Bending Monday

Yesterday S-townWife and I took our first trip out to Bells Bend and drove the 5+ mile stretch down the winding dead-end road that is the only access to this beautiful area. We didn't see any of the storied whooping cranes, but I came out no less convinced that if the neighbors here want to keep it green and rural, then an access bridge from West Nashville should not be built and the proposed high-density, out-of-place urbanistic May Town Center development group should not have their way with the land or the local people.





If the pictures or your own trip out there do not impress, then go read some Wendell Berry, and free your mind.


UPDATE: Here's what one Bells Bend resident told this morning's Tennessean about the empty, undeliverable promises of developers:

"I look at MetroCenter. I look at 100 Oaks. And I look at other places guaranteed to bring in lots of money," said Sherry Knott, who lives in Tidwell Hollow in the bend. "It has not turned out the way it was marketed."

Taxpayers would be the ones gambling if they build what could be a $50 million bridge across the Cumberland with 90 percent federal dollars, she said.

That's just the beginning of the infrastructure that would be required if the development is built and a Cool Springs-like building frenzy follows, she said.

Talk of putting hundreds of acres of the May Town Center land in a conservation easement to protect it from development doesn't impress some residents, who note that most of that is in a floodplain anyway.