Exclusive: TraVure lands second office tenant by Jacob Steimer
Gill Properties has landed a second office tenant for its monumental Germantown mixed-use project, TraVure.
Nashville-based FirstBank will be moving its local corporate office to 8,000 square feet on the first floor of the project’s five-story office building, a Gill spokeswoman told the Memphis Business Journal on Tuesday, May 15. The project’s anchor tenant, MAA, completed moving into the building’s top three floors — a total of about 89,000 square feet — earlier this month.
TraVure Oct. 2017
TraVure's main office building, located on Poplar Avenue near Kirby Parkway — just inside the Germantown city limits, taken on Oct. 4, 2017
“Our intent from the outset of the TraVure project was to attract top-rate tenants, and we are off to a great start,” said Ray Gill, founder and president of Gill Properties. “This project has been years in the making, and having tenants such as FirstBank and [MAA] from the start is a big boost for the entire development.”
FirstBank, which provided construction financing for TraVure, is the first tenant to announce it would move into the office building since MAA did so in 2016. Gill Properties’ hope is that the new deal will spur leasing for the remaining 48,000 square feet in the building. Patty Bullock, a Gill broker, said the company has a “number of other” potential new tenants it's currently negotiating with.
“Ever since the building’s been up and MAA started moving in, the [leasing] activity has been wonderful,” Bullock said.
FirstBank’s commercial lending team and top local executives, including new area president Jeff Hudson, will have their offices at the 6815 Poplar Ave. building beginning in early fall, Hudson said. Those employees had been working from offices in the Colonnade building, located at 1661 International Drive.
“The new space will provide the FirstBank corporate headquarters with a highly visible location in the vibrant East Memphis business district,” Hudson said. “It not only gives us a more prominent location; it also will better accommodate our growth in the Greater Memphis area.”
Along with the 145,000-square-foot office building, TraVure is set to include a dual-branded Hilton hotel, which should be completed in 2019, and a 35,000-square-foot building for retail and office tenants, which hasn’t yet broken ground.
