Deal of the Week: Restaurateur Buys Famous Fiddler's Nashville Properties

Franklin, Tennessee-based restaurateur Kelly Black snapped up a famous fiddler's real estate in trendy East Nashville to expand his local eatery empire.

Black paid $1.4 million for three adjacent properties, one of which is a former house now home to a six-year-old restaurant named Treehouse, according to property records. The restaurant, which has won a number of “best of” awards in Nashville, was part of the deal. It sold for $500,000, said Andrea Ladd, the listing broker with Benchmark Realty and a member of the family that owned the properties.

With the deal, Black adds the restaurant to several he owns in the Nashville area. His most recent, NashHouse Southern Spoon and Saloon, opened last year in the new Cambria Hotel downtown.

Buddy Spicher, a noted fiddler who is in the Country Music Hall of Fame and worked with country music greats such as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Bill Monroe, bought two of the three homes in 1988 for a combined $47,000. Other family members bought the third property 12 years ago for $175,000. Matt Spicher, son of Buddy and his wife Paula, and Corey Ladd, their grandson, opened the Treehouse in one of the first properties the family bought.

Andrea Ladd, Matt Spicher's sister, said the houses built in the early 1900s went on the market more than a year ago for $3.1 million. They dropped the price to $2.9 million and then to $1.9 million. Buddy and Paula Spicher are in their early 80s and were "ready to cash in their retirement," she said.

Offers started pouring in when the price dropped so much, some from outside Tennessee. But they liked Black because he was local, wanted all three of the buildings and was in the restaurant business.

"He gave us full price and he closed quickly," Andrea Ladd said.

Part of their decision to sell also was driven by a desire to leave what had become a bustling area. The properties sit in a part of East Nashville known locally as Five Points because of the intersection of five streets.

It became the epicenter for a resurgent historic area over the past two decades, bringing many new restaurants, bars and shops. Cushman & Wakefield's recent report "Cool Streets," which lists lively urban areas around the country, gave East Nashville a "prime hipness" rating.

East Nashville also is across the Cumberland River from downtown, which has exploded with new office, apartment and condominium towers. Hotels continue to spring up as tourism surges, helped by the opening of a larger convention center six years ago. Nashville's restaurant scene has blossomed over the past several years as a result.

Black couldn’t be reached for comment on his plans for the two other buildings.

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