Nashville Sounds owner finally attends a community meeting for the community funding his new ballpark; for 18 whole minutes.

Just got back from the "community meeting" the Nashville Sounds and the Gobbell Hayes ballpark design team sponsored to announce progress and to show a "3D" video of the "ballpark experience". It barely lasted 15 minutes, and no questions or comments were allowed from the floor at the end. You could fill out a comment card and hope that someone would get back to you later.

What jumped out of the video immediately was that the only places where the "Sulphur Dell" name was in plain sight were in framed archival prints hanging in the luxury suites. It was no where else to be seen inside the ballpark. Project managers told the press in June that "Sulphur Dell" would be "considered" near the batter's eye in centerfield, which makes it sound like fans inside the ballpark would see it (assuming it ever moves from "considered" to "approved"). In the video, the title of the historic site appears outside the park, facing the mixed use development behind the outfield, on the backside of the batter's eye. No one seated in the park will ever be able to read it. The venerable old name deserves a better fate.

The backside of the batter's eye resembles a tombstone

In a significant departure from last October's community meeting, project managers called the entrance facing Jefferson St. "The Grand Entry" and the video narration underscored that the home plate entrance would be the main entrance to First Tennessee Park. Last year, Metro planners conceded that most of the questions they fielded from neighbors of the ballpark concerned the Jackson St. (north) entrance, which would likely encourage driving fans to take up diminishing street parking in Germantown and Salemtown. Their reply to the questions expressed the hope that Downtown parking garages would encourage people to park south of the park and enter from the outfield.

No part of tonight's presentation mentioned the south entry for fans parking Downtown. Instead, the video promoted the north "home plate" entry, making it seem irresistible. Three of the four neighborhood associations in the North Capitol area expressed unqualified support for this development from beginning to end. Germantown, Hope Gardens, and Historic Buena Vista all had chances to try and stipulate parking requirements as part of Erica Gilmore's legislation. Now it is probably too late to do anything. As I wrote last October, team ownership will be interested in protecting the "fan experience", and they will encourage parking wherever they can stuff them in. Tonight's presentation did nothing to change my sense that parking is going to get bad in the neighborhoods on event nights at First Tennessee Park.

Now that the Nashville Sounds have finally showed up to a community meeting, I want to go back over the quality-of-life checklist I came up with last September on questions that deserve to be answered for the sake of our community. Did the Sounds offer anything new?

1. "Complete Streets" and parking?

The Sounds presentation included nothing with respect to street planning that encourages walking and biking as much as automobile traffic. The emphasis on the "grand entry" indicates that the Sounds do not plan to offer solutions for their neighbors to relieve a choked parking situation. A project manager said that the greenway (which replaces a state public greenway) would be contained in the ballpark. So, is that one less greenway for pedestrians to use on days games won't be played? Is it just me or does the new greenway resemble the standard apartment complex courtyard?


2. The North Nashville Community Plan?

The design team at least made an effort last October to discuss the integration of the ballpark into the Germantown neighborhood. Nothing was said this time about the North Nashville neighborhoods. So, why should they care about the community plan? The Sounds have been given an empty canvas as well as Karl Dean's blank checks. They have license to do as they please.


3. Flood mitigation and neighborhood impact?


I heard no mention of the impact of catastrophic flood water displacement in the future caused by flood resistant mixed-use built on historic flood plain. This is bad news for those of us who were either flooded or had near misses in May 2010.


4. Mass transit strategy?

Unlike in October, Gobbell Hayes project managers did not discuss any mass transit arrangement with Metro. Without public pressure on elected officials, why would they?


5. Jobs strategy?


I could not tell from tonight's meeting whether the Sounds plan to hire anyone outside of seasonal ushers to show people to their luxury boxes to enjoy archival prints of working-class Sulphur Dell.


6. Youth programs and service opportunities?

Do the Sounds care about North Nashville's youth? I could not tell from this meeting.

To call tonight's meeting a "community meeting" was a stretch. Everything that happened could have been watched on YouTube. There was no need to create the slightest impression that community concerns and feedback were important to the design team or to Sounds ownership.

UPDATE: I was interested to see a news piece earlier this week on the challenges of finding reliable parking downtown. MDHA has a parking garage in the works to try to help relieve the strain. The article becomes relevant to First Tennessee Park with this comment:

“Some things are so obvious that you don’t need to do an analysis or science project. If you want to find out why we’re doing this, go downtown at 8 tonight and try finding a place to park,” said MDHA Executive Director Jim Harbison.

Remember that last fall, Metro planners and project designers working on the ballpark proposal told us that that they believed downtown parking could accommodate crushes of fans attending night games. The director of the Metro agency brokering deals for parking garages does not seem to agree. Think about where ball game traffic that won't fit downtown is most likely to go.

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.

The lawyer that Hizzoner is, he won't do much more than he is legally obligated to

Disturbing patterns keep popping up in the Mayor's behavior: he excused Metro Water's dump of toxins near Salemtown saying that they complied with the state's environmental standards; he excused Metro's lack of robust remediation of soil excavated for the new Sulphur Dell ballpark insisting that he was in communication with the state and soil like Sulphur Dell's existed everywhere Downtown.

Now his response to the American Indian Coalition's frustration with his handling of sensitive archeology in the area of the new ballpark seems to be cut from the same legalistic thought:

the group wants Metro to delay or stop construction at Sulphur Dell because of its deep Indian history. Representatives from both sides met Thursday for another discussion on the issue.

So far, the city has made no plans to stop construction. Instead, they're offering to construct a wall along the greenway to honor the history of the area, as well as some artwork to go near the end of Fourth Avenue.

"That to me is minimalization and we're tired of being minimalized, American Indian people. We are tired of being just given the very least,” said Albert Bender with the American Indian Coalition.

The Office of Mayor Karl Dean said it’s complied with all state regulations for building on ground containing artifacts.

Doesn't bold leadership require at some points going above and beyond lawyerly arguments of what is required of Metro by state law? Instead of strictly what the law demands to protect the wealthy financial interests backing this project, why not try to strike a balance with all parties as equals in this debate? AIC has excellent points about the costs of culture and history that eclipse mere temporary motives of developers:

"There is evidence of a huge, huge Native American city - Native American metropolis, ancient American area," said Albert Bender, with the American Indian Coalition.

Archaeologists were excited when some Native American salt vessels recently turned up at the Sulphur Dell construction site.

They would like to see the construction of the new Nashville Sounds stadium put on hold to further study the findings, but that is unlikely.

"That's our priority that they will open up the excavation process so that more field recovery work can take place, because there is a treasure trove of knowledge waiting to be unearthed. And the knowledge is incalculable compared to any type of delay that may result from the construction of a ballpark," Bender said.

The artifacts include broken pottery from a salt factory dating back to 1150 A.D. But the digging to find more artifacts has stopped and construction of the ballpark is moving ahead.

"Now we've capped that with some dirt, and we suspect there are other things out there. But it's not going to be coming into place as part of this construction process," said Ronald Gobbel, with Gobbel Hays Partners, Inc.

Again the parallel is striking: when the Dean Administration was covering its collective ass on its new toxic landfill near the Cumberland River here, the bureaucrats justified it by insisting that they were going to "cap" the carcinogens with some dirt. So, down below dirt in our community is a toxic dump that we need protection from and a prehistoric metropolis that should be a source of pride and continuity of place. Karl Dean would rather bury both and appeal to the law in his defense.

This Mayor's term is nearly up and there is no hope of him changing his pharisaical ways any time soon. He wants to get this ballpark done before he leaves office so that he can throw out the first pitch as the guy who built it. It will be The House That Dean Built. We can only hope that the next Mayor is less prone to sticking to legalistic ways of governing this city. We can only hope that she or he has a vision that encompasses the past as well as the future.

Nine months after he held the first one, Mayor Karl Dean announces the second community meeting on the new ballpark

Last October when the Mayor's Office hosted the only community meeting held in the Sulphur Dell area that included members of the ballpark design team and planners discussing the project publicly, they scheduled it at 2:00 on a week day when many neighbors around the area were at work. Metro Planners acknowledged that the meeting time was "odd" given that it was supposed to involve the community. On at least two occasions planners promised to hold more follow-up community meetings as the process went on.

Nine months have passed since the first meeting at Farmers' Market and just today the Mayor's Office has announced the scheduling of the second community meeting on Tuesday, July 8 at 5:00p. That time is more realistic for working families who may want to attend, but they have scheduled the meeting in an inconvenient place for those of us who live closest to Sulphur Dell. They are holding the meeting in the Howard Office Building south of Downtown. Between the "odd" scheduling of the first meeting and the unfortunate placement of the second meeting, it is almost like the powers over this project simply do not prefer to make it easy for the communities most affected by a new ballpark to attend.

The sun rises in the east: early morning games?

The announcement says that the "First Tennessee Park" project team and the Nashville Sounds will present the construction schedule and that those attending will be able to write comments and questions down on slips of paper and hand them in at the end of the meeting. So, in the same tone as the first meeting, organizers are not going to let this event become hearing-like. It will all be tightly controlled with no guarantees that all questions will be answered. At this point feedback is moot. The community lost the chance to influence the project when council supporters rammed the bill through second reading.

We will see how much Sounds executives are involved in this meeting. They were conspicuously absent from the first community meeting. Then in November, when CM Erica Gilmore relented to CM Charlie Tygard and finally organized her own neighborhoods' meeting on the project during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the Sounds were no where to be found. Sounds owner and real estate mogul, Frank Ward, was reported to have influenced the compressed timeline for approval of the ballpark plan. That timeline of weeks was controversial with many because it blocked opportunities for communities to have input in the planning process. When asked about the check on public feedback, Mr. Ward claimed that he "stays out of politics".

I don't know whether the Sounds owner simply looks down on popular feedback or does not want to be out among the unwashed masses, but he has been involved in politics both in Nashville (encouraging supporters to attend and speak at the ballpark public hearing) and in New York City (where he made at least one campaign donation). Hence, I don't buy the claim that he wants to stay out of politics. And I do not appreciate equating a community planning process with politics that one would wish to avoid.

But I will be interested to see if he attends the July 8 community meeting and whether he fields questions himself from the community. We know he attended a cork-popping reception celebrating the ballpark with a bank president and our Mayor. I do not believe that this gala was open to the community though.

There remain so many questions that the ballpark project team have yet to answer even as planners have promised more follow-up to address the questions. I don't have high expectations that even after nine months we will have clear answers or the concerns of last October will be addressed.

"Sulphur Dell" relegated to the bleacher section of "First Tennessee Park"

According to the Nashville Business Journal:

When asked about what role Sulphur Dell will play in the new park, now that it’s been named, [the ballpark project's general manager] said a design element is being considered near the batter’s eye (the dark green rectangle space behind the center field wall) that would feature the Sulphur Dell name prominently. He also said the greenway, which runs just outside the stadium, will feature Sulphur Dell history, from its Native American roots through its more modern baseball ties.

History will occupy the cheap seats of the new Nashville Sounds ballpark.

The president of the league to which the Nashville Sounds belong: baseball is "not in the business of urban redevelopment"

The Pacific Coast League executive appears to be on the same page with professional researchers (who find no objective basis for subjective claims that new ballparks generate greater economic development):

When Branch Rickey [III] talks about what minor league baseball brings to a city, he doesn’t talk about increased property values or the stimulation of downtown entertainment districts. “We’re not in the business of urban redevelopment,” Rickey says. “We would not profess clairvoyance on that front.” He prefers to talk about the fan experience. And when he talks about this experience, he just happens to talk about new stadiums.

From the Friends of Sulphur Dell to Jefferson Street merchants to council members to the Mayor to the Nashville Sounds front office itself, we have seen no shortage of contriving economic impact for North Nashville of this new ballpark. Anyone who has gone all in on this game of chance is doing so on the basis of a leap of faith that Jefferson Street will naturally redevelop due to "First Tennessee Field" (or just a bunch of new apartments to be built around the ballpark).

Some of the merchants and leaders on Jeff St. even seem bent on shoving past any future stage of modest growth of locally owned stores (like those we see around places like Germantown, Five Points and 12South) to large national chains other than the ones already existing on Jeff St.:

Keisha Beard, 48, whose family has owned the property that houses the spa for 90 years, sees the ballpark becoming a reality as a sign that Jefferson Street is ready to join the big leagues. "This is the last side of town that's not been developed," she said. "We're a college street — with TSU, Fisk and Meharry — and don't even have a major restaurant chain here. The students right here need more goods and services."

Sharon Hurt, executive director of community development group Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership, also welcomes growth opportunities but hopes any projects developers bring celebrate and embrace legacy of the once vibrant economic hub of the city's black community. "I don't want it to become so commercialized and capitalized that we lose the soul and spirit of the community" ....

"We've got Church's Chicken, we've got KFC, and we've got Popeye's — we don't need that anymore," Hurt said. "I would rather see more diversity like Chipotle, Panera Bread and Smoothie King.

This is part of the problem I have with those who dream of economic development: they do not seem careful about what they ask for. I would like to see a thriving Jefferson Street economy, but why not along the lines of an urban village with locally-owned shops and other offerings? Do we really want Jeff St. to boom like West End or Green Hills and their national chains? The charming and popular Magazine Street neighborhood in New Orleans finds itself facing the loss of its local character and struggling with the influx of national chains, which kill the neighborhood vibe.

Magazine St., which we enjoyed on our last vacation

Is that what we really want for Jefferson Street?

These exaggerated expectations are all part of the unrealistic view of the impact of a ballpark on hyperlocal economy. Hopes around here are irrationally bloated by the prospect of a ballpark divorced from awareness of the risks of new construction.

And yet, even the president of the Sounds' league remains sober enough to acknowledge that new ballpark construction does not increase property values or stimulate growth.

He seems to realize that wishful thinking won't alter reality. And yet, he can still advocate building new ballparks. There are those among us who could learn something from Branch Rickey.


UPDATE: As I update this post at the end of August 2015, Sharon Hurt is involved in a run-off as a candidate for an at-Large seat on Metro Council. She will probably win, which will give her a perch from which to achieve her expectation of chain-store development along Jefferson Street.

Given that August 2015 also includes the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina striking New Orleans, I have been reading Roberta Brandes Gratz's "We're Still Here Ya Bastards: How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City." From Gratz's perspective, Magazine Street can still teach us about sustainable and smart development along the Jefferson Street corridor without reference to chain-store businesses and big-box stores:

World-famous Magazine Street is a national treasure, a remarkable six-mile stretch that, like the rule-defying traffic patterns of the city streets, contradicts many assumptions about shopping streets. It has rebounded in full force since the storms and serves as the model for shorter, more localized streets where rents are lower. It is the largest of the local shopping streets, passing through several different neighborhoods and attracting shoppers from out of town as well. This shopping street evolved without big plans, large developers, or cookie-cutter formulas.

In the 1950s and ’60s, when the car became more important than the pedestrian, many cities turned their primary shopping streets one-way—yet another of those mid-century trends intended to speed car traffic, to which New Orleans did not succumb. Only minutes from the central business district, Magazine is a two-way traffic street with only one lane each way, giving the street an intimate feel. Metered parking spaces line both sides. Pedestrians cross comfortably. Cars coming from the side streets edge across carefully without the help of traffic lights. Major thoroughfares with traffic lights cross at half-mile intervals. These are the signature New Orleans boulevard-like streets with two lanes of traffic each way separated by a median—the “neutral ground,” which is landscaped differently in each neighborhood. In its entirety, Magazine Street epitomizes what [Jane] Jacobs describes as a “close grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support, both economically and socially.

Many of us believe that Jeff St is a Nashville treasure, but it can be more with community-based planning and development instead of the relentless eradication spurred by unchained growth under market forces alone.

Gratz also cites a 2009 study that included data from Magazine Street. The study concludes that locally business generates twice the sales of big-box stores and recirculates twice the revenue as that recirculated by chain stores in the local economy. I have no doubt that college students with their limited perspective of Jeff St history would enjoy more chain stores (with which they are acquainted) along the corridor. I have no doubt that Ms. Hurt, if she becomes a council member, will lobby the Mayor's Office to give tax breaks and other corporate welfare to national companies so that they will flip Jeff St into West End Av. That would be a total waste of an opportunity to help local businesses generate an economy that would recirculate resources back into our North Nashville neighborhoods at a faster clip than Target or Chipolte could. It would also be a total waste of the chance to instill the pride of supporting smaller-scale, locally-owned businesses.

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.

In order to incorporate Sulphur Dell history, the ballpark architects have demolished its commemoratives

If memory serves, what was pitched to people about the section of state greenway that bordered the spot designated for a new Sulphur Dell ballpark was that it would be incorporated into the new facility. What I distinctly recall from the scant community meetings sponsored by Mayor Karl Dean and Council Member Erica Gilmore was that the greenways would remain intact, but their use by the public would be limited on baseball game days.

If any ballpark architects from Gobbell Hays and Populous ever mentioned demolishing the state greenway along with a water feature that commemorated the sulphur spring and creek that marked both the history and prehistory of an area that was the cradle of the city of Nashville, I missed it. But I discovered today that the greenway and fountain are gone.

June 2007: an attractive homage to the sulphur spring that once fed
French Lick Creek, whose course was commemorated with an adjoining greenway

April 2014: the spot where the water feature once stood,
now reduced to rubble and landfill left by the new ballpark/mixed-use project

Make no mistake. Nashville has a permissive track record of enabling developers to wipe its history clean in order to embrace growth. And builders rush in to reduce the historic and the prehistoric records to virtual moonscapes before building something else. Like some coursing need to wash itself clean of its own history, good or ill, Nashville hands development over to developers to largely tear down and build anew at will.

So, maybe I should not be surprised to see today that the fountain and greenway have met the same fate as demolished state parking lots and city roadways. The profit motive overruns any preservation mandate. There is no onus on the architects to acknowledge the significance of the sulphur spring for which their concept is named. It certainly won't come from this Mayor or this district's council member both of whom have ingratiated themselves to the real estate industry. Having been a Nashvillian for 25 years, nothing Metro allows surprises me anymore.

But what sticks with me now is that nobody bothered to be transparent about the demolition beforehand: not the architects, not the sponsoring council member, not the Mayor. I don't remember a word uttered about it. Hence, I wonder if what we are going to get--once something is built on top of the demolished debris, on top of the dust heap--is privatized infill rarely open to the public and forgetful of what was there before baseball or hipster urbanism were ever imagined in Nashville. Is the small corridor where there was once a greenway and a water feature going to be flipped to a sterilized, generic pass-through for people on the way to somewhere else? That would be a cynical re-write of local history.

Sulphur Dell area was once an important "production workshop" in a "major prehistoric metropolis"

One of the only external expectations that Mayor Karl Dean agreed to when it came to his fast-tracked construction of a new ballpark/mixed-use development at Sulphur Dell near Jefferson Street was an archeological survey of the site for sensitive historical artifacts before construction began.

Sulphur Dell is not just an important place in baseball and civil rights history. It is an important place in the history of Nashville's founding (Timothy Demonbreun's cabin was located nearby at Sulphur Spring Bottom). It is also an important place for in the history of ancient tribal cultures.

While a careful community-based planning process was a casualty of Hizzoner's rush to build and of the team owner's allergies to engaging the community townhall-style, we can be thankful that Mayor Dean at least felt compelled by something or someone to slow up enough to preserve some important finds:

Archaeologists made an important discovery over the weekend in the area that will become left field, including artifacts that could even hint at ancient human burials.

The state believes the artifacts could be 800 years old, and experts are excavating the area now.

In an email obtained by Channel 4 News an archaeologist working on the project says he found pottery, animal bone and pieces of ceramic vessels.

And he raises another issue, writing, "given the high artifact density, there is a heightened possibility of human burials."

There are revised details at the archeologists' Facebook page. Kevin E. Smith writes that in March they uncovered a "relatively intact land surface" representing what he believes to be a terrace that held "a giant prehistoric salt production workshop area" rather than a place for human burials:

The enormous saline spring located to the southwest of the [ballpark] project area was one of the largest gushing wells of mineral water in the interior south -- filling Lick Branch with a mineral resource valuable to both prehistoric and historic peoples until the branch was buried in a brick-lined conduit .... The vast majority of features exposed and investigated thus far reflect a large and overlapping series of fire pits -- almost all probably related to the evaporation of water from the adjacent branch to produce the valuable commodity of salt.

According to Mr. Smith Metro Nashville was under no legal obligation to allow this important study to proceed, and he digresses to gush about the new ballpark giving them this opportunity. Then again, most of the area was covered with surface parking lots and there is no reason--given the broadly acknowledged importance of the Sulphur Dell area to history and prehistory--that this study could not have occurred if and when these state lots gave way to anything else.

Mayor Karl Dean was under no legal obligation to allow this survey, but it should have been a moral imperative to be discreet in developing such an important place as "swampy" Sulphur Springs Bottoms. It was more than just good fortune. It was the right thing to do. As was including the local community in the planning process, which Mayor Dean failed to do.

Otherwise, this is exciting and important news for our end of Nashville. It should be a source of pride to local residents, thanks to the hard work of the archeologists. Check out their photos and further descriptions at the Facebook page.

Racism and the "stage-managed narrative" in transit and ballpark plans

Last year I gave Metro Councilmember Scott Davis a pass on his view that a new east-west bus rapid transit line would help "low-income residents" in his district even as it won't help the same classes in North Nashville. Based on the opinions of poli sci professor, Sekou Franklin, maybe I should not have been so quick to concede CM Davis's boosterific points for "the Amp".

Dr. Franklin's recent column is a scathing reflection on the transit injustice wrought by MTA and Karl Dean's administration and the minions supporting "the Amp":

...Amp advocates, backed by the mayor’s office and Metro Transit Authority officials, selectively picked winners and losers for the project. They relied on flawed data, steered federal civil rights officers away from studying North Nashville bus routes and backed zoning changes to boost the appearance of higher ridership in the West End corridor, which stands to benefit the most from the Amp.

The pro-Amp group’s East Nashville angle also has been an insincere attempt to inoculate itself from racial and civil rights scrutiny. Pro-Amp advocates claim that Amp terminals east of the river will help working-class blacks, when in reality, they are located in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. The project could actually accelerate the displacement of blacks who still remain in the Main Street-Five Points area.

The Amp debate also has exposed how Nashville’s leading officials exploit the politics of race while lacking any real commitment to systemic racial inequities. Similar to the debate about the Sulphur Dell ballpark, Amp supporters have brought attention to distressed communities and African-Americans, but only to bolster a stage-managed narrative of Chamber of Commerce boosterism — a narrative that is not intended to help African-Americans or distressed communities, but meant to convince urban pioneers that Nashville is the premier Southeast destination.

The irony is that the so-called distressed neighborhoods for both projects (Germantown for Sulphur Dell and Main Street-Five Points for the Amp) are places where working-class African-Americans are being pushed out in record numbers.

In both cases (a new ballpark and the east-west connector) development for the business sector has taken priority over residential interests and social justice. Metro Nashville does not seem committed to balanced, smart and sustainable growth, but seems more bound to a malignant growth that devours quality of life and historic communities. The scales are tipped toward money and power. If you don't have much like the predominantly white Courthouse class does, then you are only in the way.

The truly sad part for me personally, is that there does not seem to be a critical mass of people organized at the grassroots who care enough to speak up for equity in development and in mass transit. The opponents who do speak out are ignored, pigeonholed and marginalized, even by North Nashville council members who are supposed to represent them.

An I-40 "park-over" would do more to spur Jefferson Street renaissance than a ballpark

Studies show that public parks have positive impacts not just on neighborhood quality of life, but on rises in property values and on the growth of broader benefits like jobs and youth programs and attractions for visitors from outside local neighborhoods. This is likely why a city like Dallas (TX), not known for its abundance of greenspace, took the innovative step of creating urban park land in an unlikely place: as a land bridge over a below-grade freeway.

Kyle Warren Park in Dallas

Observers note that the "park-over" has mitigated the divisive, unsafe and intrusive effects of a major freeway, but it has also spurred major mixed-use infill and revitalized the urban core. According to one Dallas planner: 

I was interested to visit the park to see if it lived up to the hype. The landscaping and paving materials are high quality, and movable outdoor furniture creates flexibility for groups to socialize or have lunch at nearby food trucks. I also noticed a well used and expansive outdoor library where people can borrow books and magazines during their visit. From my conversations with visitors, it seems Kyle Warren is evolving into a destination itself, with many visitors driving from the suburbs just to spend time in this high quality public space. While the location of the park is on the fringe of Dallas’ downtown, surrounding office towers give the space a “center of it all” quality, with colorful, brightly lit skyscrapers creating a unique backdrop after sunset.

Everyone with any historical sense knows the sadness of the slashing, blighting impact of Interstate 40 on the Jefferson Street neighborhoods of North Nashville. Local and state government have taken minimal steps: landscaping and creating a plaza underneath an overpass of the highway near TSU. But those improvements are not prominent and seem trivial given the history of the area. They're still buried underneath an interstate, which draws the main attention.

I have yet to see real estate advertisements that catalyze the plaza as a local attractor. That should be a source of embarrassment to politicians and community leaders who touted the plaza before and during its installation a couple of years ago.

Besides, North Nashville deserves more than a plaza underneath a freeway, which seems backwards.

In addition, Metro officials and state government should work together to park-over I-40 at places where the roadway is recessed. The interstate itself should be buried by social spaces that draw the community together. One recessed place is the stretch between D.B. Todd Blvd on the west, Scovel Street on the north, 17th Ave N on the east, and Jefferson St on the south:

Prime North Nashville spot for a park-over

A park over that stretch of I-40 could be an asset to Fisk University and neighborhoods previously severed from each other by the interstate. While a park-over would work with the existing properties, a further option could be to buy up the private properties between Jeff St. and the highway and flip them into green space as well.

With the tremendously positive impact that parks play in community quality of life, parking over the interstate would do much more to benefit North Nashville than a ballpark at Sulphur Dell, which is limited by a specialized, privatized and seasonal uses.

Because the construction of a new ballpark is such a very special moment for North Nashville

From our WTH?! Department:

[Council member Robert] Duvall said Monday that Dean and other city officials rushed to get the Metro Council to approve [a ballpark at Sulphur Dell] without thinking it through.

“’Let’s get it over with’ was their attitude. It’s a done deal. ‘We have to move on to bigger and better things,’ they believed,” Duvall said.

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you, to hear that even a huge new capital project real estate grab in North Nashville may have been dealt with carelessly, cavalierly by the financing wizards in the Mayor's Office, who may view other parts of Nashville as more worthy of "bigger and better" attention. Shocked! (As if I could be at this point).

While Nashville subsidizes a convention center for tourists it may end subsizing long-term care for its own elderly

Cities don’t have the expertise.

--Mayor Karl Dean's excuse for proposing to sell Metro-run

Bordeaux Long-Term Care to a private corporation

Taking care of tourists, selling out the elderly.

I do not know the history of public nursing home care in Nashville. I would not be surprised to learn that it grew out of the Depression-era New Deal or out of the civil rights revolutions of LBJ's Great Society. But I cannot say with certainty for now that I know those possibilities to be factual. [Note: see "Historical Update" added below].

I can say that when I started following a community-based organization here in Nashville in the early 1990s, Metro-run nursing homes were in existence. That organization, Tying Nashville Together, conducted public hearings with official's regarding Metro's nursing homes and even challenged Mayor Phil Bredesen to raise the pay of Metro's nursing home workers to help assure quality care for the elderly.

So, Metro has been about the business of operating nursing homes for some time now to my knowledge. Unless at least 3 administrations have been malfeasant--including Karl Dean's 2 terms in executive office--and they all hired assisted living staffs that were not qualified for the positions, then how can Mayor Dean now claim that our city has no expertise at running nursing homes? The city has a track record and institutional knowledge in the field. What exactly is he expressing to past residents and their families about the care they received from Metro Nashville's employees?

The context of Mayor Dean's quote is plain, according to the Tennessean. They are clear that, by selling, Nashville will join a list of other red-state cities to bail on public nursing home care, and in the process Nashville will save $10.5 million (maybe to help offset a more expensive new ballpark at Sulphur Dell?). The entire quote from Karl Dean then follows: "In this environment, city-operated facilities just aren’t competitive....Cities don’t have the expertise."

The Mayor's comments belie the Bordeaux facility's own introduction:

Bordeaux Long-Term Care...is a regional leader in the provision of intermediate and skilled healthcare, rehabilitation therapy and palliative care. We are committed to providing our residents with the highest quality healthcare in a comfortable and caring environment. With an impressive team of compassionate caregivers, the Bordeaux Long-Term Care staff is trained to provide a broad range of healthcare services and rehabilitative therapies while promoting creativity, innovation and clinical excellence.

Again, how can residents and their families at Bordeaux have faith in any of these words they might have read in the past when the Mayor himself insinuates that Metro does not exactly know what it is doing in assisting living treatment? What would the Mayor say about Bordeaux's authenticity when he claims a private company can serve residents better than they have? That Metro Nashville was never really genuine about the high quality of care provided to its own residents?

Besides Karl Dean poisoning his own well with the claim that the city's nursing care delivery cannot keep up with private companies, his logic is shot full of holes. Did the city have the expertise that tourism industry giants like Gaylord Entertainment have when it subsidized the building and maintenance of a new convention center and hotel? He did not think twice about Nashville competing with private companies for tourism dollars when he built and operated Music City Center, which serves actual Nashvillians measurably less directly than long-term facilities do.

Maybe it is just easier for Karl Dean to give up on elderly Nashvillians because they have a lot less disposable income than tourists and the tourism industry does. Lest you assume this is no big deal, just remember that governments, in privatizing their services, have screwed up service delivery: utilities, prisons, schools, the military, you name it. There is some kind of horror story involved in every effort to privatize that I am aware of. And the casualties are usually common folk.

I await further details on Hizzoner's latest privatization plan, but it looks despicable, even vicious, right now.




HISTORICAL UPDATE:

Bordeaux Long-Term Care, Metro Nashville's current 420-bed nursing home on 121 acres northwest of downtown, began in 1893 as the successor to the poor farm. It provided various medical services to residents as Bordeaux Hospital until 1967 when its focus became long-term care.

A few reflections for today's ceremonial groundbreaking for a new ballpark at Sulphur Dell

Leading off in the wrong direction: new ballpark's plate will face other way.

This evening Mayor Karl Dean is holding his soiree (today shutting down 4th Avenue and two state parking lots) to break ground on his new underwhelming ballpark for the Nashville Sounds. He has ordered infield dirt and home plate be set up on 4th, about a less than block away from where the new home plate will likely be. Fittingly, home plate is facing the wrong way. It is a metaphor for me on how this process has started on the wrong foot. Token, purely symbolic attempts were made to invite community buy-in. If this project starts going pear-shaped with cost overages or construction delays, Hizzoner and a few North Nashville council members are likely going to regret not getting more popular support before moving forward.

Instead, they have expressed garden variety meanness toward anyone with a critical question. Admittedly, it comes with the territory in politics. You ask questions about the Mayor's rapid bus plan, you get labeled as conservative and anti-mass-transit. You ask questions about the Mayor's Fairgrounds sell-off, you get labeled as anti-neighborhood and regressive. You ask questions about the Mayor's new convention center, you get accused of wanting to hold back growth in Nashville.

Likewise, you ask questions about the Mayor's ballpark and the process he undertook to make it happen in less than 6 months, and your love of baseball is questioned. (In some cases the invective is uglier). What is particularly troubling is when the meanness is expressed in emotional moments by your own council member, whose public comments seem to suggest that she only considers the emails of supporter of projects that she supports. It may be, as Erica Gilmore argues, "a strange kind of love of baseball" that insists that Metro government be accountable to constituents for its capital projects even when they involve the national pastime, but to question people's deeply held devotion to something when you cannot even seem to spell correctly the name of the ballpark whose history you claim to be celebrating in your new capital project smacks of hypocrisy. Questioning someone else's love of baseball or history when you don't seem to have a grasp on either yourself amounts to being the bad sport.

For her love of the game, I'd be interested to know whether CM Gilmore has put her deposit down on season tickets in order to financially support the new ballpark she claims will "revive" Jefferson Street.

Are you crying?
There's no crying in baseball!

That is merely one of the questions I have going into this afternoon's groundbreaking. They deserve answers, not more hyperbole. Has the Mayor done the work on examining the area for archaeologically sensitive sites? Has soil analysis been done to test for contamination? Where will any toxic soil be dumped? What is Mayor Dean doing to protect historic buildings nearby? What will we do about traffic and parking? What are contingency plans for future catastrophic floods? There are a host of other questions I have heard asked that have yet to receive answers. Rather than lashing out at people who ask questions like this, rather than impugning their motives the Mayor's Office and its minions in Friends of Sulphur Dell should offer clear answers. This is baseball. It concerns our neighborhoods. We deserve more than tempestuous politics.


UPDATE: The Associated Press in a story on today's event repeats a meme that a new ballpark will end the 50-year-old deterioration of Jefferson Street. It also makes a claim that I have never read before: that Sulphur Dell was demolished due to the construction of the interstate, which is a dozen or so blocks away from the old ballpark site.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and the Nashville Sounds baseball team are hosting a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new minor league ballpark that will return Nashville baseball to its historic home.

The new park in Sulphur Dell will be near the site of an old downtown ballpark that was demolished more than 40 years ago to make way for an interstate and redevelopment. Those changes cut off the historically black neighborhoods of North Nashville from downtown, helping to drive those neighborhoods into an economic slump.

Residents and officials hope the new ballpark will help revive North Nashville, especially the central business district on Jefferson Street.

It looks like whoever wrote this piece is drawing information from a December report which made the debatable claim that our community "never recovered" from demolition of Sulphur Dell and the construction of the interstate.

The Tennessee Tribune offered a contrasting point of view to the AP last year:

“The interstate was only the beginning of the problem,” said Janice Jones, a retired nurse who lived in North Nashville for 55 years. “These hooligans moved in and starting committing crimes. It used to be safe here 40 years ago. Black folks were supporting each other and businesses were thriving.”

Jones paused to collect herself. “Now they’re over here killing each other and abusing drugs. It’s ridiculous.” Kassir agrees. “We showed unity back then. We supported each other. But somewhere in the years after segregation and Civil Rights, we lost our way and turned on each other. This neighborhood hasn’t been the same since.”

Not everything on Jefferson Street has gone downhill. In 1994, an organization was formed by longtime Jefferson Street residents, business owners, homeowners and developers called Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership to provide a jump-start to Jefferson Street.

I am sure that the Mayor's Office has no problem with the AP notion that a ballpark may save Jefferson Street neighborhoods after 50 years, thus making Karl Dean our superhero, but the facts and the truth seem to be more complex and nuanced. And the Mayor has not been attentive to North Nashville as a rule of his two terms.

As far as I can tell the folding of the previous minor league fanchise had more to do than the building of the interstate with the demolition of Sulphur Dell. And to claim that in 50 years Jefferson Street neighborhoods have done nothing but decline is blind to reality. The AP should get a grip and stop inventing news.

Do ballpark "partnerships" shelter developers from meeting their public obligations?

Mayor Karl Dean loves him some public-private partnerships. He touts them consistently when he is speaking from the stump. No less about the new Sulphur Dell ballpark "partnership":

I think the great thing about this is, because this is a public-private partnership — and it truly is a public-private partnership — you have two public entities, the state and the city government, along with two private entities involved. And because of the revenue generated and because of the contributions made by the Sounds and because of some different payments that we're already making that will go away, that will largely cover the cost of issuing the bonds.

Given his perennial commitment to them, I just always assumed he believed that all of those emerging on his watch were "truly public-private partnerships."

But for all of the positive spin of public-private partnerships, they have a dark side, which is rarely expressed in the media until after damage is done. Partnerships usually are not representative of or accountable to constituents since they rely on executive fiat behind closed doors to happen. By the time they get to legislative branches where constituents have more influence they are full-steam juggernauts. Sympathetic and loyal legislators run interference for the execs and kill most chances for public vetting.

Sports venue projects, even minor league baseball parks, are allowed to operate under the security of public-private partnerships, especially when they are run as non-profits, especially when they are overseen by tax-exempt governmental agencies. In Reno, Nevada the triple-A baseball team has a new ballpark, but the county government has been unsuccessful collecting unpaid taxes from the ballpark developer because of the partnership:

The “available legal remedies” for collecting the debt, however, are limited because of the public-private partnership involved in the ballpark’s construction, according to Assistant District Attorney Paul Lipparelli.

Typically, if a property owner stops paying taxes, the county can file a lien, auction off the building and use the proceeds to collect on the back taxes. But in this case, the Reno Redevelopment Agency — a tax exempt governmental entity — owns the ballpark. The agency leases the ballpark back to the developers for $1 a year.

Because the developers are using the tax exempt property for a profit-making enterprise, they owe property taxes....But the county can’t just file a lien, it would need to file a lawsuit to collect the back taxes.

At the heart of the tax dispute are the terms of the original deal the developers has with the Reno Redevelopment Agency to build the ballpark. Under that agreement, the developers expected up to $50 million in property tax revenue generated by growing tax collections within the redevelopment district to repay the construction loan. But property values tanked in the recession, leaving the agency in severe financial distress and with no way to make the payments to the developers.

In lieu of not receiving that money, Nevada Land LLC simply stopped paying property taxes on the ballpark.

So, the speculated wealth, guaranteed by ballpark boosters to come back to the local community when they were drumming up support, failed to come back. The maze the returns on investments have to run is more convoluted than ballpark supporters divulge. The money has to negotiate quagmires caused by turns in the economy, make its way through minefields of legal stipulations and contract disputes and avoid obstacles put up by partnerships that do more to protect the partners than the constituents who may or may not enjoy benefits that trickle out.

Because of the speed and secrecy of the Sulphur Dell deal, because of the work of Karl Dean's loyalists on the council, we still are learning about the details of the arrangement. I do not know whether a foundation will oversee the for-profit activities of the Nashville Sounds or the developers. I do not know what sort of oversight Mayor's Office of Economic and Community Development will have over the development. For better or worse, we will eventually catch wind of the details, wherein the devils lie.

But the unpleasantness in Reno makes me wonder if Nashville is set up to lose a few shirts in the Sulphur Dell deal as well.

What is wrong with this picture?

I just received an email from CM Erica Gilmore announcing a reception. Despite the fact that she co-sponsored the bill for this ballpark project, there is an error that keeps coming up. See if you can spot it:

If the problem does not immediately leap the page, jump to a previous riddled ballpark email from her for hints. Again, this is not a new project for her; she has been lobbying for this for years. I assume that she, as co-sponsor, helped craft the council resolutions on it. So, what gives?

Someone needs to kick this ballpark concept until it bleeds baseball

Practically no culture critics that I am aware of have weighed in on the Mayor's new Sulphur Dell ballpark design. That was not the case in 2006, when the Sounds and developers had a design for the Riverfront. I recall weeks of discussion about the design.

Christine Kreyling, co-author of The Plan of Nashville, wrote of the Sounds proposal at the time that it did not integrate the ballpark facility successfully with the other mixed-use development that was part of the project. Looking over the images released for Sulphur Dell, I wonder if Kreyling's opinion would be that different of Mayor Karl Dean's project for North Nashville. Rather than creating a cozy fit between ballpark, residential and parking garage, Sulphur Dell could be accused of repeating the "willy-nilly wedged blocks" of 2006 "Soundsville". Designers seemed to have fit the garage and the residential buildings more carefully along the greenway beyond the outfield wall, but the ballpark seems dropped down with little thought to continuity.

The ballpark in the Sulphur Dell plan itself looks like a low-profile afterthought, almost like the mission here is to express that this is strictly a real estate deal and not the resurrection of hollowed ground of primordial baseball diamonds of old (as went the marketing campaign went before the proposal was approved). In 2006, Kreyling reported that developers intended that residential and ballpark not strive for integration "in case at some point in the future the stadium is demolished." Is the same logic in effect at Sulphur Dell in 2014? Because the new ballpark seems to be strictly an expendable utility player on this field of dreams.

Kreyling also criticized the awkward way that the rounded shell of the 2006 grandstands "stuck on" a squared porch "diluted the strength of the building form." The Sulphur Dell proposal differs in that the rounded wall behind home plate is centered between blocks of its own squared porch instead of pulled toward a corner, but the style looks similar: the Dell's squared off porch seems to nullify the classic ballpark form.

Rather than emerging unmistakably streetside as a ballpark, the form seems to be swallowed into a blank stone wall. If you took the literal reference of the name of the place off the Jackson St. windows, would the building itself communicate "ballpark" or "baseball"? Or could the rounded shell that peeks out from its sandwich between blocks merely seem to be any building suiting any purpose at all? Indeed, the Jackson St. exterior looks like a hoary back wall to the development footprint to the degree that they could add to it a loading dock that would not appear to be out-of-place.

After the blight of Greer Stadium, Nashville may feel lucky to have any new ballpark design at all. But the one they are planning at Sulphur Dell seems to recede to the point of insignificance relative to the real estate around it. One reviewer of stadiums across the USA referred to the exterior of Titans' LP Field as "unspectacular", and I am struck by how the stone and glass skin of the new baseball park resemble points along the blasé hull of LP Field. If baseball in North Nashville history is as venerable, is as important as boosters of the Mayor's plan have insisted for weeks now, don't we deserve a more robust and unmistakable baseball aesthetic for the old ball game, befitting the history of Sulphur Dell?


UPDATE: one of the reasons that the ballpark part of the Sulphur Dell development is more utility than frontline may be because the Sounds club owner, Frank Ward, is more of a real estate mogul than a baseball guy. In a November interview, Mayor Karl Dean emphasized the Ward family's real estate credentials to insist that the real estate would succeed:

I think people need to remember that the current owners of the Sounds came into baseball with a background in real estate development. In fact, the son of Frank Ward, who's the principal owner of the Sounds, that's how he makes his living is real estate development and building student housing. So they have a lot of experience and we're very confident that they want this to move forward.

I don't have a problem with this family wanting to make some money on their real estate business, but the reality that the ballpark element in the development is downplayed and the appointments in the ballpark are meager suggests that baseball is not the focus that it should be.

When I look at Memphis's Autozone Park in contrast I think, "This looks like a park baseball people would build":

Small print for ballpark groundbreaking says, "Paid for by Karl Dean for Mayor"

It is not in the advertisement below, but the small print from the email containing the ad for the January 27 ballpark groundbreaking at Sulphur Dell notes the event's campaign nature. Here is the ad:

The email explicitly says that the event is not subsidized by Metro government funds, but the ad conspicuously displays the official seal of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County as if it is a sponsor.

By the way, this is not the first Mayor's Office e-mail blurring the line between Karl Dean's campaign aspirations and his official capacity.

Ballpark cost overruns already: what we should have been told before Erica Gilmore and Jerry Maynard rammed the Sulphur Dell deal through council

This troubling bit of Sulphur Dell news trickled out on December 31, which means that it was likely muffled by the holidays and that many might have missed it:

construction firms told Metro what it would [actually] cost to build a new baseball stadium for the Nashville Sounds.

But Mayor Karl Dean’s administration said the new facility will come in on budget, despite the builders’ initial estimates running some $5 million higher than city officials said a new ballpark would cost before public financing for the project was approved.

A procurement evaluation committee has selected a team led by Bell & Associates Construction to build the ballpark, which is scheduled to open in April 2015 with room for 10,000 fans.

Now we see why this deal had to go through before everyone started paying attention to Metro government shenanigans again in the new year. If your council member voted for this plan and it does run over budget, blame him or her for lack of proper oversight.

In Memphis in the meantime, the city council has worked out a deal to buy their minor league stadium, AutoZone Park, with guarantees from team and corporate sponsors. On first blush, the agreement looks much better for Memphis than Sulphur Dell does for Nashville. The Memphis Redbirds will now be owned by their parent club, the St. Louis Cardinals, who have agreed to help pay for stadium improvements and for marketing. Both the St. Louis team owners and corporate sponsor AutoZone have agreed to help the city pay off the debt from the bonds financing the deal if sales tax rebate revenues don’t meet projections. What got the Redbirds in trouble in the first place were bond holders trying to flip muni-debt.

And get this: there were Memphis city council members holding out against the deal until it was reworked more favorably for the city.

In Nashville we have no assurances from the Sounds owner (who strikes me as more of a real estate mogul than a baseball guy) and corporate developers that they will help Metro out if projections are not met by realities. That's because the sponsors of the Sulphur Dell bill--particularly Erica Gilmore and Jerry Maynard--discouraged any obligation whatsoever on these private interests to help Metro out if the dreams do not come true.

Maybe I've grown accustomed and calloused to the horsewhipping of Nashville politics, so I can't grasp the regressive holes in the Memphis deal like some critics, but I wish we would have had the Memphis city council representing our city on the Sulphur Dell deal. "Piddly" guarantees are better than no guarantees.