"One of my secrets for success is very simple. Simple, but definitely not easy."

ne of my secrets for success is very simple. Simple, but definitely not easy.

Keep showing up.

The success I’m most known for taught me that lesson through many small failures and a couple huge ones. We made some very tough decisions. You don't learn from your mistakes, you learn from the consequences of your mistakes. Whoever said that was telling the truth! This is the story of the transformation of The Gulch the way I remember it.

In the year 1999 Steve Turner & I took a chance and bought 40 acres of abandoned rail yard gulch and derelict industrial area just south of downtown. Over the next 20 years we turned that gulch into The Gulch, sparking an intoxicating new energy and igniting the revitalization of Nashville’s city center.

The Gulch was a harbinger of the unprecedented surge of urban construction now reshaping the skyline, and the neighborhood is a prominent piece of the trendy “It City” image Nashville now projects.

To say that The Gulch has become a successful real estate venture is perhaps an understatement. The exceedingly walkable LEED-certified community is teeming with boutique hotels, high-rise condos, world-famous murals, bustling shops, live music venues, breweries, and diverse culinary delights. Property we bought for $6.75 per square foot is now trading for $350 per square foot two decades later and shows no signs of slowing down.

But it wasn’t always this way.

If you called The Gulch a dump in 1999, that would have been even more of an understatement.