Two Hotels Each Get $3M From Nashville To Build Near Convention Center

Denver-based Swerdling and Associates plans to build a Hyatt on Lower Broadway. The estimated price tag is $135 million. Credit: Swerdling

The city of Nashville is giving a hand to – not one, but – two additional hotels near the newly-opened Music City Center. A Marriot and a Hyatt Regency are in the planning stages.

A 450-room Hyatt Regency would face Broadway between 2^nd and 3^rd avenues. Nashville developer Tony Giarratana is also planning a 400-room Marriot-brand hotel on a parcel owned by First Baptist Church next to the convention center. Both projects have been granted $3 million a piece in tax increment financing in exchange for setting aside blocks of rooms for big conventions.

There is a tremendous need for more hotel capacity,” Nashville Mayor Karl Dean says in a statement. “Private developers are interested in investing hundreds of millions of dollars into two separate full-service hotel projects in our city. Metro is willing to commit a modest amount of money in incentives.”

The yet-to-be-completed Omni Hotel with 800 rooms – also subsidized by the city – is considered too small by some, even before it opens.

Convention and Visitors Corporation president Butch Spyridon says the prospect of two more full-service hotels will keep some big conventions considering Nashville in the coming years from backing away.

“It will salvage some business or at least buy us some time until there is some more solid meat on the bone,” he says.

Both developers still have a lot of hoops to jump through before breaking ground, but Spyridon says he’s optimistic the hotels will end up being completed because of higher-than-anticipated demand.

However, hotels have fallen through on the same site before. Where the Hyatt is planned, a Westin Hotel was slated. But the recession kept developers from borrowing the money to build.