Would it kill the Nashville Sounds to add some pride of place to their new scoreboard?

The Nashville Sounds introduced then new guitar-shaped scoreboard last week with the statement, "We listen to our fans. Keeping the beloved guitar-shaped scoreboard is just part of our commitment to our supporters and to the city of Nashville."

Apparently, they don't listen to the same fans that they relied on before getting council approval for a new ballpark. In the run-up to the council vote, the team's ownership, the Mayor's Office and the design team rarely mentioned the ballpark without the name "Sulphur Dell". "Friends of Sulphur Dell" was their social media echo chamber. When the Sounds encouraged people to lobby the council for the ballpark they announced: "Come Support the Sulphur Dell Ballpark!" and used the name to rationalize the North Capitol area as the best place for baseball.

Once they received council approval, the partners in the project rarely mentioned "Sulphur Dell" again. The Friends of Sulphur Dell page fell silent immediately after the naming rights to First Tennessee were announced, which suggests to me that few in their group were interested in fighting for the historic name. Team owners have since refused to put "Sulphur Dell" anywhere close to "First Tennessee."

So I did some tinkering with the Sounds new scoreboard to see whether adding the statement "at Historic Sulphur Dell" would be that much of a drag on the First Tennessee brand:

I made an unobtrusive addition to the Sounds' planned scoreboard.

Bringing the name of the location of the ballpark below the neck of the guitar in smaller letters does nothing to take away from the primary name "First Tennessee Park". It is clearly below and thus secondary to the bank's brand. It even makes the box score board look aesthetically more balanced. This risk of adding "at Historic Sulphur Dell" to the guitar in this way risks nothing as far as I can see.

As of 07/04/2014

Meanwhile, there are a couple of benefits to adding the geographical referent. The Sounds and the Mayor's Office created popular expectations that the new ballpark would be an extension of the historic home of baseball in Nashville. The project signs currently up at the construction site still say "Sulphur Dell". A lot of people supported a new ballpark because they believe in the idea of Sulphur Dell. Including that historic moniker on the new scoreboard is a way of keeping promises that were implicitly made. It would be at best bad faith and at worst an encouragement to forget (or to never learn) for Sounds owners to exclude "at Historic Sulphur Dell."

The other benefit that I see to keeping Sulphur Dell visible in the branding of the new ballpark comes from F. Kaid Benfield, who says that people gravitate to older places because they feel grounded by them. Benfield argues that a continuity that people see in historic places gives them a sense of well-being and connectedness. We no longer have the object of old Sulphur Dell. That ballpark was torn down long ago. But adding the name as a geographical referent reminds Nashville that baseball has been played there for a long time. Hence, the name represents an arc of time into which people can be rooted in the present. Downplaying the Sulphur Dell name is akin to downplaying the sense of place and time Nashvillians (and particularly North Nashvillians) have in reference to our historic national pastime.

I understand that a lot of people are invested in a guitar-shaped scoreboard precisely for this reason: that it provides continuity with their past experiences of Greer Stadium. In my opinion, including Historic Sulphur Dell to the scoreboard is just as important and vital as the shape of the scoreboard is. We should keep in mind that Sulphur Dell existed long before Greer Stadium did.

Friends of Sulphur Doh!

Their weak-kneed response makes me think they weren't ever
authentic friends of the Dell at all.

Nearly 24 hours after the Nashville Sounds announced a new name for the ballpark in the Sulphur Dell area that will not include the historic name "Sulphur Dell", Friends of Sulphur Dell finally responded to the news that they hoped yesterday would be something regarding ballpark design.

Given that the Facebook group has operated like a well-oiled PR machine since the Mayor announced last Fall that Sulphur Dell was in, the long period of silence suggests to me that the naming news may have sent them reeling a bit. But this is the best they can muster this morning:

It will be Sulphur Dell Stadium [sic] to many of us...First Tennessee Stadium [sic] to the rest, but either way, baseball will be played there...and we'll be there to enjoy it!

Wow. That's it? Maybe to be more honest they should break into groups of "Friends of Sulphur Dell" and "Friends of First Tennessee". Either way, this is kind of a mess for the group that insisted to reporters that it was legit grassroots and not just astroturf.

Friends of Sulphur Dell could encourage some kind of debate so as not to look like complete tools of the Mayor's Office, lately left behind in the bid to bring bankers on board the ballpark bandwagon. But maybe they never really cared for our local history at all. If this was always more about bringing baseball here for economic development (what other reason could it be now?) then taking the name Friends of Sulphur Dell was bad faith, false expression and phony legitimacy.

Breaking: Nashville Sounds owner scrubs the historic title "Sulphur Dell" from the name of the new ballpark

Mayor Karl Dean even gushed:
"Nashville won't make a cent off this!"

Sometimes I really hate having my healthy cynicism about people in power confirmed, but it was this morning. Wealthy real estate developer and owner of the Nashville Sounds Frank Ward just announced the naming rights of the new ballpark at the Sulphur Dell site. The name announced is, "First Tennessee Ballpark, Home of the Nashville Sounds" (named after the bank).

Mr. Ward and First Tennessee seem to have agreed to purge the historical moniker "Sulphur Dell" completely from the official title of the new ballpark. Obviously, the brand won't stoop to bear the historic context of the area adjacent to my neighborhood.

Looks like I was not exaggerating last week (in reporting the demolition of the state fountain commemorating the old sulphur spring that gave birth to a city) when I intimated that developers are willing to wipe away history to squeeze a few more bucks to add to their obscene piles of cash. I keep looking for the ballpark/mixed-use development team to prove me wrong about my concerns with this agreement, but today's announcement is the latest sign that these folks are willing to use our history as a sales pitch to grease the skids of politics, but they are not necessarily serious about embracing it.

We have been told to trust an accelerated process. We have been preached at over and over by Friends of Sulphur Dell, by the Mayor's Office, by opportunistic Metro Council members, by supporters far and wide that building a new ballpark as quickly as possible without proper public process is the best way of honoring the history of our area and the history of baseball at Sulphur Dell. With one morning press conference Metro, the Nashville Sounds and a bank just wiped all of that away.


UPDATE: Couldn't resist broadcasting this little dig at the now extraneous Friends of Sulphur Dell as it appeared on Twitter

UPDATE: Reporter Steven Hale has a rundown of the questions to ask elected officials and team brass that no other reporters are asking in the wake the ballpark naming kerfuffle. Take note that he cites the comments from Jerry Maynard about baseball "going back to Sulphur Dell". That got me thinking about CM Maynard's other comments employed to get the Mayor's plan passed without proper public input:

In 2008, we formed Friends of Sulphur Dell right here at Farmers Market, with Freddie [O'Connell, president of the Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association, who was standing nearby] and all the neighborhood association and groups,” Maynard said, following the meeting. “And we didn't know if it was going to happen, but we fought hard for Sulphur Dell because this is the birthplace of baseball [in Nashville]. This is where it should be, the neighborhood ballpark.

Reverend Maynard's Sulphur Dell sermons strike me now as hallow and conniving. He has every opportunity now to speak out against the Sounds' decision to exclude Sulphur Dell from the ballpark moniker. I doubt he will say a word against it.

The other thing that strikes me about Hale's observations is how the Mayor places the blame for not leveraging any money for Nashville out of the deal with First Tennessee on the council's vote in favor of the deal:

Mayor Karl Dean's spokeswoman, Bonna Johnson, tells Pith that was part of the deal "just like at LP Field and Bridgestone, and it was in the agreements approved by the Council."

This is not much more than a chicken-shit response from the Mayor's Office. They determined the perimeters and terms of the Sounds deal that was sent to council with the point that any change in terms was a "poison pill" that would destroy it. They set the condensed timeline for approval of the ballpark. They held one community meeting even as Metro Planners promised more than one. They whipped the legislation through the council. They ran the PR campaign from start to finish. The onus is only partly on the weakling council that could not muster a challenge on much of anything to save its life. The Mayor conveniently acts like a strong executive (which is the Metro form of government) when he wants to, but when the heat gets turned up he consistently refuses to take it. Hizzoner's style of governing is to take the credit when it suits him, but to pass the buck when the load starts getting heavy.

The council deserves it's share of responsibility in this stupidity, but make no mistake, the Mayor should assume the lion's share of the blame for any money that could have been made from the naming rights but was lost.

Remember when Mayor Bill Purcell responded to the death of the last Sounds deal by demolishing part of their parking lot to expand a local park? I still marvel at the gumption of that. My sense is that, had he still been Mayor, he would have walked away from this deal with more revenues for public coffers (and even assurances about the Sulphur Dell name) than Karl Dean has.

Talk is cheap. Show me the money!

Three vocal interest groups have taken up the cause of promoting (no questions asked) the Mayor's plan for a new ballpark in the North Capitol/Farmer's Market area of downtown: Friends of Sulphur Dell, the Capitol District and Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership. The first group is basically a Facebook PR sharing website that claims to be grassroots. The second appears to be a bulletin board for real estate industry professionals and developers promoting information that positively effects the housing market (even though it claims to be a "partnership between neighborhoods"). The last is a special interest lobby group for the businesses along the Jefferson Street corridor.

Immediately after these groups enjoyed the moment when the council rolled over without missing the Mayor's beat and voted for the his ballpark plan, the Sounds ball club posted banner advertisements for the chance to buy Sulphur Dell season tickets. It was reported in all the papers:

Sounds announced season tickets availability a month ago.

If these groups really support a new ballpark, then logically, they should step up and encourage their audiences to put deposits down on 2015 tickets, right? We are going to have to pay for this huge capital project, so I would think that these boosters would be pulling out all the stops encouraging people to reserve seats. And it seems to me that their enthusiasm should lead them to harvest the personal anecdotes of those buying tickets and use those stories to promote the Sulphur Dell brand.

However, none of the three are making much of an effort to show the success of their mission after council approval. Outside of linking to news media stories that nebulously claim that tickets are being sold, they are not putting much effort into demonstrating that Sulphur Dell is a popular idea based on high volume pre-sales. Friends of Sulphur Dell seems to have stopped allowing comments on their Facebook page, as if streams of likers sharing news of their seat reservations is either unsuitable or untrue. FOSD comments are now active, so let us see a stream of likers who will confess that they reserved seats in support of economic development on Jefferson Street (it seems that my comments are being disallowed there. Whenever I login to my Facebook account, the comment option disappears).

Wouldn't real friends of Sulphur Dell tout their reserved seats?

If "partners" are buying 2015 season tickets, they are not saying.

Not exactly jumping to advertise Sulphur Dell ticket deposits.

But the FOSD site has always seemed to rely on marching orders from the Mayor's Office rather than on organic, community-based impetus. More curious to me is that the Jeff St merchants group is not even offering the Sounds any free online advertising to help spur ticket sales. Where are those big banners touting Sounds tickets on the JUMP website? How will they ever realize their conjecture that Sulphur Dell will be an economic catalyst if they are not putting their backs into getting their members and their friends to reserve season tickets through the JUMP website?

Some of us have criticized the fact that, under this ballpark plan, the Sounds have relatively little skin in the game. In my opinion, we should also start holding accountable ballpark cheerleaders who are not willing to risk their own hides for this game that they seem so fond of promoting. It is time to put up.

Expect the cynics to accuse us of wanting Sulphur Dell to fail every time we raise questions and concerns out of a sense of honest caution. Well, turnabout is fair play: if they are truly committed to seeing it succeed, then why are they not reserving their seats and helping Nashville start to pay the bills?

When are those on the ballpark bandwagon going to start showing the rest of us just how committed they are to the dream of Sulphur Dell? Where is their faith? What are they waiting for? The Mayor to tell them to do it?

North Gulch gets HCA. West End now has Karl's Bad Cavern

Not too long ago the Hope Gardens neighborhood association went ballistic when Mayor Karl Dean's Music City Center project sent the Greyhound bus terminal packing to an old car dealership in the North Gulch (south of Hope Gardens). In the beginning it was not clear whether the move would be permanent (it eventually turned out not to be) so zealots came out of the woodwork criticizing CM Erica Gilmore for failing to raise more of a stink over the Mayor's plan. One of these critics, who would go on to be a "co-founder" of Friends of Sulphur Dell confided to me in 2010 that he was among of group of people looking for a challenger to run against Ms. Gilmore in 2011 (she won re-election easily).

These same people seemed very quiet to me when in 2011 the North Gulch area was considered as a potential minor league ballpark site, along with Sulphur Dell and the East Bank. Hope Gardens went all in on Sulphur Dell, even though it was not apparent that the North Gulch was any less advantageous, any less walkable for them. In retrospect, I believe it was because the Mayor had already signaled his plans for baseball to return to the Dell, although I see that it is now for much less than historical reasons.

Jump to today where we learn, on the heels of approval of Sulphur Dell as the ballpark site, the latest plan that the North Gulch is going to be used to save the HCA, whose West End Summit plan for two towers and a hotel seemed to have sunk below the surface of the water gathering once again at the bottom of a Midtown crater. The timing of these announcements is looking domino-like: the Sulphur Dell news itself came on the heels of the Mayor's announcement that the Riverfront would be used for something other than a ballpark. This seems to have "grand design" written all over it. However, I wonder how the folk in Hope Gardens are feeling about the new North Gulch plan. I assume that they are relieved that it is not the Greyhound bus terminal they once worried about being stuck with.

Karl's Bad Cavern (formerly the West End Summit site)

And then, there is Midtown. Back in 2012, Karl Dean embraced the West End Summit as if it were his own child:

Slated at an astounding $900,000 million, the project is one of the largest commercial developments in the area's history and is expected to double its current workforce of 1000 within five years, making it also one of the largest economic development projects in the area.

"HCA could have gone out of state for these headquarters but instead chose to grow jobs here in Nashville," said Mayor Karl Dean at an interview. "This project speaks volumes about the vitality of our West End corridor, the talent of our workforce and the vibrancy of our city."

The Mayor's Office issued a statement yesterday that said nothing of what he now thinks of the "vitality of the West End corridor", and it frankly sounds like a relieved, "Whew!"

"We appreciate that HCA is committed to keeping this $200 million investment, the 2,000 jobs and these two headquarters in Davidson County .... HCA has been a great partner throughout this process, and we look forward to working with them as they move forward."

But you can bet that the move of this troubled project to the Gulch (not to mention building an amphitheater for Martha Ingram on the Riverfront) likely had a lot to do with the ballpark ending up at Sulphur Dell. Even with a cavern still sitting on West End, our Mayor is an acknowledged real estate maximizer.

My post-game wrap on the Sulphur Dell second reading

Emotions were certainly running high at last night's Metro Council public hearing on the Mayor's deal cut with the state and two developers, including the wealthy owner of the Nashville Sounds. If you had asked me beforehand where I thought the emotional outpouring would have come I would have bet my entire concession-stand outlay--including my beer money--that it would have been from the gallery, not from the floor of the council itself.

But the fireworks that have gone off during some public hearings--like those that ignited during the debate over the state fairgrounds plan a few years ago--never appeared from the gallery. Most of those who spoke on the question spoke in favor of the ballpark, but most of those seemed to be business interests that the Mayor's Office would have encouraged to come out. Only two association representatives (Buena Vista and Hope Gardens) from the affected neighborhoods spoke in favor. I did not see anyone from either Germantown or Salemtown associations at the podium.

CM Jerry Maynard previously characterized supporters of Sulphur Dell as a movement, which sounds dramatically populist. But where were they all on the most important night that citizens could theoretically have influence in speaking out? The booster group Friends of Sulphur Dell seems more like a gaggle of Facebook friends linking news stories than it does a movement organized for social change, but I was shocked that they did not pack the gallery with their red shirts. I saw a couple of rows of them toward the back, but even fewer at the podium. I kept waiting for dozens of them to start streaming in through the council doors from the mezzanine after Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors invited them to speak, but they never showed.

I fully expected that those speaking against the ballpark bill would be disorganized and ragtag, and not because people did not have questions about the development. Few showed up to speak against the ballpark. My expectations were already low because Mayor Karl Dean strategically pulled off a coup. For years he downplayed his support of Sulphur Dell, and he deked a couple of reporters, who wrote serious stories on Friends of Sulphur Dell. He kept his powder dry for the big push against the community planning process by announcing the ballpark plan with Thanksgiving approaching and demanding that his council stewards shrink the approval process. The genius of this was that any organized opposition, like that he faced on the Fairgrounds, had no chance to get on its feet. It was a brilliant tactical move that assured that anyone with questions or criticism would be picked off base before they had a chance to steal the deal. Opponents never stood a chance.

Red-shirt October

But the timeline and the relative obscurity of the process also may have kept authentic proponents at home, if there are really a large number of proponents out there. I do not believe there are. I'm still convinced that the "movement" under the Sulphur Dell bill is more astroturf than grassroots, and the fact that the red shirts did not show up en mass seems a huge blow to any pretension that the ballpark is a popular cause right now. I understand why run-of-the-mill supporters might not have known about the public hearing in time to respond, but when the red-shirts did not show up in droves it represented a late inning whiff as some council members at least needed the cover of community support even though the Mayor does not.

So, the public hearing portion was not nearly as momentous as it could have been for the Sulphur Dell bill. The real fireworks, the raw emotion was expressed by bill supporters who did not seem convinced during most of the post-hearing debate that they had the votes to pass the Mayor's plan. In fact they seemed desperate in lashing out and lecturing other council members about how they should vote on a concept, a proposition that they treated as fait accompli.

The first CM to make an appeal to emotion was Ronnie Steine, who characterized any legislative regulation of mixed-use ballpark development as a betrayal of trust and a "slap at integrity" (I tend to take Steine's habitual moralistic lectures to the council with a grain of salt given that he was caught stealing and lying in 2002 while Vice Mayor). Apparently, the CM did not get the memo that this is a dispassionate business agreement between competing interests. Some of those interests are the affected communities themselves who do not enjoy the privilege of sitting at the negotiating table when the Mayor, the State, the Sounds, and the developers meet. We rely on the council to represent us. Apparently, CM Steine would rather represent the Nashville Sounds, whom he also seemed to defend as having the right to cash in on past philanthropy in Nashville by getting a ballpark from Metro at minimal risk. Maybe charity is not its own reward after all.

There was also melodramatic CM Jerry Maynard, who claimed not to be resorting to hyperbole when he resorted to hyperbole: any attempt to regulate or otherwise mitigate the risk of a massive transfer of public wealth to private developers would "kill the deal" for a new ballpark. Not necessarily known for keeping a poker face or staying stoic in tense situations, CM Maynard not only appealed to fear and panic, but he practically tipped developers to our signs. Much of baseball is built on deception. CM Maynard showed no grasp of that fact. We rely on CMs to stand up for us, to represent us in these negotiating process. He totally abdicated to developers, who had to be very pleased with his frantic performance. What is worse, he insinuated that the role of the council is simply to rubber stamp the Mayor's decisions without any recourse to the community's informed consent. Why did we elect him if he is simply going to be a bat boy for the Mayor's Office?

CM Erica Gilmore seemed visibly shaken by finance questions on the council, and she lashed out at those who loved baseball, but who questioned the terms of the development outside the ballpark. She called their love of baseball "a strange kind of love". Oddly enough not a week ago at the community meeting CM Gilmore organized, I listened to Rich Riebeling say that the question of a ballpark should be kept separate from the question of ownership's stake in the development outside the ballpark. But last night she lumped baseball with everything else in the plan. And after losing her composure, CM Gilmore said that she had never brought up fiduciary responsibility or questioned the use of taxpayer money on past projects. Is that supposed to be a badge of honor or a moment of candor where she let slip that service on the council is more about trading favors and abdicating oversight of our resources than it is representing constituents?

One of the most effective agents in major league baseball is Scott Boras. He plays the long game, getting the most return for the players he represents against baseball owners who are wealthy enough to pay just about anything to anyone. The citizens of Nashville needed a few Scott Borases on the council to represent us in this decision. We needed CMs who would stick negotiations out, call ownership and mayoral bluffs, test how far to go in order to get the best finance deal from the Sounds (whose decisions at this point are down to Sulphur Dell and nothing else short of packing up and finding another city waiting around to hand them a ballpark). These CMs did not serve us well by gushing about how the Sounds are like loved vital family members we could not lose.

That is no way to do business. And it's not good baseball.

None of these council supporters of the Mayor's plan put forth any effort to be a Boras-style negotiator for us. They impulsively bashed those who did not simply go along and they ushered developers to a sense of relief that they would dominate this deal. And this deal, which only requires one more council reading, is utter domination without any protections for the community.

Here is the video from yesterday's entire council business meeting (public hearing on the Phillips-Jackson/ballpark bill starts after 41:00):

Sulphur Dell may be the dream, but economic development is an illusion

There is consensus between the professional researchers who study pro sports venues and economic development: there is no proven connection between the two. The pros acknowledge the facts. The costs of publicly subsidized stadiums usually offset or counteract any benefits. Studies show no evidence of positive effects when comparing metro areas with pro sports teams to those without teams. There is no connection to greater employment. Likewise, there is no observable link to increases in income levels. In some cases the value of real estate in public parks rises faster than that under stadiums.

So, support a new ballpark if you want one, but please do not spread the malarky that sports venues are economic boons to the cities that subsidize them.

Usually, when someone tells you that investing public dollars in building a ballpark for a pro team constitutes a "huge" benefit because they create economic development and private investment, they cannot back up those claims with independent data from reliable research. They will spout potentialities incessantly to a beguiled and bewildered news media, but they cannot back up their talking points with evidence or examples.

Baltimore: no neighborhood rebirth

Camden Yards, considered the prototype for all contemporary urban and urban-like ballparks, has had a long track record (almost 25 years) by which to judge whether the neighborhoods around it have enjoyed windfalls. In Baltimore, the ballpark has not been the boon it was predicted to be:

Camden Yards also launched a trend of placing stadiums in the middle of cities in an attempt at redevelopment, as public officials nationwide mistook its appeal as a sports venue for success as a development catalyst, said Tim Chapin, chairman of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida State University. In fact, he said, the widespread belief that Camden Yards launched a rebirth in downtown Baltimore isn’t true.

“While it expanded the tourist bubble to the west, it didn’t wholesale save the downtown economy or prop up very poor neighborhoods not too far from downtown,” Chapin said.

If the iconic ballpark of the last quarter century did not have a dramatic effect in empowering poor communities in Baltimore, it is reasonable to conclude that a ballpark built in 2014 in Nashville will not have the economic impact the wishful thinkers at Friends of Sulphur Dell intend for us to believe.

On the contrary, if Baltimore's tourism bubble expanded, it is fair to assume that Sulphur Dell could have an impact more in line with that of the new Music City Convention Center. It might be more of a revenue source for Nashville's fat tourism industry than for the neighborhoods of Salemtown, Germantown, Buena Vista and Hope Gardens.

Atlanta: no urban renewal

Baltimore is not the only place where questions are recently raised about the economic fables of sports venues. Atlanta's continuing problems with its sports teams and their facilities have observers wondering about the difference they really made:

A new sports venue presents no guarantee of urban renewal. If you doubt that, look at the scarred neighborhoods surrounding the Georgia Dome and Turner Field. That’s why the contention by [Mayor Kasim] Reed…that a new Falcons stadium will turn around the area comes off as such bunk. If the city really wanted to commit millions to develop new businesses and mixed-use development around the Georgia Dome, it could have done so without a new football stadium.

Likewise, if Nashville cared about its northern neighborhoods, it would spend more money on them with or without the Nashville Sounds ball club and mixed-use developments. It is bad faith to preach economic investment made by local government under the auspices of helping neighborhoods when the benefits disproportionately go to wealthy developers and ball clubs.

This is not to say that there is absolutely no economic potential for Sulphur Dell. One observer concedes that major league ballparks cannot be justified on the basis of hypothetical economic benefits, but he does maintain that small ballparks could economically justify their existence:

Certain types of teams and facilities can produce gains in regional income (albeit small ones: about $67 to about $117 per capita). This contradicts “the vast majority of academic research” on big-league sports, which “has found nonpositive effects on income...employment...sales tax revenues...and spending.”

You’ll pretty much have to take Agha’s word that her conclusions are solid .... But Agha, whose data set included “all of the teams that played minor league baseball between 1980 and 2006,” offers some plausible reasons smaller franchises might confer benefits larger ones do not.

For instance: “Teams can theoretically...generate substantial new spending by out-of-area residents or discourage residents from spending outside the local economy. Both of these are more likely to occur in geographically isolated metro areas.” (That’s bad news for Richmond, which lies just a short hop from Charlottesville, Hampton Roads, D.C. and Baltimore.)

What also might help? Using the stadium for unrelated events, such as marching-band competitions. Coordinated marketing by diverse civic groups. And team stability, which can build community identification.

Assuming Nashville is isolated from other Metro areas enough to keep private revenues here, then we can justify the building of a minor league park like Sulphur Dell at private expense. However, even the modest benefits rising from minor league venues do not justify the investment of public tax dollars in private enterprise. Again, there is practically no deviation by pro sports researchers on that point.

So, just because other cities decide to jump off that cliff, should Nashville? I would say: not without contractual commitments from developers and club owners.

The bottom line is that ballparks are more likely to hurt, rather than help local economies. This is widely acknowledged by the researchers who do not have a dog in the fight even as ballpark boosters repeat "economic investment" like a mantra; as if saying it over and over again makes it true.

Just try and talk to boosters about the costs of tax increment financing for sports teams. They would rather don t-shirts and wax romantic about a sport they may or may not even like. One ballpark bill sponsor thought so much of Sulphur Dell's baseball history that she misspelled its name a couple of times in her press release. It is all window dressing for the transfer of money from public coffers to private wallets with meager returns for the common good.

So don't support a new Sulphur Dell because you assume it will be a catalyst of growth in North Nashville. There is no hard evidence that it can do that.

Support it for other reasons: you believe that anything is better than parking lots, you want to walk to baseball games, history matters more to you than the money, you consider it an expression of urbanism and a chance to foster smart growth and complete streets, or whatever else matters to you. But don't perpetuate the urban myths of growth, not unless you can convince the Metro Council to add regulations and restrictions on developers and club ownership that guarantee intentional and planned economic investment in public, neighborhood infrastructure.

We need a guaranteed return on tax dollar investments given the high risk of subsidizing ballparks. Misplacing faith in private developers is no guarantee.

Friends of Sulphur Dell founder tells news media that Jefferson St has "more than enough capacity" to handle more traffic than it already has

Pedestrians need friends, too.

Apparently the founder of the Friends of Sulphur Dell has already conducted his own traffic studies on car-congested, pedestrian-unfriendly Jefferson Street, and he draws his own conclusions about the impact of a new ballpark:

Other supports [sic] say Jefferson Street has more than enough capacity to handle the crowds. "We're also talking about off-peak hours for the most part," said Brian Heuser, a founder member of the Friends of Sulphur Dell. "It's a concern, but the overwhelming benefit here certainly outweighs the traffic concerns," he added.

But for some, a quickly approaching Dec. 31 deadline brings more reason for pause. "They may not have enough time to really complete a study to get a full look at what type of traffic really comes through this corridor," [Bill] Pittenger said. "I do think it is being overlooked."

Mr. Heuser's response to the news media does North Nashville a disservice. In any other part of Nashville, neighborhood leaders demand traffic impact studies on major thoroughfares be done before huge projects are approved. Why speculate about something he knows nothing about? The intellectually honest position is to say that we need to be thoughtful about this process and give it enough time so that the results of independent studies catch up with and inform our emotions for or against it.

I could just as easily resort to speculation the opposite way: assume for the sake of argument that Jefferson has "off-peak" hours (whatever "off-peak" means to Mr. Heuser). Traffic arriving on Jefferson St for ballgames and other ballpark events would extend peak traffic hours so that there would rarely be any break in traffic. Then Jefferson St becomes Nashville's latest version Hillsboro Road in Green Hills or Gallatin Pike at Rivergate Mall. Do we really need that kind of congestion during all waking hours of the day and night along this corridor?

But why can't we be more intellectually honest and demand a traffic study before jumping to conclusions? With Mr. Heuser's unabashed, uncritical, unrestrained boosterism we will never be able to leverage a complete streets project that would make Jeff St a corridor that works for walkable neighborhoods as well as for minor league baseball fans. As it is we cannot even leverage honest answers on the impact of a new ballpark.

About yesterday's state "public hearing" on the new ballpark

I caught the important parts of yesterday's State Building Commission public hearing on Mayor Karl Dean's ballpark proposal even though I did not get there when the meeting started. I was late for several valid reasons. First, of all I do not get paid for lobbying for a new minor league ballpark or for rezoning to develop multi-use dwellings or for accruing campaign finance bling from influential sources or for reporting those who do. So, unlike most of the people in the committee room yesterday, I had to take time off my job to drive downtown, find a parking space, hike several blocks to Legislative Plaza and wander from place-to-place with a couple other average Joes looking for an outside entrance to where Tennessee keeps its committee rooms (found them in a bunker under the Plaza) before I finally settled into my standing-room-only spot at the back of the room next to bureaucrats and professional politicos about 20 minutes into the meeting.

The crowd was not standing-room-only because a flood of community-based types showed up for the hearing. Not hardly. It was standing-room-only because there were only about 50 chairs in the gallery and most of those were taken up by government and business-interest suits or journalists or lobbyists. I did not see any of the neighbors I saw at the Mayor's launch party at the Farmers Market. And, strangely, I did not see any of the red-shirted glee club of supporters of a new Sulphur Dell. That is strange to me because CM Jerry Maynard has pounded the proposition that the ballpark is wildly popular out here in the streets, and he has had the red shirt squad to show for it before. The legs on the initiative may actually have little to do with what those of us outside-looking-in actually opine about a new ballpark anyway.

But even if ordinary citizens were available to attend a meeting in the middle of a workday morning, there was no room for them either in space or agenda. The hearing ran like clockwork with representatives of business special interests (Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership, Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau) and government officials (CM Maynard, State Senator Thelma Harper and someone from the Sports Authority) all expressing predictable support for the ballpark. I asked one journalist if anyone actually representing a neighborhood spoke before JUMP did (which was when I arrived), and he said no. So, no one but those with a vested financial interest having little to do with quality of life spoke on the ballpark question.

There was no discernible direction from the chair for opponents to speak. One big shot after the other approached the podium and was recognized by the chair before he said, "Anyone else want to speak?" I was not sure whether his offer was to any of the other nabobs or it was a stooped invitation to the few plebs present, so I did not break for the microphone myself. Very quickly the chair asked for a vote, got a unanimous one and the ballpark deal was gavelled "approved". It all seemed scripted, especially to a guy like me who is more used to the rancor and pitchforks on unsettled development questions that we tend to see in Metro Council chambers. In the end it probably did not matter that I missed a chance to speak. I'm sure I would have gotten a "who-the-hell-are-you?" look from the commissioners coming on the heels of speakers in slick suits and royal ascot hats.

In the end, I'm sure it was not unintentional to actually make the public feel out-of-place at a state public hearing. Barring some sort of groundswell of resistance to the Mayor's plan, it is fast tracked to win like a well-sired 3-year-old flanked by experienced stable hands. Any concerned community critics who are not organized are going to get trampled underfoot now that bill sponsors can claim red-state support.

Let's make a list of the ballpark meetings held

Some people have mentioned about process, and I just wanted to make sure that everyone knows this. That we began this process several years ago. Several studies have been done. Several town hall meetings have been completed. Neighborhood meetings all around the baseball stadium area along with meetings with organizations, nonprofit organizations as well as property owners, business owners all along the surrounding area where Sulphur Dell currently is. There is nothing but positivity from all of the neighborhood associations. In fact all of the neighborhood associations with the exception of one has endorsed the Sulphur Dell project. The one neighborhood that did not endorse it, they did not say they were against it. They just did not vote to endorse. So, we have the endorsement of the neighborhoods .... because we met with them, we discussed it.

--Jerry Maynard's comments yesterday to Metro Council
on community support for a new ballpark

I keep up with the ins and outs of my neighborhood association. Unless they held an unannounced community meeting with Jerry Maynard and his team of supporters of the Sulphur Dell development project, I can say with certainty that he never met with us, never discussed it with Salemtown Neighbors. For Rev. Maynard to insinuate that he has met with us is pure fabrication based on my experience.

I'm curious at this point. Can anyone out there confirm that they attended open meetings on the plan in the neighborhoods where questions and comments were addressed after which the membership approved of the ballpark plan? By the way, comments with proper names carry more weight than anonymous comments do.

(The point bears repeating that the specific Sulphur Dell plan was not publicly announced until the end of last month at the Farmers' Market. At that meeting there were numerous critical and concerned questions asked from those attending, and I recognized several residents from area neighborhoods besides Salemtown. At least a couple of Germantown residents vocally expressed concern about fireworks.)

Please help me generate a list of community meetings held on this plan.

Sulphur Dell "community meeting" made ballpark look like done deal, but audience posed hardball questions that require quality-of-life answers

Thursday afternoon's community meeting sponsored by Metro Planning and the Mayor's Office on the latter's plans--with an assist from the state--to build a new Sulphur Dell ballpark was a reveal of information they had been playing close to the vest. As quoted in the Tennessean, I came away from the meeting feeling guardedly optimistic, but not because of the info I got from the concept's unveiling. What impressed me most--regardless of the marketing spin put on a new ballpark by Metro planners, Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling and a cast of architects and designers--was the quality of questions asked by the audience during the Q&A session after the pitch. At one point during the Q&A, Mr. Riebeling quipped that he was hoping for more "softball questions". I came away feeling that if a ballpark does get approved it will not be because ordinary Nashvillians neither failed to ask critical questions nor neglected to hold Metro government accountable.

South Davidson State Rep Jason Powell:
owns property in Hope Gardens

The questions asked were even more noteworthy than the turn-out, which the Mayor's supporters and pro-ballpark minions (many of whom met with the Mayor's Office before the 2p community meeting and donned red "Sulphur Dell" t-shirts) are spinning as impressive. Admittedly, the meeting seemed well-attended. There were approximately 100 chairs set up for the event. By the time the meeting started the audience was standing room only. I would charitably add 100 people standing to those seated. The total was likely somewhere around 200 (which is what the Tennessean estimated). Planning officials opened the meeting by saying that they were aware of the inconvenient scheduling of the meeting for working people and by promising to have more community meetings that others will be able to attend.

CM Walter Hunt: buoyed by campaign donations
and a catbird seat on the Planning Commission

According to Finance Director Riebeling's count, there were approximately 20 elected Metro and State officials present. I would add to that maybe a dozen from the news media. At least a half a dozen planners and around a dozen support staffers and assistants were also there. When I take those factors into account, I would guess that there were likely around 100-150 citizens, many in suits, there. The troubling question is: how many more could have shown up if this media circus were not held in the middle of the afternoon on a work day?

While I did not submit any questions myself, the audience queries touched on most of the concerns I expressed last week (planners asked the audience to present their questions on cards and hand them to the front). At least a dozen, maybe more critical and thoughtful questions oriented toward quality of life concerns in the community were asked.

Here is the information I learned that addressed the questions I asked last week:

1. "Complete Streets" and parking?

The planner receiving question cards from the audience observed that queries about impact on parking seemed the most popular. I would add, "As they should be". This scale of development has the potential to be a dramatic day-to-day problem for the communities along the Jefferson Street and Rosa Parks corridors to the north and west of the project (the Sounds are said to want the ballpark to be in use 365 days a year for "nontraditional" events). All that the planners and developers seemed to be able to hope was that people would be motivated to utilize 17,000 parking spaces Downtown that they said are available during evening ball games. They also said that the distance from the Gulch and from Downtown garages and lots is "walkable", without any reference to infrastructural changes to sidewalks and streets that would discourage auto traffic and encourage pedestrian traffic. Building a ballpark without sizable upgrades to thoroughfares would be purely symbolic as well as discouraging of Complete Streets.

Mr. Riebeling said that he expects the impact on the North End neighborhoods to be "minimal" going into the first season. However, in the event that parking does start to be a problem for residents, "Metro will take steps to deal with it", said Riebeling. The problem with that is that it is probably too late for us to deal with it. At that point the Sounds and developers within the footprint will be lobbying and leveraging Metro to allow fans to park in any convenient space because their primary interest is in maximizing their attendance before, during and after ballgames. We need a plan for any scenario now. Not after the build happens and the profit motive blooms full.


2. The North Nashville Community Plan?

No mention was made of the relationship between a ballpark and the North Nashville Community Plan. Will it come up in future meetings Metro Planning said they will schedule in the community? The lack of consideration was further evidence to me that the first "community meeting" had more to do with marketing to the media and setting the tone for future discussions. I can say this: architects said that their intent is to blend the new development with the history of the area much like the ballpark will be blended with the greenway that currently slices through Sulphur Dell. The team insisted on the name "ballpark" instead of "stadium" based on their belief that a small facility connoted by the former can integrate the communities. They said that they see "a gap" between Downtown and Germantown and Salemtown. They intend the ballpark to fill that gap. If they do intend "to knit" these neighborhoods together, they will have to be cognizant of the North Nashville Community Plan.

The Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods Director Courtney Wheeler was there bouncing between Metro big shots. I'll be interested to see if she shows up to the promised community meetings in the neighborhoods to interact with and listen to actual neighbors. MOON should be accountable for respecting the plans upon which the neighborhoods rely to guide and to check development and growth. MOON should not strictly be whipping up support for a brick-and-mortar accomplishment to suit the political aspirations of the Mayor.


3. Flood mitigation and neighborhood impact?

Mr. Riebeling said that the Mayor's Office is "keenly aware" of the need to "manage" potential flooding. He and the architects underscored the point that most of the built space on the footprint would be above the 2010 flood stage. Architects also said that the drains under the ballfield could handle some of the run-off. That may satisfy prospective tenants and business owners of a ballpark development, but it provides little assurance for those of us in the neighborhoods. If the ballpark is going to be built on flood plain, but high enough to stay above flood stage, the water will be pushed somewhere else, perhaps higher into Salemtown and Germantown than the 2010 crests. The notion that drains can handle a catastrophic flood that backed up the storm sewers in 2010 is insulting to the intelligence of those of us who lived here in 2010.


4. Mass transit strategy?

A similar type of shuttle service as that used for Titans games will serve a new Sulphur Dell from Downtown. Architects played up the south side greenway (which, as "integrated", will be opened to ticket holders and closed to the general public during ballgames) and several ballpark entrances facing pedestrian access to Downtown. The team did not mention any strategies to limit car access from Jefferson Street to the north, although they explicitly said they expect North End residents to walk to games. I am unconvinced that they have a real strategy outside of hope.


5. Jobs strategy?

Finance Director Riebeling deferred questions about team operations hires to the Sounds, although he did say that he believed the Sounds envisioned additional jobs at Sulphur Dell. He said he sees the construction jobs as more important to address North Nashville job needs. It sounded like the same pie-in-the-sky predictions of the Dean administration in the past. No bold strategies mentioned beyond saying that some council members would make sure that minority and women owned contractors would get a fair share of construction jobs.


6. Youth programs and service opportunities?

The question did not come up. The Sounds did not have a representative to speak.

One question that came up audibly 2 or 3 times from Germantown residents had to do with fireworks, which are a staple out Sounds games (or any other sporting event nowadays). Mr. Riebeling told the crowd that this was an "operations question" that the Sounds would need to address after construction of the ballpark. The planning team insisted that the situation of lights and amplifiers mitigate any bother for local residents.

The elephant in the room that generally went unaddressed as to specifics was the impact on the Metro budget and on delivery of other Metro services. Mr. Riebeling told those in attendance that the Sounds think Sulphur Dell is a good location and that they were willing to put "real" and "deep" financial commitment into the project. The devil is in the legislation that the Mayor's Office says they plan to introduce to a generally compliant council in the coming weeks. Once that happens we will start to see the potential impact unfold.

Finally, planners and architects were throwing around names like "Capitol District" and "Ballpark District", saying that they had heard that we were using them. I have already shared my view that "District" is the most overused and boring label for communities in Nashville. I don't use either term, and I have not seen either one used very much in our particular lifeworld. Why not be more creative? How about calling the surrounding neighborhoods, "Capitol Dell"? Anything that does not have the term "district" but mirrors who we are and have been historically suits me.

The impression I was left with was that this plan is a done deal just waiting to be tied up in a bow by the State of Tennessee. If this ballpark is inevitable, the neighborhoods had better start writing, calling and cajoling Metro Council now to make sure that their quality-of-life concerns are written into the ballpark legislation. It may be a waste of time and energy to oppose and to fight a new ballpark. So, I would suggest that we leverage and push to insure that architects and planners design the kind of ballpark that will be the best neighbor to all of us who will have to live with the burdens and the inconveniences it creates.

UPDATE: video of the entire hour-long meeting posted on YouTube.