Sure, the office market is struggling across the country. But that hasn’t stopped developers in Nashville. According to the latest research from CommercialEdge, 5.1 million square feet of office space was under construction as of May in this Midwest city.
What’s behind this mini-boom? Nashville’s population continues to rise. And as more people move in, more companies follow. Even with the rise in work-from-home, these companies need office space.
CommercialEdge said that the 5.1 million square feet under construction represents 8.8% of Nashville’s existing office stock. And construction crews broke ground on most of this new office space — 3.3 million square feet of it — after the start of 2021. That means most of this new space entered the pipeline after the COVID-19 pandemic started.
The most intense development activity is taking place in Nashville’s downtown, something that also bucks the trend in many Midwest cities. Nashville’s downtown market accounts for 3.4 million square feet of the city’s office pipeline.
The Nashville Yards business park and entertainment district is also seeing plenty of office construction, driven largely by Amazon’s two-tower office project that brought 5,000 new jobs to the Nashville area. This project is set to deliver its final phase later this year.