Clay Adkisson MAUD ’16 and Will Rosenthal MAUD ’16 received ULI Nashville’s 2025 Excellence in Development Award for their project The Wilder, Nashville’s first dedicated mixed-income housing project. As masterplanner, architect, and developer on The Wilder, the pair was able to deliver high-quality affordable housing creatively through its adaptive reuse of an old Super 8 motel.

This award-winning project is part of a larger, district-scale grassroots masterplan that the pair is leading with local neighborhood citizens and community leaders to revitalize an underrepresented urban core neighborhood in close proximity to downtown Nashville. Through their integrated masterplanning and real estate development company, Openworks, which the pair created as an independent study project while in studio together at the GSD, Adkisson and Rosenthal have been pioneering new programs and partnerships for mixed-income and affordable housing development in Nashville, one of the leading real estate markets in the country, which is facing the most extreme development pressures in the US.

In addition to running Openworks and several other development and construction enterprises, Adkisson and Rosenthal serve as Assistant Professors of Practice at The University of Tennessee, teaching community development and urban design.

Watch ULI Nashville’s video about The Wilder.

Photo courtesy of Clay Adkisson and Will Rosenthal.