After years of preservation efforts, downtown Nashville’s Morris Memorial Building heads toward redevelopment

One of downtown Nashville’s oldest buildings looks to be headed for redevelopment.

The Morris Memorial Building has been a high-profile preservation effort because of its history: The building’s site was once home to the Commercial Hotel and was used to sell enslaved people prior to Emancipation. After its construction in the 1920s — when the building was designed by the prominent Black architectural firm McKissack & McKissack — it emerged as a hub for the Black business community.

Today, it is the last remaining relic of the Historic Black Business District. But, in recent years, Morris Memorial has sat empty. Metro has said —more than once — that they would be interested in purchasing and using it.

An effort to acquire and preserve the building initially emerged under former-Mayor David Briley’s administration. More recently, the Metro Human Relations Commission asked the city to purchase the building. They hoped for Metro offices and a civil rights museum to find homes in a revitalized building.

For the current administration, though, there are significant constraints — namely, cost.

Mayor Freddie O’Connell tells This Is Nashville that the purchase of the building could cost anywhere from $4 million to $10 million. The renovation itself, he says, could cost around $25 million.

“It is very difficult to imagine spending $25 million or more with an uncertain future for it,” O’Connell says. “And that’s where I think we would need to figure out what is the actual vision here.”

O’Connell floated his interest in a public-private partnership to acquire the Morris. This, he says, would require a multi-year plan to restore the building.

And a public-private partnership might be the remaining option. The Nashville Post reports an LLC affiliated with hotel development company Imagine Hospitality is under contract to acquire the building and convert the structure to a boutique hotel.