The developers of the Capitol View mixed-use project in the North Gulch have completed buying three parcels from CSX Railroad, allowing them to fulfill a pledge to the city to complete a bikeway/greenway trail along the eastern edge of the 32-acre site.
Northwestern Mutual and its development partner, Boyle Investment Co., paid roughly $250,000 for the land totaling less than half an acre.
“This took three years of efforts by a lot of team members,” said Jeff Haynes, a partner in Boyle Nashville LLC, referring to engineering firm Barge Waggoner Sumner and Cannon, RPM Transportation Consultants LLC and law firm Butler Snow, among others.
Under the Capitol View master plan, the city’s existing greenway trail that stops behind the Eleven North apartments across Charlotte Avenue from the Capitol View site would be extended through the development.
From there Metro would be responsible for connecting it to the Bicentennial Mall, then to First Tennessee Park and eventually to the Cumberland River.
The finalizing of the deal with CSX comes as the Capitol View developers received a grading permit to begin infrastructure work in advance of completing construction plans for the next two blocks of the overall project.
The infrastructure work, which includes raising and widening 11th Avenue North, Nelson Merry Street and Joe Johnston Avenue and modernizing all utilities, would fulfill a commitment to hospital chain HCA to complete all such work at Capitol View by fall 2016.
That’s when new headquarters for HCA’s business solutions company Parallon and cancer arm Sarah Cannon, which will eventually house about 2,000 workers, are set to open at Capitol View.
Widening of the three streets will help to accommodate increased traffic.
The next two-blocks phase of Capitol View work at the northeast corner of 11th and Charlotte is expected to include a $90 million, six-story, mixed-use building. That building would include up to 60,000 square feet of ground-level retail space and up to 50,000 square feet of second-floor office space, as well as 375 apartment units and a roughly 1,000-space parking garage.
Originally published in The Tennessean
By Getahn Ward