Zac Brown's Southern Ground Nashville Property Listed for $10 Million

A version of this article appears at our sister publication Nashville Post.

The Midtown property home to Zac Brown’s recording studio Southern Ground Nashville has been offered for sale for $10 million. Of note, the listing is the equivalent of $1,099 per square foot based on the size of the building (which covers 9,100 square feet). The address is 114-116 17th Ave. S.

Brown owns both the recording studio business and the two-parcel 0.31-acre property, the latter via an LLC. He paid $900,000 for the property in March 2012, according to Metro records. Following the acquisition, Brown spent about $4 million updating the building’s interior and exterior, taking an existing recording studio and elevating it with the latest technology and equipment, plus a kitchen as part of Brown's interest in cuisine.

Though only eight years in operation, Southern Ground has hosted high-profile artists including Eric Clapton, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Foo Fighters, Indigo Girls, Taj Mahal, Willie Nelson, Dottie West, Victor Wooten and Neil Young.

The original iteration of the building, a Presbyterian church, opened in 1903 at the southeast corner of 17th Avenue South and McGavock Street. In 1968, Monument Records founder Fred Foster (who died in 2019) acquired the property and converted the church building into a recording studio.

Brown has enlisted Mark Kresser and Jesse Vose, broker and CEO, respectively, of Knoxville-based Exit Real Estate Professionals Network, to handle the marketing and sale of the property. The $10 million asking price includes the recording studio equipment. Brown is not ready to disclose if he eventually will open a new studio elsewhere, Kresser says.

“It’s not every day that a property with such a prime location and offering a building with this level of high-end recording studio equipment and technology is offered for sale,” Kresser tells the Post.

The property home to Southern Ground is one of a handful of area sites with recording studios that are for sale. The Midtown property home to recording facility OmniSound Studios — once owned by country legend Marty Robbins and located two blocks from Southern Ground — was listed for sale for $4.25 million in October. That property is located two blocks from Southern Ground. And in March 2019, The Tracking Room — also a few blocks away on Music Circle East, which has worked with Chet Atkins, U2 and Donna Summer, among many others — was listed for sale for $4.1 million.