The 12-story Margaritaville Hotel building in Nashville’s SoBro neighborhood has changed hands for $70 million, a deal announced Monday, March 23, 2026. The sale shifts ownership of the branded SoBro lodging property to an out-of-state investor and ranks as one of the larger downtown hotel-building trades so far this year. For now, the transaction appears to be focused on the real estate itself rather than any immediate shake-up in the hotel’s day-to-day operations.
Deal details
The buyer is Kansas City-based EPR Properties, and the seller is an entity called Jimmy’s Last Laugh LLC, which is affiliated with Safe Harbor Development, as reported by Nashville Post. The Post reports a purchase price of $70,000,000 and notes that the deal covers the hotel building. Reporting did not immediately identify who will operate the hotel going forward, so for now, guests probably will not notice much beyond a new name on the property records.
What’s inside the building
Opened in October 2019, the property is a 12-story hotel that includes 166 guestrooms and 52 Margaritaville Vacation Club timeshare units, along with a rooftop pool, more than 10,700 square feet of event space, and two on-site Margaritaville dining concepts, according to the hotel's fact sheet. The fact sheet also lists Safe Harbor Development as the project's developer and gives the address as 425 Rep. John Lewis Way S., Nashville.
Where the site came from
Safe Harbor Development closed on the roughly 0.8-acre SoBro parcel in 2016 for just over $8.2 million while advancing plans for the Margaritaville hotel, contemporaneous coverage noted at the time. That early land purchase, followed by full build-out and branding, goes a long way toward explaining the dramatic jump in value between the pre-development sale and the finished hotel property.
Buyer profile
EPR Properties is a Kansas City-based experiential real estate investment trust that focuses on out-of-home leisure and entertainment venues. The company has recently been active with larger acquisitions, including a March 5, 2026, press release announcing definitive agreements to acquire a portfolio of regional parks, and has framed those moves as part of a strategy to expand its attractions and experiential portfolio, per EPR Properties.
Why it matters locally
The sale lands at a time when downtown Nashville values have been climbing, and investor appetite for branded hospitality assets has stayed strong. Axios recently documented the run-up in Lower Broadway and pointed to other big-ticket deals in the area, including a roughly $75 million purchase of a Lower Broad Margaritaville building late last year, underscoring how quickly valuations have shifted in recent years. Local leaders and business owners will be watching to see whether the new ownership eventually brings operational changes, renovations, or repositioning that could ripple through the SoBro corridor.
