Atlanta-based Songy Highroads, in its first foray into the Nashville market, is planning the new 201-room Hyatt House West End in a JV with an affiliate of Hyatt. It will break ground in June.

Does Nashville need another hotel? The latest data by STR finds that more than 30 hotels are under construction in the Metro area, which will add about 4,800 new rooms to the existing stock of 40,000.

Even so, Songy Highroads chief operating officer Todd Nocerini said the demand is there for a new Hyatt House. One reason is good old-fashioned location, which happens to be at 21st and Hayes, very close to sizable demand drivers for rooms: Vanderbilt, Saint Thomas Medical and TriStar Centennial Medical Center.

"Also, Hyatt House is an upscale, extended-stay hotel, which provides an experience that consumers are looking for in the West End," Nocerini said. "As our first deal in Nashville, we're pleased to be able to enter a growing market with traditionally high barriers to entry."

Songy Highroads may be new to Nashville, but it is no stranger to the Hyatt brand. In the past three years, it has built two Hyatt-flagged properties, a Hyatt Regency and Hyatt Place hotel, adjacent to Houston’s Galleria shopping center, and the developer converted a downtown Washington, DC, office building into a Hyatt Place hotel. The company is also nearly finished with a Hyatt Regency hotel conversion in Fairfax, Virginia.