600 12th Ave S #2115

“If Rapunzel had a home like this, she would never have let her hair down” wrote the listing brokers on the condominium at 600 12th Avenue South.

The familiar address is that of the Icon in the Gulch, and this space on the 21st floor includes two bedroom and two full bathrooms. Known as a junior penthouse, as it has access to all the penthouse amenities. Its ceilings are lower, however, than the penthouse.

Condominiums rarely feature the powder room/half bathroom, as space is at a premium when the footage floats 250 feet in the air.

Unit #2115 is 1,298 square feet and sold for $1,075,000, which equates to $924 per square foot, a number that holds no relevance today. However, in 2005, when the Icon condos were flying off the pre-sale shelf, some buyers considered such things.

The seller closed on the condo in early 2009, although presales were three years earlier, before the building was even under construction. Initially, the developer had planned to offer 150 dwellings as apartments, but that was before the entire condo allocation had been snapped up within the first few hours by eager condo buyers.

At that point, the developers seized the opportunity to sell all 424 units as condos.

By accepting a relatively small deposit of $5,000, many competitors and naysayers felt there would be numerous cancellations based on the seeming lack of financial commitment by the buyers. This model had worked for Bristol Development before with the Bristol on Broadway and the Bristol West End developments. The Icon contracts had slightly more teeth in them, but contingencies for financing were included.

This time, those naysayers were able to claim soothsayer status, though the problem wasn’t lack of commitment.

As the building rose from the ground, the financial world crumbled around via the Great Recession. As a result, many of the buyers were unable to move forward, and the on-site sales staff switched from order takers to crisis managers. Many of the buyers were unable to fulfill the remainder of their financial obligation. A larger percentage of them actually needed the $5,000 deposit returned in order to fulfill current commitments: Rent, gas, groceries, etc.

Icon in the Gulch representatives – who years before had buyers falling at their feet, begging for favors in securing the hottest product to hit the Nashville market – were now being approached to allow those same buyers to walk away unscathed.

One of those on-site brokers was Scott Evans, the listing broker of unit #2115 this year and in 2006.

Bristol Development followed through and built the Icon on time, and Evans – with the original sales team of Carmen Swoopes (now Carmen Swoopes-Thompson) and Ivy Arnold (now Ivy Vick) – sold, resold and, at times, resold the resales, effectively selling many if not most of the condos two or three times.

One of the leading commercial brokers in town told a group of investors he felt the entire development could be purchased for “25 cents on the dollar.” That did not happen, and the development flourished with those buyers that were able to hang in there were rewarded in the years to come, many doubling their money in five years.

Evans and real estate partner Andrea Woodard, who doubles as his wife, listed the unit and sold it in 40 days.

He was the listing agent for the development when this seller originally purchased the condo, and they stayed in touch through the years. When the time was right to sell, he and Andrea, who resembles Rapunzel, listed the condo.

The Evans-Woodard team also are the proprietors of Lemon Fair in Sewanee and are with Onward Realty, having followed a circuitous route to land there.

When selling the Icons originally, Evans was with Village Real Estate Services. It later became Village. In 2018, Evans and a group of elite agents, including his real estate partner Zach Goodyear, along with Hunter Connelly, both of whom he had met when they were students at Sewanee in the late 1990s, decided to open a real estate company called Central Realty. Included in the mix of high-powered realty personnel was Hunter’s cousin, David Dorris, who played football at Ole Miss.

In the early going, Village and other firms, were losing agents to Central, so founder Mark Deutschmann suggested Central and Village merge. They did, and then merged with Parks. That merger unraveled, only to re-ravel just in time to sell to Compass.

The merger left Evans and Woodard as free agents, and they were pursued by every real estate company in the area before joining Onward as a partner with local ownership.

Evans has been selling Icon units for nearly 20 years, the gift that keeps on giving or the catastrophe that keeps on giving. It should have been called the Phoenix or, perhaps, Lazurus.

However, if the developers had known the challenges that would befall them in the years to come, they probably would not have built it. In this case, the “Field of Dreams” philosophy works.

Richard Courtney is a licensed real estate broker with Fridrich & Clark Realty and can be reached at [email protected].