If you build it…
Restaurants sign on for Biddle Farms
“Tupelo Honey is our biggest, fanciest (restaurant) we’ve got,” said Alex Quinn, leasing representative for Biddle Farms. “(Tupelo Honey’s) adding a location in the west really elevated the profile of the development.
“They’re taking 5,800 square feet, so it will be a nice, big restaurant with a huge covered and open patio space,” he added.
The town center also will have Super Chix, “a new chicken concept. They have the best fried chicken around,” Quinn said. “I think it will fill a nice void. They’ve got great ice cream-type desserts, too.
As with all the restaurants, Super Chix also will have a patio, “which will be great for the walkability of the development,” he said.
Additionally, the development will have Parlor Doughnuts, a doughnut shop that is new to the market.
“They have a store on the west end of Nashville,” Quinn said. “It’s like an elevated doughnut shop. It’s fancier doughnuts. They have milkshakes, I believe, too. That will complement the area and families as well.
“We’re talking with a couple other restaurateurs, too, that we’re close to getting deals with,” he added. “They’ll be on the Town green side of the development with big patios that overlook the Town green, where they can see kids playing and bands playing and all that.”
Along with those tenants, Biddle Farms has signed on Stretch Lab, “a stretch-fitness place,” he said. “They signed a deal.”
Regarding the project as a whole, “we’ve got the Biddle Farms project, as people can see now, going vertical with our steel,” Quinn said. “We’re excited about that. It’s taken a long time to get to that point.
“We’re finally making progress and ready to get going,” he added. “It’s going to be a beautiful development — all two-story, brick buildings, so it will feel like an old-school main street downtown.
“We’ll start turning all the buildings to the tenants beginning late next spring, early summer (2024). That process will go through, probably, the end of fall, so some (businesses) will open the end of the year and most will be open by early spring 2025.”
Currently, he said construction (on the commercial portion) is just beginning.
“But it’s not too far away,” Quinn said. “You’ve got five months away from delivering the first building to the tenant. They’ll have a couple months’ build-out from there, so the first group should be open by the end of next year.”
So far, construction is going well, he said
“We’ve got a lot of good traction early,” Quinn said. “Anytime you get this much activity before you even start going vertical with the buildings, it’s good. And, I think it’s only going to pick up from here.
“People can see the buildings are going up, and it’s a viable project,” he added. “I think we’re going to get a lot more activity now.”
Once completed, Quinn said there would be 40,000 square feet total.
“I think there’s going to be 16 to 18 retailers … probably going to be about four or five restaurants,” he said.
“The apartments (286 units) will start completion the same time as the retail … end of next summer,” Quinn added. “The (44) town homes will follow that.”
