Oracle has officially broken ground on its $4.5 billion world headquarters on Nashville's East Bank, the largest investment in the city's history and the single largest jobs commitment Tennessee has ever seen, with shovels going into the ground on the afternoon of November 10 after more than five years of planning.
The campus will bring about 8,500 jobs to about 78 acres of Cumberland River frontage directly across the water from Germantown, where 23 buildings will ring a six-acre lake alongside an amphitheater, a 120-room hotel, a riverfront park, and a pedestrian bridge over the river, with the first of them opening in 2030 and the rest following by the end of 2031.
Foster + Partners designed the campus, and the plans ring the lake with about 20 office buildings holding 759,838 square feet of office space. The rest go to a lake house, retail and dining pavilions, and the amphitheater, set among the offices with footbridges and landscaped streams running between the blocks and solar panels covering the roofs.
The campus will hold 11 retail spaces, and the pavilions open onto 16.5 acres of public green space, including a two-acre park, tied together by a 2.1-mile greenway loop. More than 1,900 trees will be planted and more than 1,000 boulders placed across the grounds, and the buildings will go up in 730,000 square feet of cross-laminated mass timber, with LEED Gold certification planned across the entire campus.
All of it replaces a swath of former industrial and warehouse buildings bordered by Cowan Street, Marine Drive, and Waterside Drive, and those buildings are coming down now, with Turner Construction and Archer Western building the campus as a joint venture. "We really believe that there is no other corporate campus in the world that will look like this when it's finished," Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia said. "You won't recognize it as a corporate campus, and that's been the goal all along."
The hotel is Nobu Hotel Nashville, the 120-room hotel and restaurant Oracle announced with Nobu Hospitality in October 2025. Foster + Partners designed it as well, and it is expected to deliver in 2028, two years ahead of the first offices. It will sit on the east portion of the campus, in the public zone along Cowan Street, with a Nobu restaurant on the lobby level, a lobby café, a spa and fitness center, and meeting and event spaces. An infinity-edged rooftop pool will face the Nashville skyline, with food and drink served on the roof. The pedestrian bridge will land beside the hotel.
That bridge is part of the $175 million Oracle is putting into public infrastructure around the campus, covering the span, a public park, greenway connections, a pump station, and street improvements, none of which the company will keep. The Foster + Partners-designed Oracle Pedestrian Bridge will run 16 feet wide and about 860 feet across the Cumberland, from River North into Germantown's Neuhoff District, with Hawkins Partners on the landscape and Schlaich Bergermann Partner on the structure. It is expected around 2028 and will tie into the River North Greenway, which recently opened along the same bank. "We're intent on building an East Bank for Nashvillians," Mayor Freddie O'Connell said.
Downriver, the new Nissan Stadium anchors the district, and the Super Bowl will be played there in 2030, the same year the first offices open, so Oracle means to have much of the campus accessible by then. Beside the stadium, The Fallon Company's Eastpoint is rising now, set to deliver in 2030, with the 600-room hotel Fallon unveiled last month expected that December. The state's new Tennessee Performing Arts Center is expected on the East Bank around 2030 as well, and Metro's own East Bank district is rising toward the same year.
The road here runs back to 2019, when Gov. Bill Lee met with Oracle's leadership while the state was recruiting companies to Tennessee. Metro Council approved a deal in 2021 built around about $1.2 billion of investment and roughly 8,500 jobs. The jobs number held, and the investment has nearly quadrupled, to $4.5 billion.
Nashville's health care industry is the reason the executives gave for picking the city, and Sicilia pointed to the company's work with Nashville General Hospital, Quorum Health, and Meharry Medical College, along with internships for students at Nashville's HBCUs. Clay Magouyrk, Oracle's other CEO, grew up in the Memphis area and spoke about how much the state has grown since. "This company will change the trajectory of this city and this state forever," Lee said.
Oracle is holding free open houses on November 12 and 13 from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 2141 Waterside Drive, where visitors can walk through 3D models, meet the Oracle team, and try the company's artificial intelligence tools. A community celebration follows on November 14 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with live music from Thomas Rhett and friends, complimentary food trucks, children's activities, and Formula One experiences.
The Nobu hotel and the pedestrian bridge are due first in 2028, the first office buildings will follow in 2030, and the lake, the amphitheater, and the riverfront park will fill in around them by the end of 2031.