A real estate development firm tied to former NFL starting quarterback Peyton Manning is tackling a Nashville, Tennessee, tract on the city's southwest side that has long been in the sights of rival developers.
AJ Capital Partners, which has Manning’s older brother Cooper Manning as a senior managing director of investor relations, is planning to build a mixed-use development on a site that is currently home to Belle Meade Plaza, a 1960s-era strip retail center that is shadow anchored by a Kroger grocery store of the same vintage. The firm filed a plan with the Metropolitan Government of Nashville & Davidson County planning department that proposes rezoning the site to build a high-rise tower there. The tower would include for-sale and rental residential units, retail space and a hotel.
Belle Meade Plaza and the Kroger are near Belle Meade and Hillwood, two of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Nashville. They are along a corridor that runs six miles out of downtown Nashville past some of the priciest homes in the area. Nashville's business elite often grab coffee at the Starbucks in Belle Meade Plaza.
Both properties are owned by the May family, which made its fortune in the late 19th century with a Nashville textile mill that made socks. The Mays bought the retail properties in the late 1990s, followed by office buildings across Harding Pike in 2001. The purchases gave the family control of a major corner in the city.
Development on other corners nearby brought Hill Center at Belle Meade in 2008, which has a Publix-anchored retail center as well as office space. A year later, the Belle Meade Town Center opened across Harding Pike in a former theater that was converted to a Harris Teeter supermarket and other retail space. Harris Teeter closed in 2015 and was filled by a Van Gogh Immersive Experience last May.
Developers tried for years to convince the Mays to redevelop the Belle Meade Plaza and Kroger properties. Terms of the arrangement between the May family and AJ Capital Partners were not immediately available. AJ Capital Partners didn’t respond to inquiries for comment. Jack May, the lead spokesperson for the family, couldn’t be reached for comment.
AJ Capital Partners and the Mays have teamed up together before in Nashville. AJ Capital Partners redeveloped the May family's former May Hosiery Mill, a property in Nashville’s Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood. A branch of London-based SoHo House, a glitzy membership-only hotel and club, opened last year to anchor the redevelopment. AJ Capital Partners, also known for developing Graduate Hotels around the country, moved its headquarters from Chicago to the May Hosiery Mill in 2020.
AJ Capital Partners has been a major player in transforming the neighborhood nicknamed WeHo from its industrial past into a thriving area for office, residential and retail property. One of its biggest projects is Nashville Warehouse Co., which includes a timber-frame construction office building and an entertainment venue with the scoreboard from the old stadium where minor league baseball’s Nashville Sounds played before moving downtown.