30-04-2025
Look at Dolly Parton's Nashville hotel: Renderings show guitar entrance, shimmer wall
Country music legend Dolly Parton's goal of "bringing Dollywood to Nashville" may be one step closer to fruition.
Plans for her 12-story Songteller Hotel at 211 Commerce Street are set to go before the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency Design Review Committee next week, and that means Nashvillians are getting their first look at renderings of the exterior.
Parton's team will transform the office building that currently houses restaurants Black Tap and First Watch into a massive ode to Parton's legacy. It will include a museum with some of her iconic outfits through the years, on-site dining and bar concepts, an entertainment venue and a special suite that's especially well-suited for bachelorette parties, the "Six Sisters Suite."
The Dollywood Co. purchased the 233,314-square-foot building on a valuable 0.5-acre plot off of Lower Broadway at 211 Commerce St. for $75 million in 2023. At the time, Parton called it a "great investment" and emphasized her belief in Nashville's future.
Parton's hotel will use the infrastructure of the existing office building, requiring construction of a front awning, adding another elevator inside, install a kitchen for the restaurant and other details, according to Metro records.
Across the street from Nashville's distinctive AT&T "Batman" building, renderings from Metro records show the hotel with a large, guitar-shaped front entrance on Commerce Street topped with the Songteller's butterfly emblem.
Around the back of the building, looking out onto Third Avenue, the renderings reveal a raised plaza leading up to the hotel and the existing First Watch entrance. There, one rendering depicts a 46-foot-tall metal art installation of Parton singing with music notes swirling around her. Behind the depiction of her is a "shimmer wall" of colorful iridescent material and a backlighting element to light the wall at night.
For now, there is no official name for the Dolly Parton museum that will open inside of the Songteller Hotel — though it is dubbed Project Bouffant and specified as being located on the third floor in Metro Nashville permits.
Parton and her team have not specified an opening timeline for the hotel, but she told The Tennessean in January that she's expecting it to be done by 2030.
211 Commerce St. is located squarely in the Capitol Mall redevelopment district, which is why the project requires MDHA approval.
Hadley Hitson covers business news for The Tennessean. She can be reached at hhitson@ To support her work, subscribe to The Tennessean.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Dolly Parton's Nashville hotel: New renderings of Songteller revealed
