BLVD Capital, a Nashville-area family office, wants to turn Brownland Farm, a 233-acre horse property on Franklin, Tennessee's Hillsboro Road, into a youth sports complex anchored by a two-sheet ice rink, 11 outdoor fields, and a golf training facility. The Nashville Predators are the publicly discussed operator for the rink. The Tennessee Titans and Nashville SC are lined up to run youth programming on the fields. None of the three franchises is named anywhere in the public record as a financial backer of the land, the buildings, or the deal itself.
That distinction, backer versus brand partner, is the story. Three of the biggest sports properties in Nashville just put their names on a piece of land that Franklin's own government rejected four years ago, and the entity actually buying dirt, borrowing money, and absorbing entitlement risk is a family office most youth sports investors have never heard of.
What Three Franchises Are Actually Signing Up For
The Predators' role is the clearest of the three. If Franklin, Williamson County, and the Williamson County Sports Authority move forward on co-owning the ice building, the team would run it. That is a disclosed management arrangement, and no source reviewed describes it as an ownership stake.
The Titans and Nashville SC roles are looser. Josh Corey, the Titans' vice president of cause marketing, has publicly framed the team's involvement around youth football and girls flag football access. Nashville SC's chief business officer, Lindsey Paola, has done the same for youth soccer. Neither team's public statements specify whether the relationship is a leasehold, a sponsorship, a branding license, or something closer to a handshake. The record simply doesn't say, and that gap is worth sitting with before assuming these are investors.
The Land That Already Said No Once
This isn't the first time Brownland has gone through Franklin's approval process. In 2022, the city's Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted against rezoning the property and denied the development plan attached to it, killing an earlier residential redevelopment. The objections that killed it, floodplain exposure, traffic capacity, and general growth concern, are already resurfacing in public comment on the sports version.
The development team appears to know this. Its plan reportedly reroutes a floodway around a church parking lot rather than leaving it where it currently runs, and includes a comprehensive traffic study as part of the application. Those are the moves of a team that has studied exactly why the last proposal on this land failed.
The One Clean Number in an Otherwise Undisclosed Deal
Almost none of this deal's economics are public. No total project cost. No debt or equity split. No named lenders. What is disclosed is narrower and smaller: Christ Community Church agreed to sell 18 to 19 acres for $8,211,931 gross, with 6 of those acres to be gifted onward to GraceWorks Ministries for a new home.
Public feasibility benchmarks fill in some of the gap the developer hasn't. A Howard County, Maryland ice-facility study puts comparable twin-sheet construction at roughly $385 per square foot, which suggests Brownland's 100,000-square-foot rink alone could land anywhere from $22 million to $63 million before a single outdoor field or retail pad gets built. A separate Manvel, Texas feasibility study priced a comparable field package at $63.9 million and still projected negative operating income across five years. Neither number is Brownland's number. Both suggest the real one is large.
That scale matters because Brownland isn't proposing fields alone. The plan also includes a golf training facility on more than 60 acres, plus neighborhood retail, a grocery store, and medical office space, uses that are common in mixed-use real estate but unusual to see attached to a youth sports announcement. This reads as commercial square footage doing real financial work here, subsidizing sports components that public benchmarks suggest rarely turn a profit on their own.
What Could Stall This
The floodplain issue is the single biggest risk, and it isn't hypothetical. The Harpeth River corridor runs through the property, and any floodway or floodplain modification would need FEMA review on top of Franklin's own process. That review sits on top of a site with a documented history of losing exactly this kind of fight.
The entitlement path adds its own exposure. As of July 1, 2026, the project is entering Franklin's approval process with groundbreaking only targeted for 2027, no land closing, no city approval, and no finalized financing package. Franklin denied this same land once before under a different plan. Winning approval this time will require convincing the same categories of neighbors and officials that a hockey rink solves the problems a subdivision didn't.
The financing plan compounds that exposure, and it's the piece investors can't currently diligence at all. Three franchises attaching their names to a project is a strong indicator of demand. It is not evidence that the underlying real estate deal pencils, and nothing in the public record answers that question yet.
Community reaction rounds out the picture, and it's already visible. Neighbors quoted in recent coverage are raising the same traffic and infrastructure concerns that surfaced in 2022, before a rezoning application has even been filed. A youth sports complex is an easier public sell than a housing development, but easier isn't the same as easy, especially on a site with this particular track record in front of this particular city council.
Takeaways for Investors
The Franchise Attachment Comes Without the Balance Sheet Risk
Pro franchises appear to be getting brand association and future programming access on a youth complex without disclosed capital exposure to the land, the construction, or the entitlement risk. That's a structure worth watching for elsewhere: teams get upside optionality on youth-market goodwill while a family office and local governments carry the downside.
The Ice Number Explains the Urgency
A county with zero public ice and rinks already running at 110% occupancy is the strongest concrete argument in the entire proposal. It's also the only demand number in the deal that's both disclosed and specific.
The Church Land Deal Is the Cleanest Data Point Available
The $8.21 million church parcel is the only real dollar figure attached to this deal so far. Everything else, the ice building, the fields, the golf facility, the retail pads, is still a public benchmark estimate rather than a disclosed number.
The Second Vote Is the Actual Catalyst to Track
Franklin's Board of Mayor and Aldermen already denied this land once. The next vote, whenever it happens, is the single event that will tell investors more about this deal's odds than any press release the partner organizations put out between now and then.
