CLEVELAND, Ohio — The developers behind Nashville’s proposed medical mart issued a statement hailing that the project’s future “has been secured” after the city’s council approved plans for a $585 million convention center.
However, that future hardly seems “secure” given the statement’s complete absence of any details of the medical mart project’s financing. The project’s developers have previously said they’d seek private funding, coupled with an infusion of their own cash, for the $250 million medical mart, a showcase for medical technology and related products, which is planned to be built atop the city’s existing convention center.
Considering the project’s lack of clear funding, the difficulty of obtaining commercial construction loans in the worst economy since the Great Depression, questions about the viability of the never-before-tested medical mart concept, and the Nashville Medical Trade Center’s lack of lease agreements with any tenants, it may be more appropriate to substitute the word “shaky” for “secure” in any discussion about its future.
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Two representatives of Market Center Management Co., the Dallas-based developer of the Nashville medical mart, didn’t immediately return calls.
The Metropolitan Council, the legislative body for Nashville and Davidson County, on Tuesday night voted 29-9 to approve construction of the new convention center, called the Music City Center, ending months of heated debate over whether Nashville can buck industry trends and actually draw enough convention visitors to make a convention center a profitable endeavor, the Tennessean reported.
The 2-million-square-foot proposed Nashville Medical Trade Center is slated to hold its first convention in 2013. The developers say it will comprise three components:
- Up to 1,200 permanent showrooms for health care product manufacturers, distributors and information technology companies;
- 200,000 square feet of temporary trade show space using the existing convention center, reception and meeting rooms;
- Conference facilities to accommodate education and training events.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 60 to 90 days, the Tennessean reported.
Nashville, Cleveland and New York are locked in a three-way race to open the nation’s first medical mart. Leaders of both the Cleveland and Nashville projects have repeatedly stressed that it is critical to be the first medical mart to open because they fear the industry can only support one such project. Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. (MMPI), the Chicago developer overseeing Cleveland’s medical mart said earlier this month it could break ground on the project by October. An MMPI spokeswoman declined comment Wednesday on Nashville’s latest announcement.
That same day, reports surfaced that the New York project’s developers had scrapped plans to locate their medical mart in a yet-to-be-constructed, 60-story tower in Manhattan. Instead, the developers, perhaps feeling pressure from the progress Cleveland and Nashville have made, will lease existing space for the project and plan to open within the next year-and-a-half. In July, the New York developers announced that they’d lined up commitments from 11 tenants, something neither Cleveland nor Nashville can say.
The one distinct advantage Cleveland has over its competitors is a source of funding. Cuyahoga County commissioners in 2007 pushed through a 20-year quarter-cent hike in the county sales tax, which has thus far netted about $75 million, to fund the $425 million medical mart project. Cleveland, like Nashville, plans to open its medical mart sometime in 2013.
