Nashville to Host 2019 ULI Spring Meeting in April

ULI will hold its 2019 Spring MeetingApril 16–18 at the Music City Center in Nashville. A major focus of the gathering will be the ongoing evolution of urban areas into thriving places that are drawing talented workers and businesses and are magnets for investment. The Nashville metropolitan area, which has experienced an extraordinary renaissance and significant growth over the past several years, is a prime example of this movement.

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The meeting’s Host Committee, which is charged with maximizing the visibility of the Nashville metropolitan-area real estate market for those attending the meeting, is co-chaired by ULI Nashville leaders—Mark Deutschmann, ULI Nashville chairman, chief executive officer of Core Development, and chairman emeritus of Village Real Estate; Jimmy Granbery, chairman and chief executive officer of H.G. Hill Realty Company; Kim Hawkins, principal and cofounder of Hawkins Partners Inc.; and Bert Mathews, president of the Mathews Company and partner at Colliers International Nashville.

“The transformative development happening throughout Nashville has changed the way we think about the impact of our built environment on the future of our city and region,” Deutschmann said. “ULI’s 2019 Spring Meeting presents a unique opportunity to showcase many exciting opportunities to our members in the Americas region and around the globe.”

“We are very excited to bring ULI’s Spring Meeting to Nashville,” Granbery said. “It truly is a dynamic city that has built on its core brand as the Music City, imagined a bigger and brighter future, and come together to realize that vision.”

“At the Spring Meeting, our members can look forward to numerous tours and networking opportunities that will highlight Nashville’s growth as a dynamic, forward-looking city,” Hawkins said.

“We plan to deliver a rewarding experience that highlights Nashville’s culture of innovation and creativity, and the exciting work contributing to the city’s extraordinary transformation,” Mathews said.

Nashville is ranked among the nation’s most sought-after markets for investment and development in 2019 by ULI’s Emerging Trends in Real Estate^® report, taking fifth place out of 79 metropolitan areas. The report has rated the city favorably for the past several years, citing its diverse economy supported by health care, technology, tourism, and education. It is a prime example of an “18-hour city,” a term first used in Emerging Trends to describe smaller cities with amenities that make them appealing alternatives to larger, more expensive markets as places to live and work.

ULI has a strong history of involvement in Nashville. ULI Nashville, which serves nearly 600 Institute members in the Nashville metropolitan region, is among ULI’s most active district councils, providing significant leadership in the city’s revitalization.

In 2014, Nashville’s Sulphur Dell neighborhood was chosen as the site for the ULI Hines Student Competition, which challenges graduate students to create development schemes for underused sites in urban areas. In 2013, the ULI Foundation funded an Advisory Services panel consisting of some of the Institute’s most distinguished land use and urban development experts to advise the city on an overall approach to redevelopment and infill development in its urban center, with a specific focus on fiscal responsibility and sustainability.

In addition, former Nashville mayor Karl Dean was a ULI Fellow from 2009 to 2010 for the Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use, which ULI has operated jointly with the National League of Cities. Dean and other city officials worked with the Rose Center and ULI Nashville on a strategy to enliven commercial corridors, using infill development to create more mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods. This area of focus has been continued by ULI Nashville, whose work on transforming corridors into appealing destinations has been supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Colorado Health Foundation.