From Groundbreaking to Sale: The Extraordinary Success of the Flats at Silo Bend
The Flats at Silo Bend, a 193-unit multifamily development with 3,500 square feet of ground-floor retail, is the flagship project for Southeast Venture’s foray into developing an entire community: Silo Bend.
The vision for Silo Bend was to create “a walkable community with retail, restaurants and multiple modes of urban living” across almost 38 acres of land along Centennial Boulevard in a bend of the Cumberland River. This dream has since become a reality with the completion of The Flats and the addition of two more multifamily buildings, single-family homes and an 80,000-square-foot retail complex, Silo Studios.
The measure of this success is the price per unit at which the Flats at Silo Bend sold in mid-2021: $292,746 per unit ($56.6 million total).
The story behind the sale
The idea for Silo Bend came about when a client, Ryan Moses, approached Southeast Venture with a well-positioned property on a bluff overlooking the Cumberland River. It was originally meant for a totally different use, but Southeast Venture came up with a new plan to leverage the potential of the unique site within The Nations neighborhood.
We determined it was a great spot for a higher-density residential and mixed-use development. Plus, there was little competition at the time. When construction of The Flats started in 2017, there were essentially no other multifamily development projects happening in The Nations.
The plan for the Flats, as an investment property, was always to sell it eventually. Within its first year of being open, it was already doing very well and the neighborhood around it was becoming a real destination with residential and retail as well as public art – thanks to Councilwoman Mary Carolyn Roberts who saw the potential of the old concrete silo on the property to become a canvas for a larger-than-life mural.
The initial effects of COVID seemed to threaten this success as supply overtook demand in the leasing market throughout 2020, but by 2021 the market had bounced back. While new development had severely slowed during that down time, we were fortunate to have a product already available. The Flats was 100% leased with a waiting list when it sold, making it a great investment.
Three sales in four years
Southeast Venture and our investors are thrilled with the sale of The Flats, and we’re proud to say it was the last of three major investment properties that we sold in the last four years, totaling 535 multifamily units and 21,500 square feet of retail space.
In 2018, a development we worked on with H.G. Hill, 12South Flats, sold for $28 million – over $314,000 per unit. It’s a 90-unit development with 10,000-square-feet of ground floor retail space, for which the partnership won a ULI Nashville Excellence in Development Award.
We also developed and sold Eastside Heights, a mixed-use development in East Nashville, in 2019. On a 1.9-acre property with 249 residential units and 8,000 square feet of commercial space – and the iconic “EAST” mural that can be seen from Interstate 24 – it sold for over $64 million (just over $257,000 per unit).
While we’re currently finishing out Silo Bend, we’re also looking ahead to more community-building with June Lake in Spring Hill.
Take a look at Southeast Venture’s development capabilities and portfolio.
