Metro Nashville to buy derelict Hickory Hollow Mall, lease to Vanderbilt Medical Center

Cassandra Stephenson
Nashville Tennessean

Metro Nashville plans to purchase Antioch's empty Hickory Hollow Mall and partner with Vanderbilt University Medical Center to transform the property into a hybrid medical and community hub similar to One Hundred Oaks, officials announced Wednesday.

The city wants to buy the property and an adjoining office building for $44 million.

The city has signed a letter of intent to negotiate a long-term lease with VUMC for at least 600,000 square feet to be repurposed for health care services. Metro anticipates the lease with VUMC will offset the land acquisition costs if negotiations go to plan.

"I do hope that this is essentially self-financing for the city," Mayor John Cooper said during a news conference overlooking the mall's vacant interior on Wednesday.

Cooper and Council member Joy Styles will file legislation Friday with the Metro Council to approve the purchase of the two properties: $24 million for the 650,000-square foot mall and $20 million for a 160,000-square-foot office building on the mall's east side. Cooper said this approval needs to be final by the end of April for the plan to proceed.

The once-booming retail center in Southeast Nashville has sat largely empty after a series of attempts to reinvent the vacant property fell flat.

It most recently reopened in 2013 as the Global Mall at the Crossings. VUMC, if negotiations are successful, would join current Global Mall tenants including Nashville State Community College, the Nashville Predators' Ford Ice Center, the Southeast Community Center and Nashville Public Library's Southeast Branch. 

The planned partnership with VUMC is the project's first phase, increasing the area's access to health care and related jobs. 

Related:Proposed Hickory Hollow Mall redevelopment deal in South Nashville collapses

Related:Lost Nashville: Hickory Hollow Mall, once Tennessee's largest, became a million-square-foot question

VUMC would pay for remodeling and new construction, according to a VUMC news release. Metro will repair access roads and the site's perimeter road. The cost and timeline of those roadway repairs have yet to be announced.

Metro anticipates the property could eventually include space for childcare, an arts facility, after-school youth programming, small business development opportunities and Metro offices and services. Those needs and services would be dictated by community members participating in surveys and public meetings during the project's second phase. 

"The existing event center that is connected to the mall will soon become the Antioch Performing Arts Center ... once again, we'll be able to host the Antioch Art Crawl, we're going to be able to host dance performances, plays and musicals," Styles said. "... We now will have the arts in our own backyard." 

The forthcoming surveys and public meetings will build on more than 500 survey responses already collected from Antioch residents, according to the release.

Sustainable real estate developer and One Public Square Managing Partner Clay Haynes helped Cooper and Styles identify ways to better use the site for residents. The city also will work with the Joe C. Davis Foundation — a local nonprofit that supports organizations working in education, healthcare and social services — to shape the mall complex into a community asset.

"This mall was once the largest and busiest in the state of Tennessee, but the future has been uncertain for a while, and today marks the beginning of the long-awaited revival as a community hub," Cooper said.

Councilwoman Joy Styles gives Mayor John Cooper a hug during a news conference at the Hickory Hollow Mall in Antioch, Tenn., to announce that Metro Nashville is partnering Vanderbilt University Medical Center to transform the Mall into a hybrid medical and community hub, Wednesday, March 23, 2022.

The city was "on the verge of having to buy expensive parking spaces" to serve patrons of the Ford Ice Center, library and community center, Cooper said, but the overall property purchase provided a "business-like solution." Metro's vision for the site also ultimately includes a transit center.

Metro is in conversations with TDOT regarding infrastructure improvements in the area.

"Hopefully this will allow us to fast-forward the investment commitments that are being made particularly by the state in Bell Road and the interchange," he said. "This needed to happen without Vanderbilt, but with Vanderbilt I'm hopeful that we can get it done even more quickly."

The announcement follows a string of recent projects and investments in Southeast Nashville. A new city park is slated for construction off nearby Tusculum Road, and the city plans to build a new police precinct in the area.

The Nashville Predators opened the Ford Ice Center on former mall's site in 2014, and the new library branch and community center opened shortly after.

Related:Nashville Predators open Ford Ice Center in Antioch

Expanding health care access for a growing community

Southeast Nashville saw drastic population growth in the last decade and is home to one of the county's highest percentages of minority residents.

"Antioch and Southeast Davidson County rank among the fastest-growing areas of Tennessee, so the rationale for creating a large footprint for healthcare here is clear," VUMC President and CEO Jeffrey Balser said Wednesday against the backdrop of what could eventually be a facility even larger than the VUMC clinic at One Hundred Oaks.

The 37013 ZIP code in Antioch has one of Davidson County's lowest rates of adults who have had a routine health checkup, according to the VUMC Office of Health Equity. Antioch was among the areas of the county with the highest COVID-19 rates during the pandemic. The healthcare provider served about 159,000 patients living in Southeast Davidson County in 2021.

VUMC developed its One Hundred Oaks clinic space in “chunks” over the course of several years, Balser said, and he anticipates this project will take a decade or more to build to its final scale, pending Metro Council approval and lease negotiations.

Related:What Nashville's rapid growth over the last decade means for its council redistricting process

VUMC plans to leverage its existing Interpreter Services to facilitate care and health education in the area, where English-speaking households are more limited than in other parts of the county.

VUMC currently provides behavioral health services to students via a school-based therapist in Cole Elementary and Eagle View Elementary through the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital. The healthcare provider partners with Nashville State's programs in allied health career development and looks forward to strengthening those ties, Balser said.

"Healthcare leaders like Vanderbilt need skilled workers to grow and thrive," NSCC President Shanna Jackson said. "Together we can create unique and innovative pathways to increase the talent pipeline, again with local residents." 

The plan for the Global Mall at the Crossings will mirror VUMC's 2009 conversion of One Hundred Oaks — Nashville's first mall — into a 440,000-square-foot multispecialty clinic in Berry Hill. The outpatient clinic is in its 13th year of operation.

“We are excited about the potential of this property to become a focal point of the surrounding community while affording VUMC the opportunity to strengthen our presence in a growing and vibrant area of Metro Nashville," VUMC Deputy CEO and Chief Health System Officer C. Wright Pinson said in a release. "Redeveloping Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks has been transformative for our health system and gives us the experience necessary to make this new project successful."

Metro purchase plan follows years of unrealized opportunities

The future of the former Hickory Hollow Mall has posed a 1.1 million-square-foot question to city leaders, investors and area residents for more than a decade.

Hickory Hollow Mall was the largest mall in Tennessee when its construction began in 1976. By the 1980s, the mall was booming with specialty shops and large retailer anchors including J.C. Penney and Dillard's. 

But its success waned in the 2008 economic slowdown, and by 2012, nearly all of its tenants were gone.

The shuttered mall reopened in 2013 as the Global Mall at the Crossings, aiming to highlight immigrant- and minority-owned businesses, but the concept failed to gain enough revenue to continue.

Developer Ben Freeland's 2019 plan to transform the mall into an "innovation district" with work spaces for tech companies and startups ultimately fizzled

Cole Villena and Sandy Mazza contributed.

Reach reporter Cassandra Stephenson at ckstephenson@tennessean.com or at (731) 694-7261. Follow Cassandra on Twitter at @CStephenson731.