Todd McCalla - McCalla brings 10 years of strong sales and managerial experience to Cumberland Commercial Partners split between Saks 5th Avenue Corporate and real estate portfolio guidance in Ohio. A member of the ICSC, ULI, NAIOP, and currently pursuing the CCIM designation, McCalla is actively involved in the Nashville local CCIM chapter as a subcommittee chair. His attention to detail and ability to find income producing properties on and off the market is where his real value is found. McCalla prides himself on his ability to listen and analyze your needs. Through his continued education and affiliation with these organizations, McCalla effectively utilizes technology, information, and market knowledge to help his clients make informed and positive real estate decisions. McCalla is truly a Cool Springs commercial real estate expert and specialist; he has been able to secure multi-unit office condos, class A office space, retail store fronts, and even rare warehousing space with exceptional efficiency. Active in the community, he has served on the special events board at the Lake County Historical Society and also on several committees for The American Cancer Society’s annual breast cancer fundraiser “Where the Boys Are”.

Development Services

Cumberland Commercial Partners develop shopping centers, anchored and unanchored strip centers, restaurant and stand alone outparcels, and 35-100 unit apartment buildings across Middle Tennessee. We offer development services, site selection services, and general consulting services to our clients as part of our preferred commercial services bundle. Our user-centric projects can be found all over Nashville and reach as far out as Lebanon, Spring Hill, and Smyrna, Tennessee. We know our core market and public extremely well, we never overreach to an area we are not familiar with in order to earn a commission. In addition to traditional development knowledge, Cumberland Commercial delivers unprecedented value with an array of solar, photovoltaic, energy star, and recycled materials knowledge to propel your Green construction project into a reality.

Welcome to Nashville and Infill Development

Continued growth and a healthy economy make Music City the perfect place for real estate developers to weather the storm.

If there’s any one particular city that’s poised to withstand the current real estate crisis, that city is Nashville, TN. To look at the flurry of commercial real estate development sweeping across Nashville, one might suppose there was no economic recession at all. Despite downturns elsewhere, Davidson County continues to receive and approve building permits for commercial real estate developers to begin multifamily development projects, office building renovations, and more. On the last day of February 2008, for instance, the county awarded a permit for the construction of a $6.2 million project on Belmont Circle, as well as several multifamily units around the city. Regardless of the downturns elsewhere, investors and developers continue to demonstrate great faith in the Nashville market, and Business Outlook has named Nashville the second most recession-proof city in the nation.

Here’s why:

It has to do with the fact that Nashville is a rapidly growing metropolis. Approximately 1.2 million people live in and around Music City, and that number is expected to climb to two million within the next two decades. Though long-term growth can be tricky to predict, the U.S. Census Bureau now says that Nashville is outpacing most other major southern cities, including Birmingham, Louisville, Memphis, and St. Louis. Indeed, growth has been so substantial over the past five years alone that certain service sectors have been unable to keep pace with it. School administrators, emergency management personnel, and urban planners have all found themselves playing catch-up with the seemingly unstoppable population boom.

For commercial real estate developers, there’s a tremendous opportunity here. Over the next two decades, Nashville’s population growth will create a substantial demand for both housing and commercial developments. As more people move into the greater Nashville area, the need for apartments and multifamily development projects will skyrocket. For savvy investors, the opportunities are limitless. The influx of more than half a million new residents will generate the construction of new shopping centers, schools, health care facilities, restaurants, churches, hotels, cinemas, office buildings, and more.

The profitability of these developments will only be compounded by the fact that Nashville’s new residents will be affluent and upwardly mobile. In fact, Nashville is already one of the most prosperous cities in the South. Its average household income of $55,000 well exceeds the national average of $48,000. What’s more, Nashville’s cost-of-living indicators are so favorable that actual purchasing power actually runs closer to $60,000. That’s nearly double that of most other major southern cities. Though an average family in Nashville may not have enough money to burn, it certainly has enough to spend.

Nashville’s relative affluence is a trend that is expected to hold steady over the next quarter-century, considering that most of the city’s new arrivals do not come in search of jobs. In fact, they bring their jobs with them. With a relatively low cost-of-living and business-friendly disposition, Nashville has become a Mecca for companies looking to relocate. Over the past few years, scores of major corporations have made Nashville their home, bringing in a ready-made workforce eager to find apartments and multifamily developments. A small sampling of the many companies now headquartered in Nashville includes Firestone, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Dollar General, Saturn, and Shoney’s. The thousands of families that have relocated with these companies represent the bulk of Nashville’s population growth. This well-salaried workforce represents one of the primary reasons residential and commercial real estate development remains healthy in Nashville.

As if that weren’t enough, Nashville also enjoys a vibrant tourist economy, another factor contributing to its overall economic health. Indeed, tourism alone brings nearly $4 billion to the local businesses each year.  What’s more, the city has recently begun plans to further energize tourism through a number of key initiatives, such as the development of a new $1 billion dollar downtown convention center. Though many of these plans are still in their early phases, there can be no doubt that the growth of tourism will also create demand for commercial property, in the form of hotels, parking garages, and even additional restaurants.

Despite all of this growth, Nashville’s political leadership and its urban planners have promised to combat urban sprawl through strategic development initiatives. Nashville’s citizenry takes great pride in Music City’s overall appearance, and numerous organizations like the Downtown Partnership have already taken up the challenge of urban renewal. There’s really little choice in the matter. Nashville is young, demographically speaking, with an average age of just 35, and a clear preference for living and working either downtown or in midtown. These youthful urbanites have little interest in creating bedroom community settlements that would force them to live outside of Nashville.

Other factors are also driving the push for urban renewal. Nashville has always been a community-minded city, but the rising cost of fuel means that the daily commute between Nashville and the suburbs is becoming cost prohibitive. People who live in Nashville naturally want to live and shop in Nashville as well. Moreover, a strong current of environmentalism has residents searching for ways to reduce the city’s carbon footprint. What better way to achieve that than by cutting out the long drives?

Given all of the above, it should be easy to see that the lion's share of profitable commercial real estate developments will be located inside Nashville’s city limits. There will be a substantial need for creative infill solutions. Not only are more apartments and multifamily developments going to be necessary, but so will creatively designed retail space. There will also be a need for smaller unique developments to be used for office space, restaurants and so forth.

And no portion of Nashville has greater reason to be optimistic about the future than downtown. The city’s Civic Design Center recently generated its Plan of Nashville, a long-term roadmap for revitalizing downtown and its surrounding neighborhoods. Indeed, there are numerous initiatives underway for reclaiming unused space throughout downtown, such as in the area known as SoBro – the cluster of streets just south of Broadway. Another long-term project involves the redevelopment of commercial property along the city’s riverfront. Essentially, downtown Nashville is on the cusp of a Renaissance and the timing could not be more perfect for either developers or investors. With such a healthy economy and with so much growth on the horizon, Nashville offers a perfect place to weather the storm. After all, there’s no recession here.