One Nashville company owns seven straight parcels around the Gadsden Dutch Bros site

GADSDEN – A single Nashville-registered company owns seven consecutive parcels in one block at the eastern foot of the Meighan Boulevard bridge, county property records show, including the vacant lot where the city has approved a sales tax incentive for a Dutch Bros Coffee drive-through.

The owner of record on all seven is Gad City Partners LLC, listed at 3841 Green Hills Village Drive, Suite 400, Nashville.

The parcels run in an unbroken sequence, 15-02-03-3-000-096 through 15-02-03-3-000-102. The lot at 300 N. Hood Ave., across from the Waffle House, is 099, sitting in the middle of the run.

The incentive covers that one parcel. The company owns the six around it.

What do the property records show?

Every one of the seven carries the same owner name and the same Nashville mailing address in the Etowah County Revenue Commissioner’s parcel records.

Consecutively numbered parcels in a single block are typically adjacent to one another. GadsdenThrive has not yet confirmed the street address of each of the other six.

What did the city agree to?

The council approved the economic development agreement July 28.

Under it, the developer receives 2.5 percent of the city’s 5 percent sales tax collected at the site, for up to five years or until $500,000 has been paid, whichever comes first. Those terms were described by John Moore, the city’s director of commercial development and community affairs, and reported by the Gadsden Messenger and the Anniston Star.

In plain terms, the city keeps half its own sales tax from that location and returns the other half to the developer. Nothing is paid up front. If the store sells well the cap is reached sooner and the rebate ends early. If it sells slowly the five years run out and the city keeps the difference.

GadsdenThrive has requested a copy of the agreement itself. City Clerk Jennifer Smith said the request must go through the city’s formal public records process, and provided the request form and the records policy adopted as Resolution R-04-22 in January 2022.

Who is Gad City Partners LLC?

The company is registered in Alabama under entity number 000540347, with the same Green Hills Village Drive address in Nashville as its principal address. Its registered agent is Corporation Service Company, a national agent service used by companies with no office of their own in the state.

That much is ordinary. Commercial developers routinely form a separate limited liability company for a single project, and an out-of-state owner hiring a registered agent is standard practice.

What the filing does not show is who the members or managers are.

The name points at Gadsden. “Gad City” reads as an entity built around this location.

How long has it owned the land?

Etowah County Revenue Commissioner Becky Nordgren confirmed that parcel 099 has been in the company’s name since 2020. The owner of record in 2019 was Willodene Freeman.

The lot has sat vacant since, roughly six years.

Acquisition dates for the other six are not in the assessment record. Those come from the deeds, held in the Probate Judge’s record room, where they can be viewed in person at no cost or purchased online.

What is Dutch Bros?

Dutch Bros is a drive-through coffee chain headquartered in Grants Pass, Oregon. It sells specialty coffee, energy drinks and blended drinks, with no dining room in its standard format.

The chain opened its first Alabama store in Decatur in August 2023 and has since expanded to eight Alabama cities, including three in the Huntsville area.

What questions does this raise?

The single-lot version of this is a routine development incentive, and a modest one. When Rural King opened at the Midtown Shopping Center this summer, the city approved a $7.75 million sales tax rebate. This cap is $500,000.

The seven-parcel version is a different question.

When were the other six parcels acquired, and from whom?

What did the assembly cost in total?

Is anything planned for the other six, or is the drive-through the whole project?

Did the council know the applicant controlled the surrounding block when it voted?

City officials have described the Dutch Bros deal as a possible first piece of an ongoing development relationship. What the rest of that relationship looks like has not been laid out publicly.

How can I check this myself?

The Etowah County Parcel Viewer is free and searchable by owner name. Choose Search Tools, then By Attribute, set the layer to Parcels and enter an owner name.

The Revenue Commissioner’s office is on the ground floor of the Etowah County Courthouse at 800 Forrest Ave. The appraisal office can be reached at 256-549-8114. Deed records are kept by the Probate Judge’s office in the same building.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns 300 N. Hood Ave.? Gad City Partners LLC, according to Etowah County property records.

How many parcels does the company own there? Seven consecutive parcels, 096 through 102 in the 15-02-03-3 block.

What did the city approve? A rebate of 2.5 percent of the city’s 5 percent sales tax at the site, for up to five years or until $500,000 is reimbursed.

When was it approved? July 28, 2026.

Where is the company based? Its principal address is in Nashville, Tennessee.

Where is Dutch Bros based? Grants Pass, Oregon.

Read more Gadsden and Etowah County news from GadsdenThrive.