Cost Control, Value Maximization: How Pinnacle Construction Partners Streamlines Development

Even as the broader commercial real estate market slows down due to economic uncertainty, Nashville continues to draw major investor interest and population growth. 

By 2040, the greater Nashville area is expected to grow to 3.1M people — an 80% increase in population from the early 2010s. Since 2020, the city’s population has grown at double the national rate. Additionally, Nashville’s economy added 32,000 jobs in 2024 and its GDP grew by 3.1%.

With all of this activity, an abundance of commercial development is needed to keep pace with demand. That’s where Pinnacle Construction Partners, a Nashville-based construction firm equipped with its Sanders Carter Development arm, enters the picture.

“I like to tell our clients we’re their one-stop shop because most businesses have to deal with real estate, but that doesn't mean they're real estate people,” said Alex Sanders, CEO of Pinnacle Construction Partners. “And we're not expecting them to be real estate people. That's what we are here for.”

Founded in 2007 by Michael Carter and his business partner Darrell Freeman, Pinnacle was originally formed to build Music City Center in Nashville with another local firm. At that time, the Music City Center development was the largest project in Tennessee, totaling about $500M. 

Though the firm ended up losing the bid for that particular project, Carter and Freeman saw a gap in the market for minority-owned construction firms. 

In 2024, Pinnacle expanded its offerings by adding a development identity and recruiting Sanders as CEO of both sides of the business.

“We’ve now transitioned into a turnkey development firm,” Sanders said. “With that, we do everything in-house from the beginning to the end of the development process.”

Sanders said that Pinnacle’s vertically integrated approach to the market begins with handling all of the preconstruction work in-house. This includes everything from site identification and entitlement to hiring the architects, engineers and design team for the project. 

Once the project is approved and the team is ready to start building, the firm prioritizes three main strategies to streamline execution: cost control, time management and value maximization. In today’s CRE market, where the issue of cost escalation is particularly relevant, this is crucial.

“Making sure that we’re efficient in terms of cost, time and value is essential to every project we work on,” said Joe Cavicchi, director of development at Pinnacle. “Since all parts of the development and construction process are done in-house, our communication is fluid. We're able to respond quickly to macroeconomic events like tariff announcements and fluctuating interest rates and rapidly modify our pro forma assumptions accordingly.”

In addition to tackling construction, Pinnacle can also assist clients with acquiring financing for their projects. This is something that not many other design-build firms have the ability to do, Sanders added.

“We'll go out and find the equity for projects, whether that involves family offices or high net worth individuals,” he said. “We then go to our debt partners as well, so our clients don't have to worry about that throughout the process when they work with us.” 

In today’s environment, Pinnacle has identified a trove of work in the municipal and higher education sectors, in addition to work in the historic preservation, adaptive reuse, office and transportation sectors. It is working with a mid-sized university in the Southeast to realize its 10-year master development plan, Cavicchi said. For a project such as a university master plan with many stakeholders, being able to rapidly pivot among their different priorities is a skill that’s made Pinnacle stand out from the crowd, he added.

“We're able to determine the trade-offs between moving forward on new development versus focusing on renovations to academic or athletic buildings in real time, just to show what altering different aspects of the overall budget would look like for the college,” Cavicchi said. “We’re a one-stop shop for not only this client, but for all of our clients.”

Notable projects Pinnacle has worked on include large developments such as Geodis Park in Nashville, the country’s largest major league soccer stadium, and BNA Phase II at Nashville International Airport, as well as the 200K SF Rutherford County Judicial Center in Murfreesboro and the 104K SF Middle Tennessee State University student union. 

In addition to working on projects in and around Nashville, Pinnacle also works across the Midwest and Southeast, Sanders added. 

“There are a lot of national developers that can develop and design structures, but they can't work on any existing building because they don't have a construction arm,” Sanders said. “On the flip side, there's a lot of companies that can finance a project, but then have to hire someone to build it, or construction companies who can build it with their eyes closed, but they can't finance it. Pinnacle can do it all.” 

Moving forward, with Nashville still reigning as one of the hottest development markets in the nation, Sanders and Cavicchi said that their strong relationships will be key to Pinnacle’s success in this expanding market. 

“Nashville has achieved so much growth, especially now that we've attracted many developers from out of town,” Cavicchi said. “Everything now hinges on speed. The best properties are getting snatched up quickly, so what we have left to rely on is not only our speed and market value resulting from integration, but our strong relationships.”

Sanders said that as Nashville continues to scale quickly, people are going to want to work with developers and contractors that they like and know can get the job done.

“When you work with us, you get a personalized relationship you can trust in an otherwise transactional industry,” Sanders said.  

This article was produced in collaboration between Studio B and Pinnacle Construction Partners. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.