Belmont University officials announced Tuesday the $22.5 million sale of the former Watkins College of Art property in MetroCenter.
The new owners are a joint venture of affiliates of Nashville-based Chartwell Residential LLC and EJF Capital LLC of Arlington, Virginia.
As planned when the Belmont-Watkins merger was announced in January 2020 (read
here), net funds from the sale of the campus, with an address of
2298 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., will create an endowment to provide need- and merit-based scholarships for visual arts students in the Belmont University Watkins College of Art program. The endowed fund is expected to produce more than $800,000 annually for arts scholarships upon maturation.
Flank Inc. now owns the three-parcel property, which has a main address of
125 11th Ave. N. and covers 0.8 acres. On an adjacent site is the building home to bowling and bar business Pins Mechanical Co., with the soon-to-open Asurion headquarters complex located across 11th.
The seller was an LLC affiliated with members of the Harwell family. Of note, the late Robert Harwell Sr. acquired two of the parcels in 1946 and one in 1958. As such, the parcels rank among the longest-held by family members in recent Nashville history.
No buildings sit on the just-acquired property, which hugs the Church Street Viaduct.
David Atchison and Brian Casey of Colliers International | Nashville represented LifeWay in the deal.
At that time, and after an April feasibility study, LifeWay officials told theÂ
Post the company was exploring multiple options, including leasing several floors to other organizations, selling the building and leasing back its office space, or selling the building and moving to another location.
LifeWay President and CEO Ben Mandrell said last year that he and other LifeWay leaders have been looking at options for their headquarters since summer 2019, well before COVID-19 hit.
A study completed before the pandemic showed Lifeway was using the building at only 60 percent occupancy on a daily basis, he said.
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