The SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament will be at Bridgestone Arena in March 2022. Then the SEC men’s tournament will return from 2023 to 2035.
That’s when tens of thousands of SEC fans will fill Bridgestone Arena, Lower Broadway and the downtown area for the five-day event. Here’s what will change in Nashville between now and then.
There are 33 new hotel properties projected to open by March 2023, according to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. That’s almost 6,000 additional rooms for visitors.
The gigantic Embassy Suites near Music City Center will be among them. The 721-room, 32,000-square foot hotel is set to open this September. The W Hotel in the Gulch (May 2021), Four Seasons on First Avenue (February 2022) and Park MGM Hotel in Nashville Yards (December 2022) are among numerous other planned new hotels.
The first phase of Fifth + Broadway opened to the public in downtown 4 March 2021. The six-acre (2.4-hectare) US$450 million complex is one of the largest single-phase mixed-use projects in Tennessee history. It has places to eat, shop and browse, including an open-air food hall, along with a luxury apartment tower and office building.
More businesses, shops and restaurants will open at the complex in the coming months.
Despite its rich history, Lower Broadway is constantly updating with new bars and restaurants. So count on there being a few new additions when fans flood the area at future SEC Tournaments.
Miranda Lambert’s Casa Rosa will be the newest honky-tonk, as the first on Broadway to be branded with a female country star’s name. It’s set to open at 308 Broadway later in 2021, but a specific date has not been announced.
The early stages of two major developments—Nashville Yards and Broadwest in Midtown—already have elevated the skyline. By 2023, visitors will notice their impact as soon as they approach the city.
The US$540 million Broadwest project will include 1.2 million square feet (485,622 square meters) of offices, condos, hotel rooms and restaurants. Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts will open as a 40-story tower in 2022. And Broadwest’s luxury condos will open later this year.
Nashville Yards is a 17-acre (6.8-hectare) development stretching from Broadway to Church Street. It will feature Amazon’s office campus, an entertainment district similar to L.A. Live, new shops and restaurants and a 1.3-acre (0.5-hectare) park running through the Gulch.
Fans arriving for the SEC Tournament in 2023 should instantly notice the new glassy skyscrapers, colorful signs and modern architecture of the project when entering downtown on the west side.
Most SEC fans drive to Nashville, but some fly. In 2023, they’ll find a US$1.2 billion expansion and facelift to Nashville International Airport done, or almost complete. It was announced in 2016 and expected to be finished in 2023.
The project will include a new Nashville-inspired look, a 288-room hotel, six-story parking garage, concourse expansion and a relocated Donelson Pike.
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