The Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency is voting today on granting $4.5M in incentives to Columbus, Ohio-based Pizzuti Cos to help it develop The Joseph Nashville, a SoBro hotel near Music City Center.

The 297-room Joseph Nashville, which will be The Pizzuti Cos’ second Starwood-flagged hotel, will be built on 0.75 acres at Korean Veterans Boulevard and Fourth Avenue S.

“We’ve had our eye on Nashville for some time,” said Pizzuti Cos president Joel Pizzuti (above), a Vanderbilt graduate. Last year, Pizzuti completed Le Meridian Columbus, The Joseph, a 135-room, art-themed boutique hotel in the Short North Arts District in Downtown Columbus.

In return for the incentives, Pizzuti would commit most of the property's rooms to room blocks for convention business.

Such a room-block commitment by Pizzuti would help deal with one of the three-year-old convention center's persistent challenges: a shortage of hotel rooms in Nashville. That's the case even though, as the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp estimates, some 1,500 to 2,000 more  rooms marketwide will be open by this summer. The Joseph would be walkable to the convention center, an important consideration.

Pizzuti also agreed to reserve 180 parking spaces within the hotel's garage for musicians and staff of the Nashville Symphony, which owns the land at 401 Fourth Ave S.