Broadwest lands big finance name
Investment firm plans move from farther down West End.
Nashville Post
Geert De Lombaerde
December 13, 2019
Storied investment firm Robert W. Baird will in about 15 months move its Nashville team to the two-tower Broadwest project rising near the Broadway-West End Avenue split.
In moving to Broadwest, which is being built by Alabama-based Propst Development, Baird will consolidate its longtime office in the 2525 West End building with the former Avondale Partners home in the nearby American Center complex that Baird acquired as part of its purchase of Hilliard Lyons.
“Signing a lease in a huge, premier development like this is a great symbol for us, a symbol of how far we’ve come,” said Parker Griffith, market director for Baird’s Private Wealth Management business.
Griffith leads a team of 58 people, about 25 of them financial advisors, that has grown Baird’s local investment management business to $4.5 billion in assets since the 100-year-old Milwaukee-based company set up shop in Nashville 20 years ago. He said he had been looking for a new home — and was already seriously considering Broadwest — but needed to put a move on ice when Baird announced in November of last year that it would buy Hilliard Lyons, which had snapped up Avondale just a few months before. After Baird had integrated Hilliard and subleased some of the former American Center space, he was free to move forward again.
Baird will take 19,000 square feet on the 11th floor of Broadwest’s office tower and Griffith said he is penciling in a move date of late in the first quarter of 2021. He added that that space can absorb some new hires between now and then but that he also has the option to add to the 19,000 square feet before making the move.
Word of Baird’s plans to move down West End comes about two months after leaders of regional law firm Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz said they had signed a lease for the top three floors of the office tower in the $500 million development rising at the site where local developer Alex Palmer sought to build West End Summit. Regional bank ServisFirst also has committed to taking space in the development.