Last week, Metro paid more than $2.6M to Zach Liff, owner of SoBro's Cummins Station office building, for the right to build one end of a pedestrian bridge on property he owns next to Cummins Station (lower center in the rendering). The deal clears the way for the bridge to connect The Gulch and SoBro, which will probably spur more development near Cummins Station, reports the Nashville Business Journal.

As part of the deal, Zach acquired a three-acre property next to the building, 1011 Demonbreun, from Metro for more than $7.5M. He now controls about 13 acres in that part of SoBro.

There's no schedule yet for building the bridge, but as an initiative kicked off by Mayor Karl Dean during his time in office, it's been in the works for quite a while. Metro's Department of Public Works redesigned the bridge this fall, replacing a previous S-shaped design with a straight structure across the train tracks. Even so, according to the department, the design is still preliminary. [NBJ]