From Industrial to Artistic Hotspot: Meander Through Wedgewood Houston with AJ Capital Partners
Written by Drew Hutchinson
AJ Capital is a driving force transforming one of Nashville's hottest neighborhoods. The company, which owns over 17 acres in the area, has designed much of Wedgewood-Houston’s main commercial block in its image, filling the district with the mass timber office building where the Academy of Country Music is headquartered, as well as plans for a live music venue and retail, office, restaurants, and apartments surrounding a historic mansion, which will also be preserved and revitalized.
A decade ago, Wedgewood-Houston was a tightly knit but sleepy area, with a hodgepodge of old — sometimes blighted — buildings scattered among industrial properties and the occasional dive bar. Neighborhood favorites like Bastion hadn’t opened yet.
One of the neighborhood’s key properties is the May Hosiery Mills complex, the row of historical brick buildings near Dicey’s Tavern. For decades starting in the 1920s, the sock factory was Nashville’s largest employer — and one of the companies that spurred the city’s growth, David Ewing said.
AJ Capital’s acquisition and refurbishment of May Hosiery Mills was the first of its Wedgewood-Houston projects. It was also the most transformative due to its scope and central location, said Lesley Florie, senior vice president of brand identity.
Weprin took Jack May, a former mill executive and grandson of its founder, through the property after the renovation. He remembers what the veteran businessman said when he experienced it: “I’d be more surprised if I saw a spaceship land here than what I just saw.”
AJ Capital’s most striking project since May Hosiery Mills has been a mass-timber office building towering over Chestnut Street, which attracted major tenants like Live Nation and the Academy of Country Music. The property is brand new, unlike the mills, but it doesn’t feel sterile: AJ Capital designed the building with surrounding green space, historical art projects (like the guitar-shaped Greer Stadium scoreboard), plans for residential units and more.