SB Equities

I’m just back from spending a few days in Nashville, TN.  I had a great time, but, as I walked past all of the Honkey Tonks and life-size figures of Elvis on Broadway, I couldn’t help but think about the city as it compares to Cleveland.  My next few entries will highlight various things that I noticed while down there.  Most will have a real estate slant, although I’ll also throw in some recommended sights and sounds. 

While tooling around the city, Nashville felt smaller to me than Cleveland but a quick check on the statistics surprised me a bit.  According to the 2009 US estimates, the city of Nashville contained 605,000 people (25th largest in the US) while the city of Cleveland contained 431,000 people (43 largest).  Keep in mind that this is only within the city limits but that is where I spent most of my time.  When comparing the two respective MSAs, the story is a little different, with Nashville containing 1.58 million people (38th) and Cleveland containing 2.9 million (26th).  I didn’t notice a lot of vacancy in the downtown area, especially on the street level.  This is backed by NAI Global’s research statistics - Nashville’s 2nd quarter CBD office vacancy stands at 11 percent while Cleveland’s is 16 percent.  But what really struck me is that downtown Nashville seemed to have a split personality.  Our hotel was by the State Capital building, in the northern part of downtown.  During the day, this area was bustling with activity but come 6pm, the carpets were rolled up and the area became very quiet.  This was in sharp contrast to the southern part of downtown, around Broadway.  During the day, this area was very sleepy but come 9pm, there streets were jammed (it didn’t hurt that Paul McCartney was playing at the Bridgestone Arena on one of those nights).  Again, I compare this to Cleveland, which also has day-time vs night-time swings but the day-time population seems lighter and the night-time population less consistent.  Nashville’s downtown population seemed comprised of three components – workers, tourists and convention/trade show attendees.  Cleveland has the first covered but is a little light on the second and almost non-existent with the third.  Hopefully, the soon-to-be-started Medical Mart will change that third component, but Nashville is hot on the heels of Cleveland with a competing medical trade center.  Sounds like a great topic for my next blog entry.