The Univ. of Tennessee has issued a notice of intent to award the Neyland Entertainment District project to the 865 Neyland Project team, which consists of Dixon Greenwood, Jake Miller, Taylor Gray, the Hartland Hotel Group, and Johnson Architecture. The renderings released Wednesday highlight the project team’s current conceptual design, but Tennessee State Building Commission approval is required for the project to proceed further. Once that approval is obtained, specific designs and construction schedules will be created. 

The development is envisioned to better tie together Neyland Stadium and Food City Center, the university’s basketball arena just to the south. The Neyland development will be anchored by a condotel, featuring 240 rooms and 60 luxury condos, adjacent to Neyland Stadium’s south end. Hartland Hotel Group is handling this portion of the project, which will include a rooftop restaurant and bar, pool and terrace, conference center, lounges, fitness center, and hotel spa. Hartland developed the Hotel Figueroa, which sits across the street LA Live in Los Angeles. 

The nearby existing G10 parking structure will be replaced with a new structure that will include additional parking — not impacting student parking spaces — and be topped with a nearly 175,000-square-foot entertainment district managed by St. Louis-based Brick + Bev, for whom Greenwood (a realtor and broker) is a strategic advisor. Renderings show pedestrian bridges above Neyland Drive connecting the Tennessee Riverfront and the entertainment district. A plaza will be created between the entertainment district and the stadium.

The RFP was first issued last December, and the university had been considering the bid responses since March. The development project is proceeding on a separate but somewhat parallel path to the $337M renovation of Neyland Stadium, which has updated the stadium’s back-of-house capabilities, like WiFi, for example, and incorporated new premium seating options and a party deck on one end of the upper bowl.