What's next for Germantown's biggest projects? New homes, retail and a rooftop restaurant
Almost 400 new single-family homes. A rooftop restaurant atop a new hotel. A high-end apartment building. Thousands of square feet for new retail options.
Germantown's biggest developments are set to bring all this and much more to the city.
Here is a look at four major active developments and how each project is progressing.
Thornwood
The 17-acre Thornwood development was planned as a walkable, urban community with shops, restaurants, three dog parks, apartments and hotels. The project's sixth and seventh phases will bring a new hotel and a high-end apartment building to the site.
A five-story, 114-room TownePlace Suites by Marriott hotel at 7800 Neshoba Road is under construction at Thornwood as part of the project’s sixth phase.
Spence Ray, vice president of McNeill Companies, is the developer of Thornwood. He said the target opening date for the hotel is March 15. The hotel will feature a rooftop restaurant concept called The Overland that will include an open patio overlooking the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC) and an interior dining concept.
The 138,000-square-foot, $17 million hotel project will also include 5,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Ray said the space is set to include a Tampa, Florida-based men’s barber shop occupying 1,100 square feet. Ray noted he is close to signing a lease with a women’s salon, which would take up 1,823 square feet and leave space to sign one more tenant.
The Registry at Thornwood — a high-end apartment building — is the seventh phase of the development. Ray said the plan is to start construction in the summer on The Registry, which was approved by the Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen in September 2021.
The 186,000-square-foot, five-story building will have 54 units. The average size of the units will be about 1,700 square feet. Ray noted some of the apartments will be close to 3,000 square feet. Rent for the apartments will range from $3,000 to $6,000 per month.
Plans for The Registry at Thornwood include about 1,800 square feet of retail space on the ground floor for a commercial tenant. The Registry amenities will include a rooftop pool, a community room with a kitchen, lounge area, leasing office, indoor dog park, fitness center, conference room and underground parking garage.
Glasgow
The redevelopment of the former Germantown Country Club will include 366 homes over 145 acres when all three phases are completed.
Cameron Ross, Germantown’s director of economic and community development, said all three phases have been approved by the Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen.
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The Farmington-Kimbrough Development Group is the firm behind this project, and Ray is also part of this group. He said phase one is under construction and is expected to be completed in the fall of 2024. It includes 150 single-family residential units. Phase two will include 123 lots, while phase three will have 93 homes.
"We have many people on the interest list and we are moving forward with phase two and three in the summer," Ray said.
The project will include 12 common open space areas with private streets, guest parking, fountains, detention ponds, landscaped medians, a clubhouse, a swimming pool, four pickleball courts, cluster mailbox units, pocket parks, pedestrian trails and a 100-foot-wide buffer area around the perimeter of the development.
The first phase will cover about 74 acres of the 145-acre development.
TraVure
The TraVure project is a 10-acre, $125 million mixed-use development with offices, retail and restaurants in the West Poplar Gateway area. The Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen in October 2022 unanimously approved a revised final plan for phase four of TraVure, which changed a 34,592-square-foot, two-story building to a 56,000-square-foot, three-story office and retail building on the southwest corner of Poplar Avenue and TraVure Drive East.
The building will feature about 18,000 square feet on the first floor for retail and about 35,500 square feet for the second- and third-floor offices, according to the phase four site plans. The 2-acre project will also have about 2,500 square feet of common area.
Ray Gill, president of Gill Properties and developer of TraVure, said the entire TraVure project is 96% occupied and has only two spaces left to fill. Gill told The Commercial Appeal that the firm is in discussions with three or four unnamed firms with the hope to strike a deal with a couple of them to fill the remaining space and final phase.
“We do have some leads and we’re actively pursuing tenants because of the situation the market is in now,” Gill said. “I’m not saying the market is hot, but you got to be ready when the market is ready.”
The first phase of the project consisted of a dual-branded 129-room Hilton Garden Inn and 91-room Home2 Suites by Hilton located at 6811 TraVure Drive was completed in 2019. The second phase including a five-story, 150,000-square-foot office building and a 500-space parking garage was built concurrently and was completed in 2017.
"Even though the hotel site was sold, there was a lot of delays in the construction for various reasons," Gill said. "We actually opened our building before the hotel opened."
The Standard Germantown
The Germantown Mayor and Board of Aldermen unanimously approved the final plan for phase two of the rebranded The Standard Germantown, formerly Carrefour at the Gateway, during its November meeting.
Developer CRE Devo Germantown LLC was allowed after the approval to send construction drawings to the City of Germantown’s engineering department.
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Adam Slovis, project manager of The Standard Germantown, said phase two is expected to consist of 27,000 square feet of retail space, which will include space for restaurants and commercial space.
It also will have 320 residential lofts, as well as 463 parking spaces.
The parking garage will have lofts on top. There will be commercial and retail space on the lower levels of another building with lofts on top of that as well.
Slovis told The Commercial Appeal the total cost of phase two of the project is estimated to be $100 million. The hope is for phase two construction to begin in April 2024 and be completed by December 2025, he said.
Corey Davis is the Collierville and Germantown reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Corey.Davis@commercialappeal.com or 901-293-1610.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Germantown development: What are the new retail, hotel in the works?
