Spanning 19 acres in the heart of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville Yards is an urban mixed-use development that is transforming the city center into a vibrant hub of business, residential life, and, as one would expect, live entertainment.
Designed to foster a live-work-play environment within its own ecosystem, the project includes a mix of modern skyscrapers, storefronts, and shared green spaces into a single cohesive community and a dynamic tourist destination.
Within the Nashville Yards development, Parcel 3 will serve as the future home of the Pinnacle Financial Partners tower—the project’s most iconic structure and centerpiece. The tower is set to become the tallest occupiable office building in Nashville, offering breathtaking views of the city and its surrounding neighborhoods.
Alex Nance, a project manager at Charter Construction, worked closely with his colleague, Ricardo Avila, a 27-year industry veteran who served as the senior superintendent at Parcel 3. Both Alex and Ricardo began their involvement with the project well before breaking ground.
“I started getting involved with this project as early as November 2021 since Charter was engaged as a design-assist contractor,” said Alex. “Our entire team, including our senior leaders, were there from the beginning to help optimize the building’s design and provide structural feedback.”
“I started studying the plans for this project about three months before we got started,” explained Ricardo. “I always start a building by building it in my mind and figuring out how everything we do clicks together.”
Along with a job site crew that would reach up to 190 employees at times, Alex and Ricardo worked closely with a team of engineers, architects, and tradespeople representing multiple firms in the Nashville area, including Clark Construction, Bell Construction, Gresham Smith, and Stanley D. Lindsey and Associates.
While the project would take them 550 feet up in the air, Charter Construction’s crew would have to start five stories under the main street level to build three levels of parking and two levels to house an array of electrical and mechanical equipment.
In addition to becoming the tallest office building in the city, Parcel 3 would also be Nashville’s first skyscraper to employ cutting-edge carbon reduction concrete mixes rated at 15,000 psi and 16,000 psi—offering nearly four times the compressive strength of traditional concrete with 40 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
To successfully apply this type of concrete to the job, Alex and Ricardo collaborated with project engineers to ensure every pour was carefully evaluated and properly handled to meet the building’s specifications.
Over 88 weeks, their crew had constructed over 3,000,000 square feet of formwork concrete requiring 85,000 cubic yards of concrete, 7,300 tons of reinforcement steel, and 1.4 million pounds of post-tensioning cable.
Charter self-performed the entire project, including the formwork, reinforcement, and slab finishing, guaranteeing exceptional quality and efficiency. By February 2024, they topped out the Parcel 3 project, completing the 37th and final floor two and a half weeks ahead of schedule.
“Our guys overcame a lot of challenges and put in a lot of hard work,” said Alex. “I’m proud of our team for doing an extremely great job, and the credit goes to all of them.”