Pivot turns Nashville office tower into Hilton hotel, timeshare

Pivot Real Estate Partners is turning the Fifth Third Center in downtown Nashville into a 483-room property split between two Hilton brands. The 30-story tower at 424 Church St. will hold 318 hotel rooms under LXR Hotels & Resorts. Hilton Grand Vacations will operate the remaining 165 units as timeshares. The Nashville Business Journal first reported the plan.

Pivot bought the building last August for $55.25 million. Hastings Architecture is leading the conversion. The design separates amenity spaces for hotel guests and timeshare owners, adds a ballroom, and puts retail, coffee, and restaurant space on the ground floor. An outdoor bar with its own food-and-beverage concept is planned for the plaza. No construction timeline or budget was announced.

The purchase price suggests how far office values have fallen. Pivot paid $55.25 million for a tower that would have cost far more at the market's peak. Rather than chase a slow office leasing market, the firm is pointing the building at hotel revenue and vacation-ownership sales. Hilton Grand Vacations brings the sales engine and a built-in pool of buyers. LXR supplies the luxury nameplate without a ground-up build. The room mix lets the operator sell the same real estate twice: first as nightly stays, then as ownership intervals.

The conversion is a concrete example of money moving out of office buildings and into hotels, a trade that has picked up as office values reset and downtown hotel demand recovers. Nashville offers a favorable test: tourism is deep and timeshare sales have a long history there. It is not clear whether the broad floor plates of a 30-story office tower can become rooms travelers want to book and owners want to buy. At 483 rooms, the project ranks among the larger office-to-hotel conversions in the pipeline, and the bet is that the shell is worth more under a Hilton sign than as an office.