Abberly Riverwalk residents can hop on a community bicycle and enjoy the greenway next door.

-- Photograph Provided

Want to see Nashville Sounds baseball without leaving the comfort of your outfield apartment? Perhaps you’d rather bike the city greenway located just steps from the door of your MetroCenter apartment or enjoy skyline views from your high-rise residence.

Nashville’s urban center is being transformed by construction of thousands of apartments and a smaller number of condos in luxury towers and low-rise buildings. Each offers its own lifestyle.

You could live in the 60-floor YMCA building being developed on Church Street by Giarratana development company. The 750-foot residential skyscraper will be Nashville’s tallest building.

Giarratana has two other residential towers, the 39-story Prime and 34-level Alcove, next door. Alcove is downtown’s first large-scale zero-parking building.

The three towers are adjacent to Nashville Yards, home to Amazon’s two office buildings. Rising in the old rail yard between Broadway and Charlotte Pike, the 16-acre development will include more than 5 million square feet of office, residential, entertainment and retail space.

Another highly visible apartment project, The Sinclair, is at the West End Avenue-Elliston Place Split. It will be skinned in blue glass and rise 27 stories. Centennial Park is across the street.

Kel Williams says he understands the appeal of living downtown.

“I wanted to walk out my front door and have restaurants and multiple things to do,” says Williams, who owns a condo in Encore. The 301 Demonbreun Street building is close to Bridgestone Arena.

“I used to live 52 miles from my office. Now I’m nine-tenths of a mile,” says Williams, a Realtor with EXIT Realty Elite.

“I have an extra three hours a day to walk, go to the gym, work. Whatever I want to do,” he says.

The honky-tonks and tourist attractions of Lower Broad are just around the corner, but he doesn’t pay them any attention.

“I’ve been on Broadway one time in the last three or four years,” says Williams. “I don’t do that, but I love the Predators, the restaurants.”

Downtown’s new residential buildings appeal to different lifestyles. If high-rise elevators aren’t your thing, Abberly Riverwalk might be for you. With just four floors, the just-opened apartments on Great Circle Road in MetroCenter don’t need an elevator.

And they are Tennessee’s first Fitwel-certified community.

Fitwel, managed by the Center for Active Design, promotes architecture and urban planning solutions to improve public health.

“It’s like LEED,” which certifies buildings that reduce their environmental impact, says Gavin Haats, Abberly Riverwalk’s assistant community manager.

Residents can step directly onto the MetroCenter Levee Greenway thanks to a $400,000 donation by Abberly Riverwalk for a trailhead renovation.

“We have access for the public and for residents to the greenway. It’s a statement,” Haats says.

Abberly Riverwalk residents can hop on one of the 19 community bikes. The bike-share program is included in their rent.

The development was named “Most Walkable Bikeable Urban Project” at Walk Bike Nashville’s 2022 Streets for People Awards.

The fitness center has a garage door that opens to an outdoor workout area on nice days, Haats says.

Abberly Riverwalk recently began leasing. The development has 304 apartments in four buildings.

“You’re close to all the restaurants in Germantown and in the middle of downtown with all the honky tonks,” he says.

Baseball fans might choose to live at Ballpark Village, the working name of the apartments under construction in Germantown next to First Horizon Park, where the Nashville Sounds play Triple-A Minor League Baseball. The mixed-use building will have direct access to a public greenway.

The seven-story building will have 356 apartments and overlooks the Sounds’ outfield. Ballpark Village is expected to be completed in the summer of 2024.

Many of the high and low-rise buildings under construction across downtown are apartments for rent, not condominiums for sale. That’s because property values are rising rapidly in the city’s hot real estate market.

?“People want to invest in Nashville for the long term, so they build apartments and keep them,” says Williams.

Parts of downtown are opportunity zones, which offer tax incentives for developers.

“If you hold it for 10 years you have absolutely no capital gains tax,” says Williams.