30 Music Square West was on the market 24 years before Bravo Development bought it. Credit Nina Cardona/WPLN
One reason why no others bid on RCA Studio A, which was planned for demolition, was because of the unusual terms established by Bravo Development, the owner of the building. That’s according to philanthropist and musician Aubrey Preston, who last week saved the site from redevelopment. Among Bravo’s demands: a $250,000 down payment before Preston could enter the building.
“I don’t think many people took very seriously that he would sell,” said Preston, referring to Bravo Development’s Tim Reynolds, who sold the building to Preston for $5.6 million. Reynolds was not available for comment. “Normally, you can look in the building and decide whether you will make an offer and end up with a contract, but instead it was backwards of the process.”
Preston said Reynolds likely overestimated the extent to which the building needed to be renovated, perhaps a move to scare off potential buyers. “He bought the building for $4.1 million, and it’s 20,000 square feet. Common sense would say it’s not going to take millions to renovate,” Preston said. “How bad can a concrete and steel building that got a new roof in 2003 be?
I don’t think he wanted to sell it. It was an offer almost put forth as a dare. And I just took the dare.”
Aubrey Preston, a native Tennessean, made his money selling real estate for years in Colorado. Credit: Aubrey Preston
Shortly before the deadline to buy came to a close on Tuesday, Preston made a call, around 3 p.m., to see if any bidders stepped up. Nobody had. Seeing it as a “damage-mitigation purchase,” he transferred the $250,000 deposit into escrow two hours later. “In a preservation crisis like this, you need to get it into a contract to get it in safe harbor,” Preston said.
He made up an LLC on the spot — AMT Trust LLC — which will be a subsidiary of Preston’s private family foundation, The Leiper’s Fork Foundation. The whole ordeal was, as he put it, “a spontaneous act.”
Under the terms of the contract, Preston can’t talk to the building’s tenants for a month as the paperwork processes. But his plans include keeping all the existing tenants and maintaining the building in its current state. “I wasn’t out looking for a building on Music Row to buy,” Preston said. “I was concerned about the situation for our town.”
It’s not the first time Preston marshaled his resources to avert a historic site from redevelopment in Middle Tennessee. He was instrumental in the restoration and re-opening of the Franklin Theater. And it was through his work there that he met piano rocker Ben Folds, whose music Preston has always appreciated.
“They were very similar scenarios,” Preston said. “Both of them were situations where properties that were culturally important but the business model they were built for became out of date and the land values around the properties kept rising.”
He further elaborates on the sometimes inherent clash between developers and preservationists.
“In Nashville, I think the Music City brand and the cache that goes with that is a lot of the reason people pick Nashville over Charlotte, Birmingham, or Louisville, or wherever,” Preston said. “And that’s a great thing. And that’s made the real estate market take off like a rocket. It’s just kind of scary when it leaves behind the things that actually helped it get success to start with — but that’s just market forces in their purest form.”
The speed of the transaction was jolting.
“It was probably somewhat of an out-of-body experience. It happened so quick. It took a little while to settle down with my wife, Michelle, and tell her how my day went.”
News that the half-century-old recording studio would be protected followed a campaign brought by Ben Folds, a tenant of the building, and other community members who rallied behind saving the space where Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley and Willie Nelson have all recorded.
Preston said the brisk pace at which real estate is being sold in Nashville will be, overall, a boon for the city. But it’s also catching some communities off guard, something brought front and center when disputes like the one over RCA Studio A erupt.
“I remember Greenspan talking about irrational exuberance,” said Preston, recalling the former Federal Reserve chairman. “There seems to be an irrational exuberance happening with Nashville real estate — it’s just happening so quick.”
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