By Stephen MacLeod – Reporter, Memphis Business Journal
After years of delays caused by the pandemic, the proposed, $1.1 billion, multiblock development in the Pinch District led by Tom Intrator is again moving forward.
In recent weeks, Intrator has consolidated his Pinch holdings (listed at the end of the story) and debt into a single entity: Memphis Pinch LLC. And he has secured $20 million in financing from Seattle-based investment firm Columbia Pacific Advisors.
Now, with COVID restrictions being lifted nationwide, Intrator said he is only waiting to sign a development agreement to begin the process of getting permits for the project.
“As things are now coming down, we are very adamant on getting moving there,” Intrator told MBJ Tuesday, March 1. “Openly, I have full intentions to develop what we had proposed and went through City Council and County Commission [with] and got those approvals.”
The Pinch project was announced in November 2019, and a 30-year PILOT and other incentives were approved by a Downtown Memphis Commission board in December 2019; by the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission in December 2019; and by the State of Tennessee in March 2020.
Intrator said the project will resemble what was initially proposed, although he does expect some retooling to match a post-pandemic world.
“I think it's very realistic to presume that some of the office spaces will be converted to more multifamily,” Intrator said. “I think there will be some rematching like that. But overall, with the magnitude, we have the full intention to go ahead with what we had planned.”
The Pinch project has been stuck in silence since the pandemic hit, but it wasn't because the plan was forgotten, Intrator said. Everything just had to take a back seat as the City of Memphis responded to the crisis.
Now, he said, the project faces a realistic path to fruition.
“We've already allocated funds for the permitting process, which would be the next stage,” Intrator said. “The development agreement needs to get signed, then we will go through the designing and permitting. And once we complete permitting, we should be able to go vertical.”
Will Nelson, director of real estate lending at Columbia Pacific Advisors, said the firm was drawn by Intrator himself to invest in the project.
"We invest in people, and so the fact that he wasn't out rubbing pennies together to find a deal [was attractive]," Nelson said. "He spent a lot of time getting to know the Memphis market. He likes the Memphis market, he's lived there."
Nelson said Memphis' recent growth was also attractive to his firm, and Columbia may finance even more of the project once it breaks ground.
"Memphis needs quality housing," Nelson said. "You're seeing it in how fast apartments are leasing, you're seeing it in the fact that stakeholders are the ones taking over office [space] — they're not going anywhere, and they're reinvesting into Downtown. That's a passion play, and that's likely going to be great runway for [Intrator] and his project."
Intrator believes the actual groundbreaking could still be a significant time away, but he's hoping to get underway in 12 to 18 months. For now, Intrator is focused on getting a development agreement signed so he can begin the permitting process.
“I hope that [a development agreement] happens sooner rather than later, of course, but that could be 30 days, and it could be a year,” Intrator said. “Once that happens, there's approximately another year to get through the permitting process.”
Intrator is working with LRK as the architect for the Pinch development. He doesn’t expect there to be one single general contractor and predicted that, given the scope of the project, several general contractors could be selected.
With all the other projects going on in Memphis’ core, he believes Downtown will continue to grow as a destination for investors and grow into a major secondary city like Nashville or Austin.
“I'm probably even more optimistic today about the city than I was in the past,” Intrator said. “But we need to go through the dance.”
As originally proposed, phase one of Tom Intrator's Pinch District plan included:
Residential: 976,000 gross square feet / 801,000 net square feet, approximately 942 units
Hotel: 290,000 gross square feet / 240,000 net square feet, 406 rooms
Retail: 169,000 gross square feet / 160,000 net square feet
Office: 222,000 gross square feet / 200,000 net square feet (at least 150,000 square feet to be built spec at the start of the phase)
Total: 1.66 million gross square feet / 1.4 million net square feet of space
The properties Tom Intrator consolidated under Memphis Pinch LLC in a series of transactions in early 2022 include:
North Main: 362, 367, 374, 381, 393, 396, 400, 429, 440 N. Main St., plus additional parcels with unassigned addresses
North Front: 364, 388, 400 N. Front St., and an additional parcel with an unassigned address
71 Overton Ave.
111 Shadyac Ave.
Center Lane: Multiple parcels with unassigned addresses