Transforming Music City one story at a time

ven on a gray, drizzly day, the view from the penthouse of 505 is spectacular, overlooking a bend in the Cumberland River, Nashville icons including the “Batman Building” at 333 Commerce St. and, in the distance, the famous honky-tonks on Broadway.

It’s a fitting setting to meet with Tony Giarratana, Finance ’80, the man who has breathed new life into downtown Nashville while transforming the cityscape with 505 and other residential skyscrapers. And he accomplished all of this while learning on-the-job.

The 45-story 505 building is Nashville’s tallest residential tower — for now. He has already broken ground on his next ambitious project, the 60-story Paramount, which will be the tallest building in the entire state.
 

From a time when, according to Giarratana, “you could shoot a cannon down the sidewalk and not hit anybody,” downtown Nashville has become a vibrant, 24/7 community with nearly 20,000 residents.

Since establishing Giarratana, LLC in 1986, Giarratana has played a significant role in making Music City what it is today.

“You can see much of his work dotting our skyline,” says Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell. “But at street level, he’s helped make our city more walkable, fostered community and helped implement a vision for a downtown that is the envy of many other cities. I’m grateful for the thoughtful ways he continues to invest in Nashville, the city we both love.”

 

Giarratana settles into an upholstered barrel chair, downtown Nashville sprawling out behind him. His day often begins at 5 a.m. with barn chores at the 26-acre farm in Franklin where he lives with his wife, Lisa. On this day, at 7 a.m., he headed downtown, where he hosted a meeting in the 505 penthouse with local real estate agents promoting Paramount.

“My wife loves the farm, and so do I, but I could live here full time and be very happy,” he says.

Ironic, since he never intended to stay in Nashville when he arrived in 1984. In fact, just a few years later he landed his dream job — in California. But when he told his then-girlfriend they’d be moving to the West Coast, she let him know she had no desire to leave the South.

“I was not able to change her mind,” says Giarratana, who promptly let the company president know why he couldn’t take the job. “He said, ‘Well, she must be one special woman.’ I said, ‘I believe she is.’ And we’ve been married 34 years.”

Giarratana’s path to Nashville started in Clearwater, Florida. The son of first-generation Italian immigrants, he was born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1957, the year after his eventual alma mater. He enrolled at USF because, frankly, it was affordable.

“I was on the five-year plan,” he jokes. Admittedly not the best student, at least in subjects that felt irrelevant to him, Giarratana says USF taught him how to learn, a skill he has called upon again and again throughout his career.

Though he majored in finance, he had no interest in banking. One day, while walking on the beach, admiring the hotels where he had worked in his teens sweeping floors and picking up construction debris, he had an epiphany.

Giarratana’s daughter, Kate, has joined the family business as a real estate agent. She brokered the sale of his 505 penthouse and is involved with marketing his new project, Paramount.

“I thought, ‘Those guys who developed these hotels, they seemed to be really enjoying themselves. I can see how it’d be fulfilling to do something like that. That’s what I’m going to do,’” he says.

He earned his real estate license and attempted to sell houses for six months, but didn’t sell a single one. The opportunity to list an office building came along, and he finally found success.

“I said, ‘That’s it. Office buildings for me!’” he says with a laugh.

A couple of years later, a fellow USF alum let him know about an opportunity to lease out commercial real estate in Denver.
 

“Two weeks later, I’m living in the Fairmont Hotel. I’m the leasing director for 2.8 million square feet of office space. And I’m entirely out of my league,” he says.

For his first lease, he recalls, he would meet with prospects all day, taking copious notes and nodding his head knowingly. Then at night, he would cross the street to his company’s lawyers to learn what they’d spent the day talking about.

“It was a very difficult negotiation, because I had to pretend like I was competent and I was not,” he says.

Giarratana chats with USF Foundation CEO Jay Stroman and Principal Gift Officer Steve Blair after a tour of Giarratana Development headquarters and Alcove, visible across the street.

After Denver, and a brief stop in New Orleans (it wasn’t the right fit), Giarratana came to Nashville for an opportunity to lease out space in MetroCenter before founding his eponymous development company.

Today, Giarratana headquarters is just a couple of blocks down Church Street from 505 and a short walk from two more of his properties, Prime and Alcove. Alcove won the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat’s Award of Excellence, an international honor, for Best Tall Building in the 100- to 200-meter category.

Walking through the building, Giarratana points out the state-of-the-art Mitsubishi elevators, the wall and floor finishings. He notices the door to the gym sticking and immediately telephones someone to address the issue.

It’s a far cry from his first condo tower project, the Cumberland, which opened in 1996.

At the time, there were only a handful of residents in downtown Nashville, but then-Mayor Phil Bredesen planned to change that.

“The mayor wanted to do apartments, and I had never done apartments,” says Giarratana. “I asked if we could please do something else — but, at that time, I would work for food and so I did the Cumberland project.”

He has since completed 24 projects, including 2,700 apartments and 1,000 condos. His work includes luxury units as well as more affordable options in the business core and SoBro (South of Broadway) neighborhoods.
 

He has consistently been named to the Nashville Business Journal’s Power 100 and was one of The Tennessean’s 2023 Persons of the Year. He has also welcomed the next generation of Giarratanas into the business. His daughter, Kate, is a Nashville real estate agent who brokered the sale of his 505 penthouse in February. His son, Sam, a developer at Imerza in Sarasota, Florida, creates the visualizations for Giarratana.

For Giarratana, building the community includes serving on a number of boards in Nashville, including Lipscomb University, Vanderbilt’s Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital and the Nashville Symphony, Zoo and Downtown Partnership.

Last summer, he expanded his circle to Tampa, becoming a founding member of USF’s President’s Global Leadership Council. It was the first time he’d reconnected with his alma mater in years and he was blown away by its physical evolution.

“When I was a student, I don’t know if there were any paved parking lots. It was sand and scrubby trees. There was nothing there,” he says. “Now it is enormous. The campus is just breathtaking.”

His developer eye was especially awed by the beauty of the Morsani College of Medicine building downtown. “

The structure of that building is visible, and that’s hard to do. All those irregular shapes and those multiple levels of atriums,” he says. “What is accomplished there in that building, it was really magnificent.”

Back in the 505 lobby, Giarratana says a warm farewell, then heads up the street to headquarters.

“I can see things complete. That’s my blessing and my curse,” he says. “Early on it was risky, because I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I actually do know what I’m doing. It’s kind of the unfairness of life, that I’ve finally figured out what to do, and it’s time for me to turn it over to the next generation.”

But not before he adds Paramount to the Nashville skyline.

-by Kiley Mallard / Advancement