The downtown property home to City Winery Nashville has sold for $21 million — with the long-term status of the winery and live music venue unclear following the transaction.
According to a source who asked to go unnamed, the new owners of the 1.56-acre Pie Town property are, via Evelyn Capital LLC, local real estate investors Byran Fort and Taylor Preston.
The seller was City Winery Nashville LLC, which paid $2.65 million for the roughly 26,000-square-foot warehouse structure in December 2013, Metro records show.
Entrepreneur Michael Dorf founded City Winery in 2008 in New York City. Dorf — also a jazz aficionado and philanthropist — created City Winery Nashville LLC for the purchase of the property 10 years ago.
Dorf, who could not be reached for comment, posted via social media the business will be looking for "a new and improved location."
The source declined to disclose information regarding City Winery’s lease. The City Winery Nashville website lists concerts into 2024.
The downtown property is located at 600 Middleton St. near SoBro and sits adjacent to the Nashville Rescue Mission site. For context, that nonprofit paid $740,000 in 1993 for both its current building and the City Winery site and then, two days later, sold for $210,000 the City Winery segment.
The recent transaction is the equivalent of almost $310 per square foot based on the site’s acreage. Properties located within the general Pie Town/SoBro area have often commanded at least $350 per foot.
Fort, a senior vice president with the local office of CBRE, declined to comment.
The buyers have landed a $16 million loan from Lewisburg, Tenn.-based First Commerce Bank, according to a Davidson County Register of Deeds document.
The purchase comes after a group of investors led by Preston and Fort in March 2022 paid $9.2 million for 0.9-acre property located at 616 Ewing Ave. The site, which sits across Ewing from the City Winery building, offers a 22,900-square-foot building (read here).
Fort and others also own 701, 709 and 717 Ewing Ave., having paid a collective approximately $5.45 million for the properties in two transactions in 2016. Tennessee Brew Works is located south of those sites at 809 Ewing Ave.
Fort and CBRE colleague Frank Thomasson (also a senior vice president) represented Evelyn Capital LLC in the City Winery transaction, while Lee Associates brokers Jim Rodrigues and Peter Braus represented City Winery Nashville LLC.
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
