The Gulch's suspended luxury sidewalk--reanimiated by a new funding scheme--is still a bridge too far

It's back. The Mayor's audaciously opulent pedestrian bridge--which is actually a terraced sidewalk suspended across Gulch train tracks by cables--is back. And it now has a higher price tag than it did last winter (up to $18 million from $16 million), when the proposal went down in flames in Metro Council due to Hizzoner's attempt to raid the funds dedicated to bridge and sidewalk maintenance, endangering the upkeep and installment of routine sidewalks everywhere else. Jerry Maynard jumped in to request a deferral of the bill, which probably averted an embarrassing trouncing for the Mayor. Reluctant project sponsor, Erica Gilmore, agreed to defer.

Rather than relying on the council this time, Hizzoner took his case straight to The Gulch's business and residential community under the banner "Connect Nashville." At last count, the Gulch had 2,000 residents, mind you, but somehow connecting them to downtown constitutes "Connect[ing] Nashville".

On a parallel note: the Mayor skipped a packed townhall meeting last month in North Nashville called "Nashville Unites" regarding police militarism and brutality in African American communities. That Jeff St. meeting was focused on bringing Nashville together for positive change. But the Mayor could not make time for that meeting. Somehow he made time for the "Connect Nashville" meeting, despite the fact it had nothing to do with bringing Nashville together. He would rather connect than unite.

He always has been a risk-averse Mayor more focused on new and neat capital projects than on messy interaction with dissatisfied constituents. And his comments indicated that he was right at home at The Gulch pep rally:

The pedestrian bridge would serve as a critical link in that network of walkable, bikeable paths. It's the difference between the Gulch being included in the vision of a better downtown or not .... For pedestrians the Gulch is virtually isolated from downtown, and the pedestrian bridge would solve that. It would also serve as a destination itself, much like a park. It would attract people to relax or to be entertained with green space and seating areas. It should not be a plain straight bridge when it can serve a much greater purpose.

What a departure from the North Capitol community meetings on the new Sounds ballpark plan, where the Mayor's representatives and Metro planners barely even addressed the community's auto traffic concerns. Despite the fact that many of us here want to see a real dedication to complete streets (which integrate safe walkability and bikeability) at First Tennessee Park, the Mayor's forces bulldozed through our concerns to get quick approval for the development so that he can throw out the first pitch next April 17 when the Sounds take the field for the first time. But when it comes to the Gulch and approval of a luxury sidewalk, complete streets are critical.

The Mayor's other point--that the sidewalk would be be more park or greenspace than sidewalk--is a hard sell. Greenspace-starved Jefferson Street in North Nashville could use a park-over to minimize the blighting effects of the interstate that cuts through neighborhoods (our lone pedestrian bridge reflects that blight) Park-overs are generally super-sized land bridges, not pedestrian sidewalks with a few places to sit. To ask us to believe that Mayor Dean is creating a park with a sidewalk is an insult to our intelligence and to real park-overs everywhere.

Hizzoner's brave new proposal is not to raise taxes but to dedicate the taxes already collected from business and property owners to the project.

So, is this proposal any different than the first? Not really. Mayor Dean is merely robbing Peter to pay Paul. The bridge funding plan really is a gimmick, catalyzed by smoke and mirrors. It is budgetary sleight of hand, making it seem like no one gets hurt.

In his Gulch speech, the Mayor defended spending the money on the new Gulch sidewalk insisting that it would promote growth downtown whose benefits would then trickle down to suburban Davidson County. He encouraged Gulch residents to argue that point with critics of the plan. It is the same argument he lobs to promote lavishing public funds--without raising taxes, but with diminished Metro budget returns--on any of his big ticket capital items downtown.

With a sufficient number of sexy downtown builds to judge now, the question we should be asking ourselves is, "Do you feel the benefits trickling in yet?" From where I sit in North Nashville, I'm not seeing benefits that serve citizens trickling into Salemtown. Libraries and community centers are still on restricted hours. Schools in the area want for resources. I have to wonder when our brush pile will be picked up, proper bus stops will be installed and pot holes will be fixed. So, why should I support a luxury sidewalk for tourist-oriented downtown if North Nashville does not get one, too?

The taxes that would have otherwise gone to help fund services that all of us benefit from are going to be held in abeyance to pay for infrastructure enjoyed only by Gulch residents and the tourists who frequent the hotels and downtown hot spots. Could near North Nashville (or any other urban ring neighborhood) get the same deal? Could our taxes be withheld from the Metro budget to build a luxurious pedestrian bridge even without the same concentration of tourists enjoyed by the Gulch?

I doubt it. Karl Dean would not make the offer to any neighborhood outside downtown that does not have the cash flow in hand. Dedicating these funds is a net tax break for the Gulch: the buying power of their revenues gets a bump with this assist from Karl Dean. So, again, why should I support Metro's latest gilded excess designed to indulge downtown's bloated elite class? Rather than expressing the avarice of trickle-down benefits, why can't the Mayor spread the wealth around liberally? Why can't Gulch land owners and merchants continue to kick in their share of revenues for the benefit of us all or be decent enough to leverage their own tax increase to pay for this sidewalk?

The Mayor's argument that he will not be raiding Metro's bridges and sidewalks fund--as he proposed to do last winter--is moot. The fact that it took an embarrassing defeat of one of Mayor Dean's more titillating capital projects for him to kick in money for ordinary sidewalks in neighborhoods should tell you what you need to know about him: he does not care about communities beyond those that attract tourists, beyond those with the money to finance campaigns.

So, Karl Dean is going to start working to peel off votes of CMs who previously expressed opposition, likely with promises of future spending on neighborhoods in various districts. He seems already to have peeled off one CM who shouted the loudest against the bridge last winter: Charlie Tygard, who has always crumbled at the slightest hint of giving tax breaks to developers anyway.

Bridge or no bridge there is a silver lining. The positive takeaway from the coarseness of this plan is the insight of what it takes the get this Mayor to consider spending money on infrastructure outside of downtown: vocal, organized, sometimes angry opposition. There is no courthouse good will absent the pressure to make him care. Neighborhood leaders have to stay well-organized to stop not just the actual bulldozers but the virtual ones, too.

6 important questions I would ask planners of a new Sulphur Dell ballpark

These are questions I am hoping will be answered at next week's community meeting on a new Sulphur Dell ballpark sponsored by Metro Planning. They are in no particular order:

1. Please tell us how you are going to incorporate the idea of "Complete Streets" (that is, making streets safe for all forms of transportation besides cars) into the ballpark development.





Complete streets at Fenway:
2 sidewalks, 3 planters & 1 rain garden!

• Karl Dean paid lip service to Complete Streets consistently throughout his tenure. He should not have a problem demonstrating that the redevelopment around the Sulphur Dell site will place limits on auto traffic while installing amenities for bicycle and pedestrian traffic. In their stories on Dean's ballpark designs, the news media is fond of dropping the factoid that the Mayor is a big Red Sox fan. If Dean fails to include complete streets in his design, would it be too much for the media to point to redevelopments around Boston's Fenway Park that have aggressively incorporated Complete Streets and to ask about the lack of consistency at Sulphur Dell?


2. How does a new Sulphur Dell fit alongside the North Nashville Community Plan?


• Pick your plan. 2002: traffic calming along the major roads and a diversity of housing stock to attract diverse groups of residents including lower density options. 2010: parking solutions for busy urban corridors, leaving flood plain undeveloped, conserving green space, restricting taller buildings to major corridors. The community has a clear track record of expressing how they would prefer growth to be managed rather than be permitted to run amuck. A new ballpark plan should be consistent and sensitive to already formulated community plans, which represent the most significant democratic brake on the power of money and on Johnny-come-lately political influence.


3. What measures are taken to incorporate flood mitigation into this ballpark plan? What will be the impact on the North Nashville neighborhoods of Sulphur Dell flood mitigation in the event of another catastrophic flood?


• This is a simple equation: the old Sulphur Dell flooded because the ballpark sat on flood plain. In May 2010 the area flooded again. Metro plans to do what it tries to prohibit Nashvillians from doing since 2010: build on flood plain. If they do not take measures for mitigation, the new Sulphur Dell will likely be inundated in a catastrophe. If they do mitigate future floods, the water will have to go somewhere. The most obvious place it will go is higher into the surrounding neighborhoods.


4. What is the mass transit plan for the North Capitol area to MetroCenter on game and event days/nights at a new ballpark? If the only plan is to build more parking for car owners on site, what plans do you have for alleviating overflow parking and congestion in the nearby neighborhoods?


• Parking is already becoming a huge challenge with the rapid wave of mixed-use developments sweeping the area, including massive apartment complexes. The stadium plan includes even more mixed-use residential along with the entertainment complex itself. The strain on on-street parking, our primary mode of parking, will only grow more intense. If the Mayor is committed to Complete Streets in more than just words, Jefferson Street will become a choke point of cars, bikes and people without a mass transit strategy that he has yet to divulge (if he has one).


5. Besides uncertain, pie-in-the-sky predictions of local job growth with new businesses around a new ballpark, what job strategies do you have for hiring people from North Nashville for every phase from construction to team operations?


• Watchdogs of another of Mayor Dean's immense capital projects, the Music City Center, discovered during the construction phase that Hizzoner did not follow through on promises to extend contracts to local companies and that jobs created by MCC looked lousy. The planners of a new ballpark should have to explain why North Nashville can expect more from the development than Music City Center offered our community.


6. What commitments can we get from the Nashville Sounds baseball club that they will provide programs and service opportunities for North Nashville youth (for example, inner city baseball training programs)?


• I am not aware of anything that the Sounds are working on with neighborhoods around Greer Stadium. North Nashville needs the ball club to commit to be more involved here.

Those are six I have off the top of my head and a good start toward formulating other important questions. Look forward to hearing from others who are concerned about our quality of life.


UPDATE:  Nashville Scene reporter Steven Hale gets Metro Planning to explain why they would schedule a community meeting on the ballpark in the middle of a weekday afternoon when most people cannot attend the meeting. Planning's response to Hale indicates to me that this meeting may be more of a pitch of a done deal to the community and less of an invitation to influence the ballpark plan:

This was the first meeting Metro and the State could schedule that could work for all of the speakers, and we wanted to get the conversation started.

For those unable to attend, we plan to tape the meeting so that they can view the presentation online and make comments and ask questions. We also hope to offer more community meetings as this process continues to give additional opportunities for community questions and comments.

So, there is a slate of speakers and they are going to tape for the "benefit" of those who cannot attend. It does not sound like to me that they are enlisting the community's participation in the formulation of this plan. In fact, it is reasonable to assume that since the unnamed speakers' attendance is more important than the community's attendance, the plan has been agreed upon between Metro and the State without reference to community planning. Yesterday in an email exchange with Planning's Craig Owensby about the meeting I asked him whether such a perception was correct. I received no response from him on that particular question.

A Jane's Walk in Nashville

Some Salemtown leaders organized the first Jane's Walk in Nashville on May 5 in North Nashville. We joined groups in over 30 communities across America who marched to honor one of the more influential activists in community-organizing and urban-planning history. Because of the high chances of rain, short notice and some no-shows our group was of modest size, but we traveled from Morgan Park on 5th Avenue North to Bicentennial Mall State Park on Jefferson Street and 6th Avenue North, where we had a picnic and even managed to chat about Jane Jacobs' legacy for community-based planning and walkable neighborhoods. There was also a frank discussion about the vehicular impact of a Sulphur Dell ballpark on North End neighborhoods. Eventually, the focus became activities for the kids who made the trek too.

On the way home, we waited over 5 minutes to cross back over Jefferson Street, as traffic flew past us at dangerous speeds. And when some drivers did eventually allow us to enter the crosswalk other drivers did not immediately yield, but sped up to try to beat us through the crosswalk. One driver yelled at us to get out of the street. It was a glaring example of how automobile-oriented growth destroys accessibility and complete streets. It expressed Jane's lessons on the irony of building bigger roads that reduce options for other modes of travel and that merely attract even more dangerous car traffic. There is little on Jeff Street between Rosa Parks Boulevard and the Cumberland River that dampens speed or lowers the volume of cars. Sidewalks along that area are narrow and place pedestrians frighteningly close to speeding automobiles.

It was a modest effort, but from small things big things one day come. Hopefully, Jane's Walks in Nashville will grow in future years and bring more attention on the need for complete, welcoming and thoughtfully-planned streets.

Nashville's first ever "Jane's Walk" this Saturday in North Nashville

On Saturday a small group of North Nashvillians will meet at Morgan Park (corner of 5th Av N and Hume) at 10:30 a.m. and walk to Bicentennial Mall State Park (corner of 6th Av N and Jefferson)  in commemoration of the life and influence of urban activist Jane Jacobs. After the walk, we will have a picnic (bring your own food and non-alcoholic beverages) and engage in kid-friendly activities like kite-flying and chalk art. The event will end at 12:30 p.m.

Our community has a strong history of holding kid-friendly events. One of those events we called "Kid Klatch," which has been operating off and on for the past two years among Salemtown and Germantown parents, their with pre-school and school-age children and other adults who are children-at-heart. We tend to gather at various places in our community to underscore the importance of the local community and the priority of Metro programs and infrastructure to support families.

This year our first Kid Klatch supports Jane's Walk, which has grown into an international event but has yet to be held in Nashville as far as we can tell.

There are two Jane's Walk organizations, one in the US and one in Canada (Jacobs lived both in New York City and in Toronto).

What Saturday's event is:

Jane’s Walk is a series of free neighbourhood walking tours that helps put people in touch with their environment and with each other, by bridging social and geographic gaps and creating a space for cities to discover themselves.  Since its inception in 2007, Jane’s Walk has happened in cities across North America, and is growing internationally.

Jane’s Walk honours the legacy and ideas of urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs who championed the interests of local residents and pedestrians over a car-centered approach to planning. Jane’s Walk helps knit people together into a strong and resourceful community, instilling belonging and encouraging civic leadership.

Who Jane Jacobs was:

Jane Jacobs was a community organizer who helped save her neighborhoods from destruction by the hands outside interests.  She invited everyone to see how cities actually work through experience, to go out and see what makes a neighborhood thrive, or to see what makes a neighborhood struggle.  And she opposed those who insisted on the same solutions to fix the unique challenges in cities.

We honor Jane Jacobs by helping people leave the isolation of their homes to come together to experience areas of their city outside of the automobile.  Our mission is to help people walk, observe, and connect with their built environment.

Photo credit: Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images

There is a point of contact between Ms. Jacobs' writing and our event in the shadow of Capitol Hill. Ms. Jacobs once mentioned Nashville in a 1958 Forbes piece called "Downtown is for People":

What will the projects look like? They will be spacious, parklike, and uncrowded. They will feature long green vistas. They will be stable and symmetrical and orderly. They will be clean, impressive, and monumental. They will have all the attributes of a well kept, dignified cemetery.

And each project will look very much like the next one: the Golden Gateway office and apartment center planned for San Francisco; the Civic Center for New Orleans; the Lower Hill auditorium and apartment project for Pittsburgh; the Convention Center for Cleveland; the Quality Hill offices and apartments for Kansas City; the downtown scheme for Little Rock; the Capitol Hill project for Nashville. From city to city the architects' sketches conjure up the same dreary scene; here is no hint of individuality or whim or surprise, no hint that here is a city with a tradition and flavor all its own.

These projects will not revitalize downtown; they will deaden it. For they work at cross-purposes to the city. They banish the street. They banish its function. They banish its variety.

We want to celebrate a walkable North Nashville and show our local children a fun time in an urban environment. While Jane's Walk happens once a year, Kid Klatch events will continue throughout the season as weather permits.

Road trippin'

Nashville's mean streets:

One of every two county roads is littered with potholes and is in need of repaving, according to a report provided to Metro Public Works in October. While 47 percent of the county’s roads are in poor condition, just 22 percent are in excellent condition, according to the report.

Public Works officials say they were not caught off guard by the news and have a plan in place to aggressively begin patching potholes across the county next year. But even with a significant increase in the department’s paving budget by Mayor Karl Dean’s administration, Metro continues to fund only a fraction of what is necessary to keep the county’s roads in good shape.

Translation: the Mayor's Office increased the paving budget in the wake of 2010 flood damage but not nearly to the degree (alongside federal funds) that was needed in light of a 1,000 year catastrophe.

While the knock out blow might have been the Great Flood, the Metro budget has been pummeled by cuts since Karl Dean took office. Even when Public Works gets enough money to try to catch up, someone else's department is losing to compensate.

And if we cannot even raise enough money to patch potholes, how can we ever expect to implement complete streets projects that accommodate pedestrian and bicycle traffic in a more sustainable context?

Putting the "Public" in Metro Public Works

I'm late on posting a portion of a very strong letter by West Nashville leader Trish Bolian addressed to the Planning Commission last April on the issue of re-designating streets and making them less pedestrian friendly:

IT SEEMS IMPERATIVE THAT NASHVILLE NEIGHBORHOODS MUST BE AT THE FOREFRONT OF ALL DECISIONS MADE......NOT AN AFTERTHOUGHT THAT GETS BRUSHED ASIDE. NO WONDER RESIDENTS MOVE TO BRENTWOOD AND FRANKLIN. THE MAIN GOAL THERE IS TO SUPPORT AND PROTECT NEIGHBORHOODS. IN NASHVILLE, NEIGHBORHOODS HAVE TO FIGHT TO EVEN PROTECT THEMSELVES.


I have been asking and I will ask again. THERE NEEDS TO BE A STATEMENT IN THIS LISTING AND NAMING OF COLLECTOR STREET THAT IT IS A PLANNING DOCUMENT ONLY. BEFORE CHANGES ARE MADE TO STREETS OR NEIGHBORHOODS THERE MUST BE SOME KIND OF PROCESS TO GET NEIGHBORHOOD INPUT. PLANNING HAS A PROCESS, ZONING HAS A PROCESS. PUBLIC WORKS HAS NONE AND THEIR ACTION (OR INACTION) HAS A TREMENDOUS IMPACT ON NEIGHBORHOODS.

I've found that unless you apply constant community pressure to Public Works they tend to be callous to neighborhood concerns. Trish is right. Neighborhoods should not have muster exceptional numbers at hearings each time they deserve to influence a decision affecting their quality of life.