Traffic & parking planning in Salemtown sinks from deficient to dumpster fire with latest ballpark predicament

First, Metro tells us that they blew up their $65,000,000 First Tennessee Park construction budget because they didn't account for the age of the buried utility lines. Yesterday another shoe dropped: the garage that was supposed to keep game day fans from filling up our vanishing parking spaces won't be baseball ready until the 2016 season. That's an entire traffic-clogged baseball season to you and me:

Two and a half months before opening day at the Nashville Sounds' new baseball stadium, Metro officials are searching for places where fans can park their cars.

That's because an $18 million parking garage to accompany the city-financed stadium won't be ready this season, presenting complications for the inaugural year of First Tennessee Park ....

The 1,000-space garage — paid for by Metro and built by the state of Tennessee on state-owned land — is part of an agreement between the two governmental entities and the Sounds. The plan is for state employees to eventually use the garage during the day and for stadium-goers to use the garage at night and on weekends.

But the state, which will own the four-story garage, only recently broke ground on the project and state officials estimate it won't be finished until Oct. 31.

How is the Mayor working to extinguish this dumpster fire? Well, to start, four hours before the bad news broke, his spin squad announced a media tour of the ballpark construction site to take reporters' minds off the negative impact of the parking snafu on the local neighborhoods. He also promises a "temporary parking plan" using shuttles and parking lots off-site. Even when the garage was part of the concept as planned back in 2013, the Mayor made vague references to shuttles and off-site parking lots with few specifics or details, so I do not have much faith in his latest parking plan. I think baseball fans will be scouring Germantown and Salemtown for parking, especially because there are no spaces to be had downtown.

I tried to warn CM Erica Gilmore about the need for a traffic and parking plan, but she wouldn't listen as she pounded ballpark construction through the council. She has already told me point-blank that she will not even consider reserved street parking for Salemtown residents. She does not have her ducks in a row on parking issues in our neighborhood. And she's a last-term lame duck herself this election year, so I'm not expecting any high flying at the council level this spring and summer as we fight for parking spaces near our own homes.

For his part, Nashville Sounds team owner Frank Ward uses the occasion to lecture on the differences between being realists and expecting perfection:

"Will it be perfect?" Sounds owner Frank Ward said of the parking plan. "No, but it will help alleviate the parking issues. And we're working hand-in-hand with the city in coming up with that and making sure that we get it out to all our fans in sufficient time.

"Part of the plan with the city is to minimize the inconvenience of residents in Salemtown and Germantown and to keep [the parking] all south of Jefferson Street."

Maybe I missed something. Who expects perfection? Please, Mr. Ward, don't confuse demanding good and careful planning before jumping into historically huge construction with "perfection." Don't confuse expecting the mayor to have contingency plans already publicized with "perfection." Don't confuse a real, transparent risk assessment of higher costs after ground is broken with "perfection."

Despite the fact that that his club is now living on the Metro dime, Mr. Ward's ultimate allegiance is not to us taxpayers but to the Sounds ownership group and to the luxury suite and other season ticket holders.

However, I am pleased to see that Mr. Ward can for once utter the name, "Salemtown" with reference to the impact of his new toy. Hopefully, the Nashville Sounds will start treating us with more respect as time goes on.

I will not put my money on it, though.

Mr. Ward and the Sounds stopped their nostalgic references to Sulphur Dell and Jefferson Street once the council rubber stamped the Mayor on the plan. The nods to local history are over.

Moreover, I'm told that when our association's event organizers approached the Sounds about co-sponsoring a recent event, the club sent some left-over bobbleheads and out-dated t-shirts. That is not much of a sponsorship. It is rather pathetic.


UPDATE: The spate of reporters tweeting pictures today of the Mayor's tour of the new ballpark says to me that it was effective in turning a bad story into positive news media PR. Rather than reaching out to the neighborhoods most directly affected by the delay in the parking garage until 2016, the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods is joining the feel-good chorus by posting photos of Hizzoner's tour of laughter and forgetting on Twitter:

"Creative visualization is my new plan to see that parking garage behind right field."

UPDATE: Give a sports reporter a hard hat, a yellow vest, and personal access to the Mayor and he is bound to go all giddy. The Mayor's Office and the Nashville Sounds have to pleased with this free advertising: "the new park appears to be the latest home run for the city." Is the Tennessean's Dave Ammenheuser bucking for a future promotional job with the team?

In a video connected to that editorial (because it is not good journalism), Frank Ward tells press, "Everything inside the ballpark will be ready for opening day." And conditions outside the ballpark? Fuhgeddaboudit!


UPDATE: At least some local journalists are giving us a fair shake after attending the Mayor's publicity tour of the stadium. Staff reporter E.J. Boyer at the Nashville Business Journal acknowledges the challenges facing this zooming construction project:

Another big question that has emerged this week is related to parking, a concern for the neighborhood, which has seen an influx of residents and visitors in recent years, crowding already narrow streets with cars. Dean's original proposal included a 1,000-spot garage to be funded by Metro but built by the state on state-owned land .... the garage won't be ready this season.

On Wednesday, Dean shifted responsibility for the garage's delay to the state, noting that on Metro's side, this is a fast-moving project. He added that his team has been working on a back-up plan for months, anticipating a delay, and that he hopes to reveal something in the next few weeks. Both Dean and Sounds owner Frank Ward said details are being worked out as to which party would pick up the tab for an alternative parking situation (which would most likely use shuttles to get fans to satellite parking locations) ....

The mayor's office will organize and host neighborhood meetings in the coming weeks to offer details on traffic patterns, noise and light pollution.

So maybe we will eventually get some answers to a laundry list of quality-of-life questions that should have been answered in the planning stages before approval was ever given to start construction.


UPDATE: So, the opening of the parking garage was never an expectation for opening day, huh? Then why are Metro officials acting like the news came out of left field?

"It really put us in a lurch to figure out where we're going to park people," Metro Sports Authority Executive Director Toby Compton said. "A. We wanted to figure out as much of a parking blend as possible. And the mayor was really insistent that there be a free component to the parking. That was big.

"To layer that, what we've also done is encourage people to think about mass transit options ...," he said. "Once they see this plan, they are not going to go north of Jefferson."

Metro powers-that-be have "cobbled" together a transit plan that includes free parking at Farmers' Market, state lots on James Robertson Parkway, and the "center piece," $5 parking at the Courthouse 7 or 8 blocks away from the new ballpark.

Will baseball fans buy the idea that no parking exists
above the map's top edge?

My first reaction is: why not free parking at the Courthouse? If I'm a commuting baseball fan and I have choice between parking in Germantown 2 or 3 blocks away for free or parking at the Courthouse farther away for fee, I would take the Germantown option. The fringe benefit of my choice is that I also get some exercise; health benefits accrue to the free Germantown option. Until the parking garage behind right field is built, there should be free parking for every fan in all of these lots south of Jefferson. Otherwise, Germantown and probably Salemtown are going to lose on-street parking. Universally free parking is the least the Mayor can do after blundering through the planning stages with no transit options ready-to-roll.


UPDATE: the primary reason that the ballpark legislation was shamelessly rammed through the process with little council debate and practically no citizen influence over planning is realized Opening Day, April 17. Hizzoner reserved the right to throw out the symbolic first pitch.

Mayor Karl Dean throws out the first pitch
(as celebrated by CM Jacobia Powell on her Twitter feed)

His work here is done.


UPDATE: It's Friday morning, April 24, 2015. I reserved seats in the ballpark weeks ago for my family to attend tonight's game. Paid for them and everything. I got an email mere hours before game time that our seats have been moved farther away from the action. Here is the relevant part of the email:

Dear fan,

This is not the kind of email we like to send. We’ve just been told that we have to move you to a new spot at your upcoming event, and we’ve been searching for new seats you’ll like just as much.

Nashville Sounds Vs. Oklahoma City Dodgers
First Tennessee Park
Friday, April 24, 2015 at 7:05PM

We’ve done everything we can to get you comparable seats!

If they keep treating me like this, I may have to re-evaluate my long-time status as a Sounds fan.


UPDATE: It's Monday morning, July 13, 2015. Have to say that I am hearing more and more complaints in the local community as the summer goes along that Sounds fans seem to have discovered all of the free streetside parking in Germantown and Salemtown. I cannot say I feel too much sympathy now, because the dire and bloated parking situation was predictable and preventable.

In the meantime, John Oliver's Last Week Tonight recently produced a brilliant piece on public taxes (in the form of municipal bonds, like those going to First Tennessee Park). The whole segment is wonderful and hilarious (according to one long-time stadium observer called it "more thoroughly fact-checked" than most news media coverage), but pay particular attention to the impact of one stadium on a neighborhood business, which locals who are "the regulars" abandon during games.





Hopefully, you also noticed that one big league owner refused to be transparent about his team's finances in exchange for public revenues "because that's just how it is" in league history. You may also recall that Metro's Finance Director made the exact same argument for committing municipal bonds to build First Tennessee Park, even though there are glaring instances in which that was not the way it was at all, and even though Nashville claims to want to be unlike any other city in the country. You cannot really be "It City" if you simply conform "because that's just how it is."

Want to kill a neighborhood's connection to a sporting event? This is how you do it

I've been following the Country Music Marathon up close for years now but April 2014 was the worst experience I've had on the race course here in North Nashville. Why? Because instead of shutting all of Rosa Parks Blvd. down for the marathon, race organizers opened half of it up to vehicular traffic, effectively cutting off the view of spectators as the runners went by.

When asked, a Metro Police officer responded that some developers of some of the construction projects in the area lobbied to keep long swaths of Rosa Parks open so that their trucks and workers could get in and out continue to gentrify on Saturday.

This was the view of the race and the traffic from just outside the Werthan Loft complex last April 26:

While not a marathoner myself, I maintain that marathons are unique in that they give neighborhoods the most direct, immediate contact with an organized sporting event that fields professional athletes. That's what I once enjoyed about the Country Music Marathon.

It is too bad that Metro government, real estate developers and the marathon's organizers had to spoil that direct contact and the view with auto traffic in 2014. Will it happen again this year? I guess if developers continue to hold sway here it will.

Is this Salemtown development designed for people or for cars?

Over the past year--whether concerning a new bus rapid transit line or an $18 million pedestrian bridge--the Mayor's Office has drummed into our heads that the strapping millennial generation is different than others in that they want more walkable neighborhoods and more mass transit. In short, they don't care for cars.

What's good for public dollars ought to be good for private dollars, too, so why is Dale & Associates builders planning a high-density build in Salemtown with what looks like parking for at least 40 cars? New builds are marketed to millennials who don't subscribe to car culture (unlike baby boomers), so why do these the developers of "The Row at 6th and Garfield" plan to pave/build over what looks like about 80% of the land across 5 properties?

Accommodations for 40 cars?!!

It seems brash enough to demolish 8 units across those 5 plots and build 20 in a neighborhood zoned mostly for medium density. However, I can grasp the logic that the urban core is going to become more, not less dense over time. What I fail to appreciate is taking out what are currently modest rentals that accommodate working-class folk in are increasingly being pushed out of Salemtown. What I fail to fathom is why one more project is being built for upwardly mobile millennials, with no mention of affordable options to hang on to diversity. What I fail to respect is the idea that the space will be more devoted to servicing cars than people; in an age where we are told that millennials are giving up their cars.

Current configuration: 8 units, maybe a dozen parking spaces.

Some in the new urbanist klatch refer to this corner as the "last remaining corner at 6th and Garfield," even as it continues to be occupied families with children. Part of the problem with the gentrifying mindset it that it renders people of modest income invisible. The more profound attribution to me is that if The Row at 6th and Garfield is built as currently planned, then the last patch of considerable green space at this intersection will be paved over. It is not uncommon to see children playing on the grassy areas whenever I pass this intersection.

The builders of each of the other three developments (one is Dale & Associates) at the intersection took vacant lots with nothing but green space and built town homes with completely paved car ways in the back. They left thin slivers of green space ringing each of the developments. So, The Row at 6th and Garfield would complete the trend of orienting intersection completely to car traffic regardless of environmental and stormwater run-off impact.

While the question of 20 units may not be as much of an issue in the urban core, the question of parking for 40 cars in the core makes 20 units too much for this intersection. The owners of these properties are allowed to build what they wish within the current medium density parameters, but they are requesting rezoning for 40 cars. They have to have community support to be permitted to build for 40 cars.

In my opinion, it is unwise for Salemtown to support to the idea of parking for 40 cars in one development. We need to ask the developers to scale down their build more practically for the people they are marketing to. Why not double the number of units from 8 to 16 and reduce the number of car provisions to 32 (or less since millennials don't prefer cars)? And they should be required to include affordable housing components in the project.

If the men of Dale are going to ask for our support in their bid to maximize land owners' investments, then they should be willing to give something back to our community.


UPDATE: I took a photo of the MTA bus stop closest to the properties where The Row at 6th and Garfield would be built. The blue sign marks the stop. The red brick duplexes in the center background of the photo are the properties in question. We are talking about a few dozen feet to walk to catch a bus that runs straight down 5th Av N to downtown's central station in around 5-10 minutes (yes, I have picked up a bus there before), where other buses can take riders anywhere in Nashville.

Again, if mass transit is a comer with potential buyers, and they do not have to walk even a block to access mass transit, why should developers include 40 parking spaces at The Row at 6th and Garfield?

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.

Association starts discussion of parking problems in Salemtown

Last fall, I underscored the coming storm over street-side parking in Salemtown (where the lion's share of parking is on public streets), based on the bottlenecks that were already appearing in Germantown.

At last month's Salemtown Neighbors business meeting the subject was brought up and discussions began about possibly leveraging reserved parking on public streets for residents.

I'm all for this and I would sign a petition to reserve parking on my street (I am told Metro requires 75% of residents to sign a petition to get reserved parking). The only caveat I would add is that Salemtown should not wait for anyone or for anything to do this. We certainly cannot wait for CM Erica Gilmore, who pushed the Sulphur Dell ballpark plan through without any consideration for or concern about impact on neighborhood parking.

There was some discussion about working in tandem with Historic Germantown. But, why? If all we need block-by-block is 75%, then why wait for Germantown? HGI often goes its own way without consulting Salemtown. Can anyone show me how working with Germantown on parking in Salemtown would help our case?

Let's get this done before the hulking apartment complex, Werthan Flats, opens and we have our own bottlenecks to deal with. Let's get this done before developers start asking for rezoning for restaurants and mixed-use in Salemtown, at which point we will have them, their lawyers, their lobbyists and their cash flows to fight for reserved parking. Let's get this done before it's too late.

The real-life impact of a new ballpark absent the unsustainable promises

A woman who has lived in the South Bronx for 35 years (the last 9 of which have been near the new Yankee Stadium) shares her experiences, and we fail to take heed of her view at our own peril:

There was no significant community input into how our neighborhood could co-exist with the new stadium. Our voices were silenced by elected officials who accused us of not wanting any development.

As a resident I have witnessed and indeed lived in the snarling traffic that consumes our neighborhood. As a taxpayer I strongly object to subsidizing garages to bring more traffic to an area that is trying to rebound as a good place to bring up children.

We were told the new stadium would bring economic development and a resurgence to our community.

I invite you to take a walk around the neighborhood and see for yourself if that has happened. Businesses have closed and the remaining ones are hurting as the Yankee organization has moved many of the services inside the stadium.

The NYPD has become super-aggressive on game days by blocking streets with no prior warning and posting police officers all around the neighborhood. Streets with posted signs of “no parking on game day” are closed off to the community while fans are charged to park on these same streets where parking is normally legal and free.

The sanitation trucks circle all day, emptying trash (this would be a wonderful service for residents!). The community is host to numerous parking garages and lots that are open only on game day and of no use to us otherwise.

Mayor Dean has already said that neighborhood input on Sulphur Dell will take a backseat to his own interests. Ballpark boosters already falsely throw charges at ballpark realists like me about how we just do not want development in our backyard ("NIMBY"). Some of us have been raising red flags about potential traffic and parking problems in our dense urban neighborhoods.

But I should underscore her observations that businesses are closing due to services provided inside the stadium development. We have not talked enough about the potential negative economic impact on area stores and restaurants due to the self-enclosed, self-sufficient organization of contemporary ballparks. They are more amusement parks and mixed-use retail than they are sports venues. Hence, they try to be all and end all for customers. Hence, they may pull customers away from Jefferson Street and away from Germantown. Local business owners should not be lulled or deceived into believing that more fans at a new ballpark will translate into a wave of patrons for them. This will not be like Oktoberfest (or Germantown Street Festival).

Salemtown and Germantown better start counting of the costs of the Mayor's plan as well as embracing its benefits. We better start paying attention to neighborhoods elsewhere who have these new sports venues in their midst. If we fail to vet the impact fully we will only be hurting ourselves in the long run.

A problem looming on Salemtown's horizon

East Nashville reserves parking for neighbors.

West Nashville reserves parking for neighbors.

At the last Salemtown neighborhood association meeting a Metro Police officer told us about changes likely coming to Germantown streets. After spending some time working to persuade his superiors about the problem of traffic choking Taylor St. and overflowing onto 7th Av. N. and 6th Av. N. due to the wildly popular restaurant, Rolf and Daughters, he believes that the department is prepared to restrict parking on Taylor between 5th Av. N. and Rosa Parks Blvd. to one side of the road. That would be a welcome change to those of us who have tried to navigate the narrow road in our vehicles between a closely set gauntlet of parked vehicles. However, it is also bound to lead to increased parking challenges on the side streets as residents will vie with bar patrons for remaining open spots.

The parking problems caused on Taylor by inbound restaurant patrons should be a wake-up call for those of us who live north of Germantown: parking in a neighborhood that generally does not have driveways is going to become more problematic. We need to start working on solutions like other Nashville neighborhoods have.

The problems will be compounded if mixed-use retail and dining establishments spread into Salemtown. There is a plan for mixed use at the hulking new Werthan Flats development at the other end of the block from Rolf and Daughters, right on Salemtown's doorstep. The apartment dwellers of the Flats and their visitors will themselves surely overflow into Salemtown. I am aware of attempts already made to launch a new restaurant on 6th Ave in Salemtown, which will cause considerable congestion around the adjacent blocks. When I served on the citizen advisory committee for Salemtown's block grant, we recommended putting the same traffic calming bulb-outs that 5th and 7th enjoy on 6th, but Metro disapproved, saying that 6th is too narrow for bulb-outs. If it is too narrow for traffic calming features, it might just be too narrow for residents to park alongside the traffic congestion caused by restaurants. The northern part of Salemtown will not be spared as Salemtown Cottages, an urban-density development offering 2 dozen units north of Buchanan St., is set for launch.

Add to that the Mayor's plan for a ballpark a few blocks away set to open in 2015. We will be overrun by automobile traffic with no guarantees of places to park near our homes.

Opposes parking permits on public streets.

These problems are compounded by the fact that our council member Erica Gilmore has said that she opposes any reserved residential parking on public streets (or so she told me at a recent community meeting when I brought the question up to her). She enthusiastically supports the Mayor's ballpark, but she flatly opposes residential permits. Yet, permits could give residents who live near the ballpark a fighting chance for convenient parking spaces even when they come home from work or from picking their kids up from soccer practice late on a Sounds' game night. If CM Gilmore is going to reject residential permits out-of-hand, then she should propose alternative solutions to the looming problem.

In my opinion, Salemtown should be proactive about this problem before it overtakes us. We need to start planning parking provisions for the people who live here to balance the flood of people who would come in as we grow. We need to work together to persuade our council member that she should represent residents' interests and not just the interests of retail establishments that fill in the mixed-use and strive to pull in more customers in automobiles. We need to show up at planning meetings in order to make clear when developers want to rezone for restaurants--on 6th or anywhere else--that they need to make traffic mitigation, parking plans and support for reserved residential parking priorities in their plans in exchange for our support.

Above all, we need to ask out loud, "Why is reserved residential parking on public streets good for Nashvillians to the east and to the west, but bad for their neighbors to the north?"

Rezone for a restaurant in Salemtown? Don't be dazed by the dream

So, there is this rumor floating around Salemtown and promoted by certain segments that a developer on the 1600 block of 6th Av North is trying to woo owners of East Nashville burger joint, bar, and beer garden The Pharmacy to open a second place in our neighborhood (or at least to woo a restaurant "like The Pharmacy"). The 6th Av property, like most of Salemtown, is zoned for residential, so the developer would have to rezone either for commercial or mixed-use if they come to an understanding with restaurateurs.

Screenshot of 1604 6th Av N & homes from Google Maps

The developers who bought 1604 6th Av N last summer are absentee. They are Oak Tree Partners LLC of Gallatin, TN. They were founded in 2011 and they flipped another holding in their own town into a liquor store. According to Next Door comments forwarded to me, Salemtown Works (a 501c3, not to be confused with Salemtown Neighbors Neighborhood Association) president, Molly McCluer has corresponded with Oak Tree Partners. She encouraged neighborhood residents online to "lobby" The Pharmacy owners (the restaurant is owned by Terrell Raley) to open a restaurant in Salemtown. No word on which owners of restaurants "like The Pharmacy" are being so lobbied.

Now I don't question the value of having restaurants in higher density urban neighborhoods as long as there is careful planning and attention to traffic and parking impact and noise abatement. I have expressed support on this blog for a number of local businesses, including those that feature bars and restaurants. And we spend our money in these establishments to support them particularly because we appreciate the chance to walk rather than drive to do so.

But Salemtown sends the wrong signals to developers when we unquestioningly welcome them with open arms and no critical concerns. We send the wrong signals when we assume that, if we support a specific zoning change here, developers--especially absentee developers--will deliver the restaurants they float in front of our noses as wishful concepts to get their rezoning. We send the wrong signals when we appear to fall in love with their product and generally appear desperate for development when we should be asking developers to compromise to a win-win.

I live very close to the property that other people in my neighborhood who appear to live farther away want to see flipped into The Pharmacy. If I lived where they live I might want that dream, too. The reason I like going to the Pharmacy, besides the fare, is because it's across the river in East Nasty, and I do not have to worry about late-night bar closings near my property or noisy beer gardens.

But if this rezoning bobs to the surface, I will be contacting Mr. Terrell myself to ask about parking, traffic, his closing hours of 3am 7 days a week, and any amplified music played in a beer garden on top of the voices of dozens of customers on school nights. I see that he has a kid about my youngest kid's age, so he would probably understand why I would ask. I might even visit The Pharmacy late night with a decibel meter to measure the noise level myself.

Before I could support a bar and restaurant with outside service near my house on a property that is currently zoned residential, I would need assurances. And I have already talked to a couple of my neighbors who tell me they would need the same assurances. I bet I could find other neighbors who would be sympathetic, especially parents.

One online review of The Pharmacy indicates that parking is a problem in its East Nashville location. In 12South residents have been struggling with shrinking parking due to business growth for years, and the tensions came to a head in 2012. Following multiple meetings between 12South neighborhood association, the Belmont-Hillsboro Neighbors neighborhood association, and 12South businesses, affected residents have successfully navigated the parking permit application process to reserve street parking for themselves. They have a public hearing set with Metro Traffic and Parking Commission on March 11. I bet reserved on-street parking for residents will be approved.

Given that Salemtown has primarily on-street parking, support for residential permits is one thing among others that developers and business owners should be willing to give in order to get support for rezoning. One among others, like noise abatement.

Speaking of the impact of neighborhood businesses on parking, I meant to respond to Chris Chamberlain's observations about on-street parking in a Nashville Scene review of Germantown's Rolf and Daughters back in November. Chamberlain wrote:

Although Rolf and Daughters may seem to be in a remote location with no dedicated parking lot, intrepid diners will quickly realize that it is really only about a minute past the Nashville Farmers' Market and just a couple minutes from the interstate at the Rosa Parks exit. There is plenty of street parking on Taylor Street, so you shouldn't have to walk far to enjoy this new gem in the local restaurant crown.

I drove down Taylor tonight at rush hour, just before dinner time. I saw no ample on-street parking. There was ample parking if you were willing to walk at least a block to get to the place, because cars were choking both sides of the street (and what is the impact on residents who live on 7th Av off Taylor?). Taylor is so narrow that moving traffic is reduced to one squeezed lane when the ample parking spaces are occupied. Without traffic flaggers, two-way traffic on Taylor would be impossible on nights when Rolf and Daughters is slammed and on-street parking backfills for two or three blocks. Ample parking? Did Chamberlain closely look at the street before writing that?

All questions about traffic and parking impact and noise abatement must be soberly considered by Salemtown before we indulge ourselves in the seduction of developers' dreams.