Real density comes to Cool Springs

There’s no denying the key role Cool Springs’ office market has played in Greater Nashville’s growth over the past two decades. Year over year, it seemed, workers would break ground on another 250,000-square-foot building to give health care companies, financial services firms and other notable names a top-shelf home within an easy drive from their executives’ homes and downtown Nashville. And year after year, those buildings would rise to six, eight or nine stories and be surrounded by a lake of surface parking.

Those years are over. The combination of rising land prices and rents, a supply crunch that dates back to the Great Recession and changing consumer demand is quickly turning parts of Cool Springs — the epitome of mixed-use suburban development in Middle Tennessee, with your retail over here and your office over there — into a smartly designed and better-connected district.