For at least the third year in a row, an urban grocery store, a movie theater and more retail top the list of downtown residents’ wants, according to the Nashville Downtown Partnership’s 2015 resident survey, out Monday afternoon.
Despite the missing ingredients, occupancy remains high (at 97 percent) and waiting lists long at several residential buildings downtown. Still, the desire for more walkable amenities serving residents — not daytime commuters — shows how much downtown Nashville has transformed over the past decade and how far it still has to go.
Riverfront Park will open to the public this weekend, offering downtown Nashville’s first dog park, for example.
Overall, downtown residents are well-educated and well-heeled, and incomes have increased over the past year, opening up opportunities for retailers looking to cater to an affluent, urban-living crowd.
The forthcoming Gulch project Capitol View, being developed by Boyle Investment Co., is expected to bring both a grocery store and a movie theater, but isn’t slated to open until 2017.
To conduct the annual survey, the Downtown Partnership sent out 4,100 surveys to homeowners and renters in the downtown area. For survey purposes, the neighborhood was defined by Jefferson Street to the north, the Cumberland River on the east and the interstate loop on the south and west. (continue reading at NashvilleBusinessJournal)