Giving Compass' Take:
- Christopher C. Williams explores how repurposing buildings could create more affordable housing options in Nashville.
- What impact can Community Development Financial Institutions have in communities?
- Learn more about issues related to housing and homelessness.
- Search Guide to Good for nonprofits in your area.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Nashville may be known for the Grand Ole Opry, for its iconic honky-tonks and for being the stomping grounds of a young Taylor Swift. But lately, it’s also attracting national attention for its growing shortage of affordable housing, high vacancy rates and soaring housing prices that are sparking alarming levels of homelessness and pricing out many residents.
Now, a Massachusetts-based community development financial institution and a local developer are working together to show that adaptive reuse of dilapidated or forgotten buildings — factories, warehouses, schools, hotels and more — could be the key to tackling Music City’s affordable housing shortage.
The previous year saw two motel-to-housing projects open in North Nashville, a developing community of Black and lower-middle class residents near downtown, marking the completion of Nashville’s first mixed-income pilot projects.
The first is The Wilder, a former Super 8 motel that’s now a refurbished three-story building with 97 studios that restricts 40% of its units for tenants earning at or below 75% of the area median income. Across the street sits its sister structure, the Perch at the Wilder. Once a King’s Inn Motel, it’s now a gleaming 55-unit workforce housing with 20% of its units set aside for tenants at or below 50% of AMI.
“Equitable housing isn’t an issue for tomorrow’s Nashville; it’s an issue right now,” says Clay Adkisson, a partner of Wilder Development, the developer of the projects. “The speed of adaptive reuse — as compared to traditional ground-up construction — is the only way we can compete against market forces, development timelines, and interest rates to keep affordable products coming online at a time when they are most urgently needed.”
The Wilder-Perch conversions might be relatively small in size, but Adkisson, CDFI advocates and local government and community supporters see these buildings doing as expected: revitalizing the community, creating jobs and enhancing safety as much as providing a roof over peoples’ heads.
These two mixed-income projects have won commitments from all the major stakeholders: BlueHub Capital, the CDFI that provided initial construction loans for both buildings; developer Wilder Development; and city officials. They could serve as a template for other adaptive reuse projects in Nashville and beyond.
Read the full article about adaptive reuse by Christopher C. Williams at Next City.