Signature Tower

[monsoon]

... My post wasn't even really about Signature Tower--...

Then please don't post complaints about UrbanPlanet or me or anyone else here in these topics. There are actually people who want to read about the Signature tower and are not interested in your opinions of this site. If you have a complaint you are more than free to send a PM to Me, Neo or anyone else on the staff. It will be addressed. To my knowledge you have never complained to any of us, so I think it is a bit unfair that you shoot at us without first giving us a chance to address your concerns.

[southsideJ]

Then please don't post complaints about UrbanPlanet or me or anyone else here in these topics. There are actually people who want to read about the Signature tower and are not interested in your opinions of this site. If you have a complaint you are more than free to send a PM to Me, Neo or anyone else on the staff. It will be addressed. To my knowledge you have never complained to any of us, so I think it is a bit unfair that you shoot at us without first giving us a chance to address your concerns.

and i am one of those people who wants to read about the signature tower. but it was your post that has led us off on this tangent. i came on here to read about the news and perhaps get some details and instead there was stuff about how you continue to be proven right and stuff about instructing us to remember that we read it here first, not in the local media which seems all too willing to take whatever developers say without question or comment.

so i appologize if i am supposed to PM someone to complain, but no one PM'd me before the global moderator got on here and put words in my mouth.

[ariesjow]

OK, my two cents as a resident of Nashville: This tower will be built, just like WES will and just like the 1201 Demonbreun towers will. This is part of expansion.

To comment - the proposal is not dead as Monsoon has suggested in post with quote "The proposal is now dead and the developer has gone back to the drawing board." The Burj Dubia went through something like 16 revisions before a final count for business, hotel, boutique, and residences was resolved. It took several years to achieve this. My data to back that up was the Discover Channel special on Dubai, as quoted one of the developers. Provided Signature Tower is nowhere near the icon that Burj is, it is going through the same process - revisions until it is finally accepted and built. Who cares if it takes five years total to get it sorted out. That does not signify death. Only delay.

To comment - I don't think her posts have been "childish" as suggested, rather I would say a little more unsympathetic to the building. I doubt seriously it is jealousy over Nashville vs. Charlotte.

I believe this is the last revision needed - and it will still have the claim as the highest residences in the US when it's done. 70th floor penthouse hasn't changed at all, in fact it was the first to get a contract. (Edit: This excludes the Chicago Spire until completion of each)

I pretty much agree with everything you said regarding Sig and Monsoon. I'm more optimistic now than I was a couple of weeks ago that Signature was moving in the right direction. Indeed, I was hoping Tony G. announced sooner than he would lower the number of condos.

I also don't think Monsoon is trying to start some petty city vs. city drivel. I've read his/her comments on other threads and he/she does often offer a counterpoint to some of us who are perhaps too easily excited over any and every bit of positive news about our favorite projects, cities, etc. There's nothing wrong with a variety of opinions.

[dmillsphoto]

I pretty much agree with everything you said regarding Sig and Monsoon. I'm more optimistic now than I was a couple of weeks ago that Signature was moving in the right direction.

Thanks, and thank you for expressing another part of my 2 cents that didn't get typed out. I am feeling substantially more optomistic with the project now it is being revised and the stupid little hot-air balloon rides gone. I think that with the limit of new office tower construction in Nashville, limited to Pinnacle, some of the Brentwood/Franklin/Hendersonville businesses might consider taking a floor or two at the hottest building in the Southeast, thus pulling business back to the core and allowing for future projects of this magnitude.

One last comment on Signature, some have speculated that Tony G. lost a substantial number of contracts in this revision - I do no believe this is true, as when I last counted, 89/107 contracts were for the 44th floor and above. With only 125 residences remaining in the revision, that is more than the required 60% for leasing from Bovis. Land a second anchor tenant for the business part of the tower (the other being an additional 3-5 floors of Palomar) and voila, construction. If he plays his cards right, we could have a winter 2011 completion date set.

[southsideJ]

and i am one of those people who wants to read about the signature tower. but it was your post that has led us off on this tangent. i came on here to read about the news and perhaps get some details and instead there was stuff about how you continue to be proven right and stuff about instructing us to remember that we read it here first, not in the local media which seems all too willing to take whatever developers say without question or comment.

so i appologize if i am supposed to PM someone to complain, but no one PM'd me before the global moderator got on here and put words in my mouth.

adding to the above thought . . . i guess you guys disagreed with how i said some stuff and i disagreed with how you guys said some stuff. next time i will just send a pm. but i don't feel like i personally attacked anyone.

as for the tower i think if the economy gets worse instead of better then it would be hard to imagine it being built. but if the economy recovers within a reasonable amount of time then i think it is very possible that this, like some other pending residential projects around town, will be built--just with a little delay. i don't think that's surprising at all considering how ambitious this project is. and i would agree with the argument that other types of development would be more appropriate for the world that we live in today, but I am still fascinated by buildings like this proposed one.

[GRDadof3]

and i am one of those people who wants to read about the signature tower. but it was your post that has led us off on this tangent. i came on here to read about the news and perhaps get some details and instead there was stuff about how you continue to be proven right and stuff about instructing us to remember that we read it here first, not in the local media which seems all too willing to take whatever developers say without question or comment.

so i appologize if i am supposed to PM someone to complain, but no one PM'd me before the global moderator got on here and put words in my mouth.

Enough. You have been suspended for three days southsidej. Right, wrong or indifferent, regardless of history of this thread (for which I have checked in on on occasion) I came into this discussion and in two pages witnessed you attacking and squabbling with the people who run this site. If you have problems with anyone on this forum, please do not hash it out in the public square. Bring it to my, Neo's or another global moderator's attention.

I'm hoping this topic can now return to the project at hand. BTW: Thank you ariesjow, dmills, satalac, titanhog and others for maintaining a mature level of discussion. Moving on.

[dxartist]

Highriser...this goes back years. There's been MANY stones cast by everyone.

By the way...I may be wrong, but I believe Monsoon is a "he".

that is correct, Moonson is a guy and he's not a big fan skyscrapers. I can't think his reasons off the top of my head why he's no fan, but read his older posts (if you have time to wade through them).

As for Sigi, glad Tony finally figured out this wasn't going work and is going back to the drawing board to find something more feasible. However, I think he's had it figured out for a while that it wasn't going to work but didn't officially say until now. As far as the 1000' mixed use tower being built, it will still be a crapshoot if it gets done or not. With a mixed used project like this, he will obviously have a lot of hurdles to go through. Good luck to him.

[smeagolsfree]

Holy Moly guys, please calm down and talk about the Signature and not he said/she said. I do apologise for not being in here but I am working 60 hour weeks right now and not a lot of time to spend on the the forum as I would like. Enough Said.

I will use the magic word and even say Please.

Lets just take a wait and see attitude. Tony is trying everything he can to make this a success. He has gone full circle now back to a larger first proposal that was made FOUR years ago. That was a true mixed use tower with office/retail/condo/ and maybe a hotel. Its been so long ago I cant remember.

We are looking at 133 condos give or take (if he is reducing it by 2/3rds), 15 story hotel, & 25 floors of office space. The hotel could take another 5 stories and we would have 20 stories of office. If Tony is the man I take him for, he may already have a possible tenant lined up for office space.

The real issues are a weak condo market and financing. He will get the financing if he has a major office tenant to fill that space. Lets say 10 floors if he increases the hotel size which I have heard is a possibility.

Lets just keep with the subject of the tower not any forum members. Please keep this relevent.

Please, I want to sleep sound tonight.

[timmay143]

Looks like Fox News (local) is about to do a report on the changes. I'll update later with their story.

edit:

Nothing new. Just saying the height and exterior design will remain the same. It did show Tony speaking about the changes, and one thing I learned was that it seemed almost definite that there will be office space and the hotel portion will grow a few floors. For some reason I thought the office space was speculation with the other option being the hotel take over the vacant floors. Hopefully, this gets done, but it seems DT will have a lot of office space to fill up.

[satalac]

my hope is that with rising fuel prices, more people will move to the core business areas (downtown) and along with it will bring more businesses. of course we're going to need more affordable housing options. after seeing the short clip of an interview with tony tonight on channel 2, i feel a bit more optimistic, but still could use more.

[samsonh]

We continue to be proved right here at UrbanPlanet about this tower. We have said here for quite some time the market for luxury condos of this type is gone and probably won't come back and that is why there has been no movement on the Signature tower.

I will be glad to discuss anything that I have posted that you think is incorrect.

Do you really believe that the market for luxury condos has left us for good? I mean seriously? I would love to make a wager with you on the number of luxury condos being built in the next 15 years exceeding the number built in the previous 15.

[monsoon]

Do you really believe that the market for luxury condos has left us for good? I mean seriously? I would love to make a wager with you on the number of luxury condos being built in the next 15 years exceeding the number built in the previous 15.

Two observations.

There are currently 16 luxury condo towers on the oceanfront in Myrtle Beach that have simply stopped construction. (various stages) And I am told there are 6000 unsold condos sitting on the market there. There are hundreds of these towers across the nation and the problem has gotten so bad that Treehugger.com, just this week, suggested they could be turned into greenhouses to grow food locally for people.

But aside from those anecdotes, there is this to consider. Real estate prices in this country have risen to very unreasonable heights when you consider what has also happened to average income over the same period. (last 8 years) First, there has been a long period of real estate appreciation in the USA over this period that was basically based on the idea that if I buy it now, I will flip it in 6 months and make a profit. Couple this with extremely low interest rates and bad lending from the banks, and people were willing to make unsustainable bets on real estate that were not sustainable in the long run. It's a card house that works as long as people think they will make a profit when they sell. So over the last 8 years real estate prices in the USA have risen 87%. This is an unprecedented rise and has made money available so that developers could create the equivalent of the dot.com internet startup, the high rise vanity condo. Money has poured into these towers.

Now the problem with this of course is that while real estate prices have risen by upwards of 87% in a very short time, real house hold income has actually dropped during this period. So it doesn't take long for the market to exceed the demand of of people who can afford these places and when that happens, which it has at this point, the whole thing starts to collapse. We are seeing carnage in not only this market but also in the cookie cutter McMansion neighborhoods, and even in starter home communities because financing has disappeared. (and there are other reasons)

I won't make predictions for what will happen over 15 years. But I will point out that it has been 8 years since Nasdaq was 5000+ and its still just barely 1/2 that now and those people will never get their money back. I am going to bet that likewise people who made investments in overpriced real estate will never see their money come back. I think you are going to see a movewards down in prices to something close to what we were in 2001 and then the market will move at a more reasonable rate from there. This means there are going to be few if any new luxury condo highrise projects going up and of those that are in the works, the owners are going to be sweating it out for a while.

You don't have to believe any of this of course but then again, the developer came into this market with this project at the beginning of this national real estate collapse, and the contracts that he was able to garner on such a very high profile project just stopped and even seem to fall over what was implied during the "reservation phase". (all based on what they put on their website)

[GRDadof3]

Boy, this project seems to be a lightning rod for a lot of emotional responses, on all sides. Maybe everyone should submit if they have personal financial interests in this project or competing projects. J/K. But I will say this about the real estate market and this project:

) Yes, it is much more difficult to line up financing, investors and contracts for residential high-rises such as this. Even more difficult than it was just 6 months ago (or 3 months ago), in many U.S. markets. That has now been well documented on every real estate blog, talking head and business publication a billion times over. But to say it will "never come back"?

) It appears as though the developer understands that, and is trying everything he can to still get the project off the ground (by changing his product mix). It definitely shows tenacity. I've seen many a project over the years fall into the rendering graveyard when they just hit one speed-bump along the way (like losing one major tenant and calling it quits).

) The P.R. campaign leading up to this point seems to have been a bit over-the-top, with even the local Nashville media jumping into the fray and becoming Signature Tower cheerleaders themselves, but that's hardly the first time that has happened. I find in most mid-sized cities the local news people are all over car chases and bank robberies, but then tend to treat local businesses with kid gloves (because local businesses pay the ad revenues). You can't expect a local news reporters to ask hard-hitting questions about a project's "street level transparency", or it ramifications on "class divide". And then usually when they do, their high-school business classes lead them to all the wrong conclusions (they know just enough to be dangerous). But on the development side, they needed big hype to build big momentum to reach that magic 50%+ sold mark.

In other words, the market combined with the will of the development team will determine if this project gets built. It doesn't sound like they are displacing a homeless mission, building on an Indian burial ground, or planning to use slave labor to build this thing, so on the surface it seems like there's not much to criticize. The bigger the project, the bigger the hyperbole it seems.

[franktown]

The possible naming rights on top of the the building might be a fairly large draw for possible business tennants. They truly would have the 'Signature' spot in the Nashville skyline in terms of advertising and visibility.

[ariesjow]

The possible naming rights on top of the the building might be a fairly large draw for possible business tennants. They truly would have the 'Signature' spot in the Nashville skyline in terms of advertising and visibility.

This is an interesting point but it might mar the beautiful design if not executed properly. I don't currently see a spot where large signage will look decent but I'm not architect.

[satalac]

The possible naming rights on top of the the building might be a fairly large draw for possible business tennants. They truly would have the 'Signature' spot in the Nashville skyline in terms of advertising and visibility.

i don't think that this would be an option. a lot of design work has been done on the spire and i doubt they'd want to take anything away from that. plus it would have to be quite large to be seen at that height. funny you mention that though. nashville_maestro just had an interesting post on a new sign technology. link

[dxartist]

The possible naming rights on top of the the building might be a fairly large draw for possible business tennants. They truly would have the 'Signature' spot in the Nashville skyline in terms of advertising and visibility.

I think it would be tacky to have something like that. A tasteful signage at the the bottom of the building would suffice.

[Nashvillain]

I think it would be tacky to have something like that. A tasteful signage at the the bottom of the building would suffice.

Yeah, the building itself is already tacky enough, some tasteful signage at the bottom might class it up a little.

[nashvylle]

hah nashvillian i know you're not a fan of high-rises, but tacky isn't the right word to describe Signature Tower. Beauty is more like it.

[franktown]

I agree that it would be tacky, but I wouldn't put it past TG to whore out one aspect of the building to get the whole thing done. Street-level signage wouldn't provide the draw to tenants to which I was referring; I would assume they would get some form of that. Hopefully he doesn't, but it's something he might need to look into.

[satalac]

I agree that it would be tacky, but I wouldn't put it past TG to whore out one aspect of the building to get the whole thing done. Street-level signage wouldn't provide the draw to tenants to which I was referring; I would assume they would get some form of that. Hopefully he doesn't, but it's something he might need to look into.

maybe a bright red vacancy sign.....j\k! but seriously, i really doubt he'd put a sign on the top of this building. if it was designed differently (not a tall spire), then possibly. i'm kinda hoping he'll top it king kong style with that gorilla from the old muffler shop that used to be on nolensville rd (all you old school nashvillians will remember that).

[timmay143]

maybe a bright red vacancy sign.....j\k! but seriously, i really doubt he'd put a sign on the top of this building. if it was designed differently (not a tall spire), then possibly. i'm kinda hoping he'll top it king kong style with that gorilla from the old muffler shop that used to be on nolensville rd (all you old school nashvillians will remember that).

Hahaha! I will never forget that place. Big memory from my childhood and living in Nashville.

[Hankster]

I must say that I felt Tony Giarratana would have to do something drastic like this to make this project work. Let's face it, the whole residential market has changed. But now, as some others have stated, I'm quite a bit more optimistic about this than I was just a few days ago. Tony Giarratana is definitely not a quitter, as evidenced by the past. He has had a history of pulling off projects against the odds...of finding the way to make things come together. And now he's at it again. According to the report, he would be redesigning floors 14 thru 41 of the tower to other uses. My guess is that he will expand the hotel portion to about 20 stories. The report says that he may redesign the remaining floors 21 thru 41 to office. That 21 floors of residential, if redesigned to office and if the overall height of the tower is to remain the same, would probably only redesign into something like 17 floors of office with about 14,500 Sq Ft floorplates, making about 250,000 Sq Ft of office space. This means the project may end up redesigned at about 66 floors instead of 70. The floorplates are a bit smaller than generally built nowadays in new Class A office space, and that could be a bit of a negative. If Tony does redesign the top 29 floors to larger condos and only ends up with 120 or so, he may already have (or have little trouble) getting the 60+ sales he would need to get financing. Now the big hurdle would be getting that prime office tenant. I do think his odds are better this way. It was pretty evident to me that he would not be able to sell enough condos to get financing for the old design for a long, long time.

[samsonh]

I won't make predictions for what will happen over 15 years. But I will point out that it has been 8 years since Nasdaq was 5000+ and its still just barely 1/2 that now and those people will never get their money back. I am going to bet that likewise people who made investments in overpriced real estate will never see their money come back. I think you are going to see a movewards down in prices to something close to what we were in 2001 and then the market will move at a more reasonable rate from there. This means there are going to be few if any new luxury condo highrise projects going up and of those that are in the works, the owners are going to be sweating it out for a while.

You don't have to believe any of this of course but then again, the developer came into this market with this project at the beginning of this national real estate collapse, and the contracts that he was able to garner on such a very high profile project just stopped and even seem to fall over what was implied during the "reservation phase". (all based on what they put on their website)

First off, A well reasoned post for the most part, I'm proud of you. I must say the bold part is just wrong though. Do you believe the Nasdaq will never reach 5000 again? It will most likely be there within 10-12 years, maybe faster, maybe slower. Those people will get their money back with time, albeit their money will be worth less due to inflation. Likewise, how can you believe real estate will never reach the prices of the past 12-18 months ago again? Thats a bold prediction to make and one that shows a real lack of knowledge of economics and history.

I also like the part in italics. It seems like you think you are an expert, right after displaying a huge gap in logic. FWIW, I am not a fanboy of this tower, I agreed months ago that this tower was likely to never happen due to a variety of factors. I also don't think the revised mixed use version of this tower makes sense, and I doubt it will ever break ground.

[satalac]

That 21 floors of residential, if redesigned to office and if the overall height of the tower is to remain the same, would probably only redesign into something like 17 floors of office with about 14,500 Sq Ft floorplates, making about 250,000 Sq Ft of office space. This means the project may end up redesigned at about 66 floors instead of 70. The floorplates are a bit smaller than generally built nowadays in new Class A office space, and that could be a bit of a negative.

he will be better off marketing the office space to several smaller companies with floor plates that small (plus the layout is a bit awkward for office use). larger companies wouldn't really like having to use several different floors seeing how they are used to the large campus type facilities that have sprawled out in cool springs and brentwood. i'm really pulling for him to get this going though. he's known for doing what the experts believed to be impossible (the cumberland for example). i believe that the public is looking for any type of success story these days. this would be a great boost in the morale of the buying public to see something this massive being pulled off in an economy like this. the only way to get us out of this slumping economy is to start supporting local businesses. well that and figuring out what to do with this whole oil mess, but that's a whole 'nother thread.