Corcoran OTA Group Blog Shining Up Nashville, Tennessee’s Star: The Anson

Nashville, Tennessee has undergone an impressive architectural, cultural and economic transformation over the past decade. Its downtown full of neon-clad honky tonks and cheap-thrill tourist attractions has morphed into a trendy, walkable haven of hot chicken set against world-class dining and tiny dives sharing space with state-of-the-art venues and boutique hotels, and all of it alongside a building boom that has sparked redevelopment that radiates from the Gulch to Germantown and beyond. For someone who grew up amongst the din of Printer’s Alley and the down-home charm of a night at the Opry and then moved away, the city might feel nearly unrecognizable today.Predictably, this reinvigoration has spread to Nashville’s outskirts, and we are proud to play a part in the Music City’s makeover. There, near Antioch, Tennessee, we worked to turn one initially challenging piece of property into a beautiful place to call home.   What would become The Anson multi-family residences began as a dramatically sloped plot of land surrounded by wetlands. What it needed to be was luxury living for several hundred Nashville commuters. As we sometimes do with challenging properties and site plans, we took this project over from another architecture firm. We began by moving the original position of the buildings around a bit to better fit the topography, then blasted through tons of rock and accounted for a required wetlands buffer and drain field edging around a large stream.  It wasn’t the easiest project we’ve undertaken, but hot damn (as they say), are we pleased with the results. It’s rare that budgets allow us to go wild creating a luxury, in town-like living experience in the suburbs, and this project was no exception. Creativity however gave us an edge. We needed to give The Anson a contemporary feel – clean, modern and amiably industrial –  and that typically means a flat roof and a sophisticated façade. We decided to use minimalism to our advantage, making the rooflines interesting but still somewhat conventional to bridge the stylistic gap. Overhangs, cantilevers and pop-outs also help the downtown vibe along, creating an overall aesthetic that’s competitive with more urban developments but isn’t too “out there” for the neighborhood. As is becoming the norm in multi-family, amenities also abound at The Anson. The community features units from 1 bedroom/1 bathroom up to 3 bedroom/3 bathrooms, with 2/2s and 3/2s between, all adorned with finishes that echo local working-class materials from stripped-down concrete to polished steel. The urban-industrial aesthetic is most obvious in The Anson’s two-story clubhouse and leasing center. Separated from the complex’s pool by a wall of multi-pained, steel-mullioned windows, the common space feels a bit like a reclaimed warehouse, with a double-height, clerestory seating area and an open, steel-and-concrete staircase. Game tables, quiet reading nooks and offices flank the open space in a cozy ring.  “Our intention was to help this property beat out the competition,” says Corcoran Ota Principal Michael Corcoran, “and to give the area a high bar to clear. Even though it was a rough site and a rough start, The Anson sets the stage for luxury multi-family living here.”And at The Anson, all’s well that ends well for Nashville’s Antioch-living commuter class. Like Nashville itself, The Anson and its grounds were an apparent diamond in the rough just waiting to be polished up, like so many rhinestones catching the light at the Opry on a Saturday night.