Songy Highroads

Songy Highroads, which goes by SHR, is an Atlanta-area real estate investor and developer whose principals formed their first company in 1992. It moved its headquarters to Atlanta in 1998, and its main office now sits on Haynes Bridge Road in Alpharetta, with regional offices in Fort Myers, Fla., and Baton Rouge, La. SHR buys office buildings, hotels and apartments that need heavy renovation, repositions them, and also builds ground-up on prominent sites. It says it has acquired or developed more than 5 million sq ft and $2 billion across 50-plus investments. SHR is co-developer with Matthews Southwest Hospitality of the $398 million, 444-room Signia by Hilton Savannah convention hotel.

The firm operates under three names, and knowing which one is which makes the rest legible. SHR handles office and hotel work. SHR Resi handles multifamily. Songy Capital Partners, or S-Cap, is the primary capital source behind both.

SHR Resi is the newest of the three, formed as a wholly owned subsidiary in 2021 with its own chairman. It has since reported seven multifamily projects totaling more than 1,250 units and over $288 million of capitalization — a standing start to a meaningful platform in a few years.

The founding thesis is still visible in how the firm buys. David B. Songy, Perry M. Waughtal and Todd W. Nocerini started out acquiring office buildings below replacement cost, an opening created by overbuilding in the 1980s. The modern version of that discipline is urban-infill acquisition where either operating performance or the physical building is underwater, plus ground-up work on strategically located unimproved sites.

Hospitality has become the largest share of the portfolio, and it is branded rather than independent: Signia by Hilton Savannah, Hyatt Place Centennial Park, Hyatt Centric Buckhead, Hyatt House Nashville, Hyatt Regency Houston Galleria and Margaritaville Lake Conroe.

Houston office holdings are substantial on their own — Galleria Place I and II, Wells Fargo Plaza and 777 Post Oak Boulevard. In Atlanta, 1850 Howell Mill and Arlowe Townhomes sit on the list.

Headline portfolio figures published by the firm run to 50-plus projects, 3,000-plus hotel keys, roughly 1,500 multifamily units, 4.6 million-plus square feet of office and $3 billion total invested. Worth noting for anyone citing these: the firm’s own history and overview pages give somewhat different versions of the square footage and total-invested numbers, so the figures should be confirmed directly before being used in print.

The capital relationships page names Goldman Sachs, The Carlyle Group, Morgan Stanley, MetLife, Hyatt and Hilton, though it does not describe the nature of each relationship.

Beyond the Alpharetta corporate office at 11605 Haynes Bridge Road, regional offices are listed in Fort Myers, Florida and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Leadership is compact — a chairman and co-founder, a president who is also a co-founder, a chief operating officer, a principal, and a separate chairman for the SHR Resi arm.