesboro for Clari Park. As part of the development’s first phase, Hines has begun construction on a Class-A 300-unit multifamily community, The Residences at Clari Park.
Located in the heart of the larger Hines Clari Park master-planned community, the property will offer future residents a walkable suburban experience in the core of Murfreesboro’s commercial and entertainment Gateway District adjacent to The Avenue Murfreesboro, an existing 800,000-square-foot super-regional lifestyle center.
The Residences of Clari Park will include a state-of-the-art fitness center, two-story club space, grand lawn for social events and outdoor games, performance area, seating nooks and a link to Clari Park’s linear park system. The multifamily community will also feature a resort-style pool with cabanas and grill stations; a Zen Garden featuring a yoga lawn, reading nooks and fire pits; and a community dog park.
The overall Clari Park master plan will also include luxury for-sale housing and restaurant and entertainment offerings. Such retailers include Firebirds Wood Fired Grill, Main Event, P.F. Chang’s and Drake’s.
We spoke with Kevin Jund, director at Hines, about this new project and why this was the right time to bring it to fruition.
Why was this the right location for Clari Park?
Kevin Jund: The Nashville region as a whole has seen a major growth spurt since 2010. Murfreesboro which is located just 25 minutes southeast of downtown Nashville, has experienced significant in-migration in the last several years in accordance with broader migration trends toward the suburbs.
Murfreesboro has Rutherford County’s best schools, retail options, parks and healthcare. It’s also located along a growing employment corridor that includes Middle Tennessee University, a substantial driver of population and job growth in the area. The robust demand for housing in and around Nashville, coupled with Clari Park’s strategic location, will accommodate residents looking for convenient and walkable suburban living while still being centrally located with access to Nashville’s major employment nodes.
What impact will this mixed-use development have on the area? What benefits will it bring?
Jund: Clari Park, in tandem with The Avenue, the adjacent 800,000-square-foot super-regional lifestyle center, offers an inherent amenity base for residents with more than 110 retail storefronts, restaurants and other services within just a 10-minute walk, accommodating local demand for a walkable suburban community in a prime location. Clari Park’s suite of amenities, convenient access to employment centers and sense of community will offer residents a distinct experience unlike anything else in Murfreesboro.
The project’s buildings are designed to evoke different atmospheres throughout their courtyard spaces, creating opportunities for spontaneous interaction between residents. Additionally, its residential units are carefully designed to respond to consumer preferences, including elements like double vanities in restrooms, continuous luxury plank flooring throughout units, wine fridges, strategically designed kitchen islands that orient towards living areas, work-from-home spaces and a campus-wide Wi-Fi system to drive both demand and efficiency. Coworking spaces and rentable office suites will help create a more diverse mixed-use environment on the ground plane.
Why is the demand for mixed-use developments so strong today? Why do they appeal to both developers and consumers?
Jund: Consumers are looking for easy access to storefronts, dining and other amenities without having to hop in a car every day. These mixed-use destinations offer a little bit of everything and can add time back to people’s busy lives while helping them reconnect with their neighbors and the community in person, something that we believe we are all craving more of these days.
In addition, we are seeing a large demographic shift led by aging millennials entering the next chapter of their lives and moving out to the suburbs in search of more space, affordability and quality schools. However, even though they are leaving the urban core, they still want the convenience of the mixed-use environment from which they came. Suburban mixed-use communities like Clari Park provide just that.
Mixed-use destinations don’t necessarily appeal to all developers, as a company undertaking one of these developments must have expertise across multiple asset classes to successfully pull it off. Hines is especially qualified to create developments like Clari Park because we have expertise across a wide range of asset classes, and understand the challenges associated with bringing different elements together to create transformative communities for the cities in which we invest.
Did the environment of higher interest rates in 2023 slow the plans for Clari Park? If so, how is Hines working around this challenge?
Jund: Last year’s market environment created unique challenges in the industry, and as one of the largest privately held real estate investors and managers in the world, Hines was able to deftly navigate these challenges to move the project forward. We are finding that in today’s environment, those projects that have a compelling investment thesis, strong sponsorship, a market-defining aim and a unique story to tell are the ones getting capitalized.
What other challenges has Hines overcome to get to this point in the project?
Jund: Like many larger mixed-use projects, Clari Park has had to overcome its share of hurdles to reach groundbreaking. Aside from the complexities of navigating through a more restrictive capital markets environments, the project, along with the greater Clari Park development it is a part of, had to be completely rezoned to ensure that the right set of land uses could be developed to form a cohesive mixed-use community.
Projects that need this initial work require more upfront capital and carry more risk than those that are shovel ready. This means that investors and sponsors must have even more conviction in the thesis for these types of investments to move forward. We have that conviction at Clari Park and are grateful for the opportunity to move this project forward.