Nashville-based development company Giarratana is planning a mixed-used tower to replace the Elliston Place structure housing The Corner Bar.
A multi-page electronic document submitted to the Metro Planning Department notes the building will rise 17 floors and offer a combination of 356 apartment units and ground-level retail and restaurant space. The address is 2200-2204 Elliston Place.
In addition, Giarratana is eyeing a five-story (with two levels below grade) 578-space parking garage to supplement the tower, for an adjacent property located at 209 22nd Ave. N.
Via Cooke/Wilson Properties, local real estate investor Ched Cooke owns the properties and would, were the development to materialize, have a ground lease with Giarratana. Cooke's LLC recently paid $8.3 million for the 29th Avenue North property, which offers a small modernist commercial building and some surface parking. Cooke/Wilson Properties owns the Corner Bar building, which also includes other tenants, having paid $1,589,000 for it in 1996, Metro records note.
As part of the development, Giarratana would create a pocket park in a small, unused Metro-owned green space (see here).
Chicago-based Goettsch Partners will design the mixed-used building and parking garage.
Developer will offer new iteration of beloved dive bar in mixed-use Rock Block Flats project
The project would bolster Giarratana’s Rock Block Flats development — which has been on pause — and its Elliston Place Soda Shop business, which company president Tony Giarratana owns via Giarratana Restaurant Group with Craig Clifft (and had also with Randy Rayburn until his recent and untimely death). The Rock Block Flats effort will include a reinvention of long-closed dive bar The Gold Rush and a seven-story apartment building.
On this theme, an historic preservation overlay district is being sought for properties located at 2114, 2205 and 2205B Elliston Place. The Metro Planning Commission will vote on the matter Aug. 8, with Metro Planning staff recommending approval.
Giarratana and some of his colleagues hosted a community meeting Monday night to unveil the plans. He tells Scene sister publication the Nashville Post the development company temporarily ceased work on the Rock Block Flats project to "look at the neighborhood comprehensively" when the chance to take a more holistic development effort presented itself.
Giarratana tells the Post he has enjoyed the city's so-called Rock Block since he arrived in Nashville in 1984. He is seeking from Metro an overlay that would protect the "beloved old buildings" while making the overall development effort more viable than otherwise and to ensure a consistent design aesthetic for future work on the two-block stretch.
For context, Giarratana developed multiple nearby sites with apartment buildings Artemis Midtown, Infinity Midtown and 1818 Church.
The time-honored milkshakes-and-more spot is scheduled to reopen May 11
“We have been investing and developing in the Rock Block neighborhood for many years, including Elliston Place Soda Shop, nearby 105-unit, 146-unit and 142-unit apartment buildings, and the former Gold Rush, Elder’s Bookstore/Buffalo Exchange, and Samurai Sushi buildings,” Giarratana says.
“With support from the community and Metro, we hope to bring the Rock Block back to life.”
Doug Sloan, a land-use attorney with Holland & Knight, represents Giarratana in the effort.
The properties sit within Metro Councilmember Jacob Kupin's District 19.
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
