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Development and Leasing

Grand new Opry

Despite challenges, Nashville megamall remains ontrack

By Tom Kirwan

The 1.2 million-square-foot Opry Mills may be the first U.S. center to be built on the site of a former amusement park.

When Opry Mills opens May 11 in Nashville, Tenn., visitors shopping at its 14 anchors and nearly 200 other tenants will remain blissfully unaware of what it took just to clear the 130-acre site.

For starters Opry Mills, with a gross leasable area (GLA) of 1.2 million square feet, may be the first U.S. mall to be built on the site of a former modern amusement park. When The Mills Corp. and Gaylord Entertainment in November 1997 announced their joint venture, they also signed a death warrant on Gaylord's own Opryland USA theme park. A Nashville landmark for 26 years, the park was soon razed to make way for the new mall.

For locally based Gaylord, it was a no-brainer: Opryland's revenues were in decline, its 20-plus rides attracting only about 3 million people a year. (By comparison, Opry Mills is projected to attract 17 million shoppers during its first year in operation.)

For Mills, accustomed to building its megamalls on open land well outside major metro areas, the site represented an already thriving tourist destination that fit well with its growing emphasis on entertainment. The site is in rock-throwing distance of a strong tourist draw, Gaylord's Grand Ole Opry and other entertainment venues, including two sightseeing boats and one of the largest hotels in the United States.

Within days of the center's October 1998 ceremonial groundbreaking, site-prep work began. But this would be no level-and-build job. Below ground workers found a maze of electrical, plumbing and communications lines connecting the old theme park and other Gaylord properties.

To make things more difficult, there were no plans showing all those underground utilities. Workers had to fix gas lines, water pipes and power cables as they groped through the dirt and tangled debris.

"It was a complicated network of utilities, and sometimes we were taking a best guess as to where they were," said Julie Smith, development director for Mills and Opry Mills. "It was a big job in that this project campus had grown so much over 25 years."

It took four months for Mills just to complete site demolition.

But according to Smith, an even bigger challenge was to fill the site — on the banks of the Cumberland River — to lift it out of its 100-year floodplain.

"We knew from our engineering analysis that we would have to either build a levy wall or fill," she said, explaining that Gaylord has a levy around its 2,883-room, 600,000-square-foot Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, and other properties.

But most of the mall's site was not protected by a levy.

"We decided from the engineering analysis that the best solution was to fill the site with eight feet of soil."

Eight feet might not sound like much, but spread over 130 acres it is. In all, about 750,000 cubic yards of soil were dumped onto the site.

"If you laid the fill on a football field," Smith said, "it would be 45 stories high."

Throughout all this work contractors used battlefield-like planning and phased-work schedules to make sure they did not interfere with day-to-day business at the Grand Ole Opry and other Gaylord ventures. They diverted streams, moved a pump station and alternated parking lots for Grand Ole Opry visitors.

Workers once mistakenly cut the power to Gaylord's 1,200-passenger General Jackson Showboat, which is moored in the river, but the problem was fixed so quickly that none of the boat's tours were interrupted.

However, Smith demurs when asked if Opry Mills was her firm's toughest project to date.

"I'm sure everyone thinks theirs is the toughest," she said, referring to top managers for the other nine Mills projects. "This one had a lot of unique challenges to it."

Ironically, Opry Mills' opening has been delayed a week, but not because of its complicated construction; Mills moved its opening day from May 3 to May 11 so as not to conflict with the Academy of Country Music Awards in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, as construction workers rushed to complete their job on time, Mills' leasing staff was doing much the same. Judith Berson, the firm's executive vice president for leasing, said the megamall will be about 95% leased and occupied when it opens.

Mills predicts the project will do sales of $350 million during its first year in operation. With a GLA of 1.2 million square feet, that means the mall is expected to post average sales of about $300 per square foot.

"We think Opry Mills will be in the top third of our portfolio in terms of sales performance because of the very strong tourist base there, and because it is also a very high-profile property," said Berson. "Generally a Mills project sets the profile, but in this instance we are connected to a very high-profile area."

Berson said Opry Mills differs from its predecessors in that it has about a third more space dedicated to entertainment and related tenants.

So far, anchors that have been announced include a 154,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, which bills itself as a "sportsman's paradise" selling camping and fly-fishing gear and outdoor apparel; an 18-screen Regal Cinema; and an IMAX theater. Another anchor is Barnes & Noble, Mills' first such deal.

The company will carry on its tradition of including well-known regional players in its projects at Opry Mills. Standing out in this category will be Gibson Guitar, the world famous Nashville-based company, which will anchor one end of the mall. Gibson's 30,000-square-foot space will include a store, restaurant, gift shop, museum and a workshop where visitors can look through a glass wall to see a dozen or so employees building mandolins.

Two other regional stores include Apple Barn & Cider Mill, a Sevierville, Tenn.-based chain, with a 28,000-square-foot space containing a cider bar and a smokehouse; and Blacklion, a 21,000-square-foot, multitenant upscale gift and specialty home furnishings design center based in North Carolina, offering furniture, interior design products, dinnerware, gifts and garden items.

Other tenants announced for the project as of press time were Gap Outlet Store, Liz Claiborne Shoe Outlet, Mary Engelbreit, Golf America, Guess Outlet, Build-A-Bear Workshop, Bliss Soaps, Alabama Grill, Bed Bath & Beyond, Boot Country, Ghirardelli Soda Fountain, Jillian's, NASCAR Silicon Motor Speedway, Rainforest Cafe, Sun & Ski Sports, Tower Records and Wolfgang Puck.