New York-based Atlas Real Estate Partners in a partnership with Nashville-based Natchez Group, are pleased to announce that it closed on 825 Third Ave. S., a 0.58 acre site in the SoBro neighborhood of Downtown Nashville. Atlas/Natchez intend to build a 150,000 sf 8-story class A self-storage facility to capture the increasing demand for self-storage driven by the population and employment growth in SoBro. “We’re excited about the acquisition and believe the site’s unique physical attributes make it a perfect fit for self-storage, as it has excellent visibility within a rapidly growing neighborhood”, said Taylor Preston, Managing Partner at Natchez.
The JV also closed on a construction loan with Nashville-based FirstBank to finance the construction of a 100,000 sf class A self-storage project located at 500 Downs BLVD in Franklin, TN. The JV acquired the site in April and will begin construction within the next 30 days and expect to complete construction by the summer/fall of 2017. The JV assembled best-in-class teams to design and build the facilities including Stinard Architecture, Smith Gee Studio, and JM Williams Contractors. “These acquisitions were excellent transactions for Atlas, Natchez, and its investors in that it allows access to a niche asset class at an attractive basis within high barrier to entry markets.
The self-storage business has been the best performing real estate asset class over the past 20 years, and we view self-storage as an attractive asset class due to inherent fundamentals such as its recession resiliency, strong rent growth, expense control, and growing institutional investor appetite,” said Arvind Chary Managing Principal at Atlas. The acquisitions are the first for the JV’s new Nashville platform. The JV will continue to target ground-up and value-add self-storage assets throughout the Nashville metro and is looking to grow the platform substantially in 2017.
