The building that houses one of Nashville’s many celebrity-backed bars, this one by rocker Jon Bon Jovi, is up for sale for a tidy $130 million.
Jon Bon Jovi Nashville, known as JBJ’s Nashville, is on the city’s famous Lower Broadway strip of bars and entertainment spots, a popular tourist destination. The five-story, 36,767-square-foot building at 405 Broadway is a combination bar, restaurant and music venue “on one of the busiest and most visited streets in America,” according to Chris Urban, the broker at Surmount who listed and is marketing the property.
Urban told CoStar News on Thursday that he’s received brisk interest and inquiries since he went public Wednesday with the sale-leaseback listing on LinkedIn and social media.
“It’s basically, it’s been ... a little crazy, a lot of good activity,” Urban said.
The building’s owner is Joshua Joseph of Buffalo Grove, Illinois, a businessman involved in the music and real estate industries, according to Urban. Joseph manages the JBJ bar and would continue to operate it after the property’s sale. JBJ’s will have a 20-year triple-net lease, paying $6.4 million in annual rent with 2% yearly increases, according to Urban. The triple-net arrangement means the bar would be responsible for building expenses, including taxes, insurance and maintenance.
New Jersey native Bon Jovi is a partner in JBJ's Nashville, along with a local real estate firm. The bar debuted in June 2024. In an interview, Bon Jovi told Backstage Country that he was a fan of Music City, as Nashville is known, and that he and his band had written some of their hits and recorded some albums there.
He described JBJ’s as a home away from home, “a little bit of New Jersey on the strip in Nashville.”
In the city, many other bars and restaurants are either owned by or branded with the names of celebrities, including Kid Rock, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, Luke Bryan and Justin Timberlake.
JBJ’s, built in 2024, was the first ground-up development on Lower Broadway since 2018 and is the second largest venue on the strip, according to Urban.
“It’s just an extremely unique asset ... an opportunity to acquire a truly generational and trophy asset,” Urban said. “It was an expensive build. ... It’s just expensive real estate, [JBJ’s expects] to do significant sales there to [cover its] rent.”
Nashville has seen at least one other big-ticket sale of a bar. A 24,646-square-foot building leased by a triple-net tenant, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, at 322 Broadway, traded for $75 million in December, according to CoStar data.