Inside CAA’s new Nashville office, where a listening lounge, sports bar, and employee dressing rooms are the amenities

For a workplace redesign, it’s hard to imagine a project that would need to serve as many types of stakeholders as the new Creative Artists Agency (CAA) office opening in Nashville this July. As one of the world’s leading sports and entertainment agencies, CAA caters to a wide range of outsized personalities, from NBA legends to touring musicians to college football coaches to You Tubers. But it’s also regularly bringing in new, young, unsigned talent, and often their parents or family members. And, of course, this new office in Nashville is also a 9-to-5 workplace for 160 employees, from the hotshot agents signing multimillion-dollar deals to the 23-year-old assistants changing out of their office shoes after work to go cover the concert of a potential client. [Photo: CannonDesign] To meet these very different users, CAA decided to design spaces for all of them. Beyond workspaces and offices, there are private conference rooms, a music listening lounge, a sports bar, wellness rooms, two speakeasies, and a central social hub. Whether an agent is hosting a longtime client for an informal catch-up, a young executive is trying to bring an even younger talent into the company roster, or a client is in town to prepare for a big campaign or tour, CAA’s new office was designed to offer a variety of spaces and themed areas to accommodate their needs. “We just wanted to show, through programs and rooms, that you could be comfortable here,” says Howie Nuchow, CAA managing director and sports co-head. A very Nashville office CAA worked with the architecture firm CannonDesign over the past several years to bring this idea to life. They drew inspiration from the city itself, where CAA has had an office for more than 35 years. The new office covers 75,000 square feet across two floors in a building that’s part of the Nashville Yards development, a 19-acre mixed-use development in downtown Nashville, and the spaces inside celebrate the city