Suburbanization is a failing development model in Tennessee

Charles Marohn describes how a city like Memphis got itself into a bind by relying on subsidized suburbanization as an answer to the ills of industrialization. Now with "soft defaults" (vs. hard defaults in Detroit) the chickens are coming home to roost:

Relying on the automobile to facilitate growth by horizontally expanding the city, Memphis shifted away from the traditional pattern of neighborhood development and played its part in building the American Dream of large yards, easy driving, and free parking.

Suburbanization, sold as a way to cure blight and promote prosperity, was radically new and untested. It was also irresistible. Driven by federal programs and financial incentives, Memphis – like most American cities – built highways through the middle of the city, annexed property and extended public utilities outward.

In the process, core neighborhoods were destroyed and residents relocated to neighborhoods built in the new, experimental style. Streetcars were abandoned and the economic activity at the old stops shifted to new commercial corridors. Old buildings were torn down to provide parking and millions of tax dollars were spent widening streets to accommodate the automobiles now necessary for daily life.

Eventually, the vitality of the city was inverted from its traditional historic pattern of a strong core surrounded by incrementally growing neighborhoods to one where most economic activity took place on the edge. While this shift left many people behind and devastated the historic neighborhoods of Memphis, the result was seen largely as a social problem, not an economic one. Easy growth on the periphery – where land is cheap, the development community is ready, and all the government incentives are in place – was then, and remains today, the community’s default strategy for economic improvement.

Somewhat unhindered by the levels of industrialization borne by Memphis, Nashville is no less exposed by its overreliance on exurban expansion and what Mayor Karl Dean embraces as "regionwide growth". Nashville recently depends on gimmicky baubles like the new Music City Center, a "We Are Nashville Promenade" and an east-west rapid transit connector ("The Amp") in order to spike short-term economic activity without reference to long-term viability in the city for its inhabitants.

Marohn warns of "new massive gambles" undertaken by sprawling metros to keep heads above water: convention centers and retail complexes driven by municipal debt and tax breaks for already wealthy corporations. Likewise these conditions also apply to Nashville, where it feels like we are mortgaging our future sometimes to fund huge new capital projects that enable the Dean brand more than aid Nashville proper. We are definitely sacrificing urban services, from which the Mayor perennially demands cuts, in order to bankroll the diversions.

In the end, an emphasis on regionwide growth seems like warmed-over, evangelical suburbanism. It constitutes a doubling down on failing economic policies that hurt both Memphis and Nashville in the long run. Once the smoke-and-mirrors floor show of the Dean administration ends, what will be left with?

Nashville said to be possibly taking a giant leap ahead on Tuesday (but likely leaving North Nashville behind)

The Obama Administration is reportedly going to roll out its 2015 budget today, and the Mayor's minions are all abuzz that POTUS may drop $75 million on Karl Dean to run his bus rapid transit line down West End almost to Belle Meade. The excitement and the predictable blowback at Hizzoner's self-imposed blindness catalyzed by power and money has gone national:

For Nashville, the backlash calls to mind a recent battle over the planning of the city's half-billion-dollar convention center, which opened in May, and was a cornerstone of the administration of Dean, the second-term Democrat who has the support of the chamber of commerce and the business community writ large. Some residents and elected officials derided the project as a publicly funded gift for tourists. A similar line of attack has been heard over the particular route planners chose for the Amp.

"This bus gets the tourists from downtown to the nicer restaurant/bar district," as one elected official recently put it. "The concept is: we're not building a transit system for Nashvillians. We're building a fun bus to run tourists out to West End and the cool bars."

If President Obama does award Karl Dean a huge grant to build a new transit line for a corridor that needs it less than any point north or south of downtown, it will merely the latest stanza in the dirge I sing for the support I once held for Barack Obama.

The President's stimulus package, if properly funded, could have been a dramatic turnaround for our nation's cities and our national workforce. It was constricted by a leader who has preached the virtues of bringing the unrepentant, uncivil GOP along.

Obamacare is not much more than Romneycare.

Federal education policy has been directed at privatizing public schools and managing high-stakes testing with an eye to giving big business more control in school districts.

Our foreign policy continues to be marred by Bushian tactics, including the civil-rights-violating detention of prisoners. Mr. Obama's drone-slaughters of civilian targets have far exceeded anything Dubya ever did.

And now, instead of granting rapid transit in working-class communities or in neighborhoods predominated by people of color, President Obama may reward Nashville for serving the entertainment and tourism industries one more time before Karl Dean leaves by subsidizing party buses to run visitors to-and-from their hotels, bars and honky tonks quickly.

A President who has been more comfortable serving up tepid Republican pablum may enable a Democratic Mayor who is himself a nice fit for red-state, neo-liberal Tennessee politics.

If Nashville wins this grant today, then it could complete Karl Dean's tenure of serving Nashville's wealthy and influential while leaving communities like North Nashville behind. The Amp is the perfect compliment to the Music City Center. If funded it will be a subsidized pleasure line on which tourists can depend.

And those who make promises that it is only the first step in BRT extended to underserved communities cannot back up those promises. Despite their empty promises, they are going to stand by this Mayor to the end. It's not illogical. If you want to play, he's the game in town. However, Mayor Dean--being term-limited and having higher political aspirations--will never have to be accountable to deliver on those promises.

If the federal government does come through, I predict that in a few years, when we're told there is no more grant money and the budget is too overextended to serve places like North Nashville, Amp supporters will be eating their promises. The best thing that can happen now to bring everything and everyone in Nashville back down to earth is that Obama finds another neo-liberal Mayor elsewhere to support in 2015.


UPDATE:  The Obama transit dept. is recommending $27 million next year for the Amp. If approved it is a little more than 1/3 of what the Mayor's Office wants. So, which 1/3 of the project will get built and which 2/3's waits to see if federal money shows up in 2016, 2017, 2018? Downtown to West End gets BRT first? Without $75 million in 2015, how much longer does North Nashville have to wait for its promised bus rapid transit lines to materialize?

Also, consider this one: “Evidence suggests expanded rail operations produce higher ridership gains than more bus service.” There is a reason the BRT grant is called "Small Starts". It is not nearly as bold as rail, which would create more ridership. The fact that BRT is cheaper, but limited to the hotel and entertainment corridor suggests that the Mayor's Office not only plays it safe in choosing locations, but does so on the cheap. Rail would have made a bolder, more attractive statement.

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.

Problems at Major League Baseball park relevant to questions about Sulphur Dell

A baseball fan blogger with Yahoo's contributor network lists the upsides of stadium upgrades in the home city of the Texas Rangers, but I am much more interested in his criticisms, given perpetual calls in Nashville for a new ballfield:

First, the city of Arlington could add a mass transit system. I know they'll never do it but it sure would ease traffic a little on game days and give more fans a chance to go to a game. And don't bring up moving the Rangers to Fort Worth or Dallas. It's a ridiculous notion considering that right now the team is centrally located in the metroplex allowing equal travel time for fans all around. If Arlington can't approve a city bus line then maybe the "T', the train line between Fort Worth and Dallas, could add tracks and a station near Cowboys Stadium that would also be within walking distance of the Ballpark.

I also recall that when I, a citizen of Arlington, voted on the bonds to build the new park back in the early nineties we (the residents) were shown pictures of the stores and restaurants that would be built nearby and along what later became known as Mark Holtz lake. The lake is still there and it's possible to build some restaurants and bars along it a la the San Antonio Riverwalk. It would be nice to give the area a downtown feeling allowing fans to walk around after games and enjoy some night life rather than be stuck in traffic for an eternity.

Arlington, Texas (which also happens to be my childhood home) is perennially listed among the worst places for mass transit, the biggest transportation nightmares, the bottom tier of places you would want to live in an oil crisis. Being built in a suburb on top of a prairie without urban density in sight (save for the buildings enclosing the outfield stands intended to project urbanism), there was huge potential and there were lots of promises of economic development that has not happened in 20 years.

Transportation and quality economic development are questions that nip at the Sulphur Dell proposal. Build a ballpark on the old Sulphur Dell site and common sense tells me that road-choking traffic will come. Without a strong transit option we will be facing extended asphalt for parking, fans taking up neighborhood street parking, and limited access during each home game. A lack of plans for sustainable transport will endanger any vision we have for walkable neighborhoods as our streets become even more suited for privately owned cars than they already are.

The unrealized promises that came with the Ballpark in Arlington for economic development also show us that it could be decades before a Sulphur Dell ballpark produces economic development that tantalizers like CM Jerry Maynard dangle before North Nashvillians. We are not told that chances for development simply increase with a ballpark; we are told that development is a sure thing, even though the Greer Stadium development desert itself stands as a glaring local counter-argument. And we are not even talking about quality economic development at this point. The last thing any of us needs is more of what Hope Gardens is about to get: development anchored by a bail bonds business.

Despite the validity of these questions, Sulphur Dell proponents simply refuse to deal. That silence mars their vision as far as I am concerned. They have yet to get serious and sober about the realities and risks of ballparks. The discussion about Arlington's baseball details ought to prompt us to treat transportation and development as front-end priorities instead of wishful afterthoughts.


UPDATE: here's a photo I took in 2007 during a visit to the Ballpark in Arlington. It shows the buildings built to enclose the outfield and create the impression of a dense urban setting.

Road trippin'

Nashville's mean streets:

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

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

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

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

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

The education reform industry is doing to public education what General Motors did to public transportation

Financial incentives for building highways nationally culminated in the 1956 federally-funded interstate highway system, a huge project that made car companies like General Motors unimaginably wealthy. GM worked with city planners like New York's Robert Moses to market urban renewal, tearing down old pedestrian neighborhoods and slashing them up with interstate highway systems, to serve the migration of the mostly white middle class out of cities. Federal money stacked up against urban renewal perpetuating blight and creating ghost towns enabling criminal behavior further perpetuating the myths of already-privileged suburban sanctuary. Consequently, the primary transportation of cities, public transit withered in many cities as demand decreased, further adding to the car industry boom.

This week in Time magazine, a co-founder of Bellwether Education, a private non-profit that has benefits from education reform, laments that Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander (among others including President Barack Obama) is trying to dismantle education reform by giving states more latitude in dealing with their underperforming schools. God knows the last thing I want is red-state Tennessee further undermining public education at the local level.

However, the Bellwether critic is sadly mistaken that Senator Alexander's moves are moves against education reform. Moving control of education to the state level is the logical extension of NCLB and Race to the Top, because education reform is bent on fracturing and dismantling public education itself. Allowing charter schools effectively skims high performing students from public schools and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that public education only attracts the dregs of society and holds kids back.

The reality is that education reform is the urban renewal of the 21st Century. Urban renewal attempted to by-pass old structures, which only manufactured more blight, which became the justification for tearing down and breaking up communities while wealth and poverty pooled and concentrated into a two-tiered America. It and racism and the automobile industry conjoined to literally drive large segments of the middle class out of once diverse cities and crippled or destroyed once robust mass transit. Renewal disciples like Moses used rising urban blight and poverty to justify even more renewal.

Likewise, while education reform may be providing hope for some families, it still perpetuates a social-Darwinistic system of haves and have-nots, and many non-profits and for-profit education companies are making money off stratification and misery. Charters still lag in performance, but only a fortunate few get into the ones that function well. In the meantime, public dollars and good students are siphoned out of public schools (where African American students continue to be disproportionately disregarded) and decay sets in, further justifying education reform's mission.

While education will continue to deteriorate because of the reform movement, private education companies and organizations will make money in the federally supported and foundation backed privatization climate. And even if the reform market turns from bull to bear because of declining federal intervention, the corporations will find a way to profit off the losses, too. Public education is the ultimate loser either way.

Putting the "Public" in Metro Public Works

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

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


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

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

Meeting report: the question of bringing complete streets to Rosa Parks Boulevard

CM Erica Gilmore recently held a community meeting with leaders from Salemtown and Werthan Lofts and members of Walk Bike Nashville on the possibility of installing bike lands on Rosa Parks Boulevard along the TDOT construction zone stretching from Germantown to MetroCenter. Presenters included TDOT construction managers and Public Works officials.

Rosa Parks is currently wide enough for four driving lanes, an impressive median and good size shoulders on  the sides. Metro is working with TDOT on three different possibilities:

CM Erica Gilmore announces community meeting

Newspaper repeats: TDOT says that stopping noise they make possible is Salemtown's task

I was wondering when this story was going to show up. Given that this project started almost a year ago, the Tennessean seems to be playing catch-up at a very late stage. Reporter Nancy DeVille sort of portrays some of the frustrations Salemtown residents have expressed with TDOT:

Does the pollution of Browns Creek result from the race track or from larger Nashville negligence?

One of the claims I expect to hear over and over at tonight's council meeting during the Fairgrounds discussion is how the race track pollutes Browns Creek and that is the reason to support what is the first step in Karl Dean's plan to redevelop. That seems logical conjecture until one considers the huge watershed that feeds Browns Creek upstream from the Fairgrounds. This Metro map highlights in green the entire watershed of Browns Creek:

Upstream from the Fairgrounds, the two forks of Brown Creek cross residential, business, and industrial areas with their surface streets and stormwater run-off. They cross under a maze of roads that make up two interstate mixmasters, and the East Fork parallels I-65 closely from its headwaters near a large railroad yard.

With all of that distance Browns Creek has to travel in contact with the leavings of exponentially larger volumes of auto traffic than the Fairgrounds Speedway could ever produce, with its course through a web of streets and industrial nodes, including a rail yard, is it even feasible to believe that Browns Creek's pollution problem will be scrubbed simply by closing the race track as the Mayor's supporters--who will no doubt seem like a new waterkeeper alliance--will argue tonight?

Being the sprawliest sprawler limits Nashville's options

Keeping the theme of the previous post on sprawl, another new study of census data 2000-2009 indicates that Nashville sprawl contributes to higher reliance on automobile usage (obviously) and lower interest in non-automobile options that are consistent with pedestrian-oriented, walkable neighborhoods (needing to be underscored):

Automobile usage continues to decrease in the nation’s older, densely developed cities: The places recording the largest declines in overall car share were, in order, Washington, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Chicago. Those with the largest declines in non-automobile share were largely sprawling cities, including ... Nashville.

The places recording the largest increases in transit modal share were Nashville, Washington, Austin, Seattle, Los Angeles, Charlotte, and Boston. All but Austin, Boston, and Nashville have spent hundreds of millions of dollars investing in expanded rail transit system ....

The minimal nature of Nashville’s Music City Star means I won’t include it as a "significant" rail investment here.

So, our sprawling town continues to depend largely on private autos for commutes, but our mass transit system, which strictly means bus use, has increased over the last decade.

But buses are not good enough to prompt large-scale non-auto reorientation. Because we lack significant a rail system, non-automobile options in Nashville have declined. This is bad news for Nashville's nascent new urbanism: biking is down nearly 25% and walking is down nearly 40% in commute mode share, according to the census data. Biking and walking to work do not seem to be growing trends in the past decade (telecommuting is included in non-automobile shares).

Sprawl hurts us, as does the lack of a rail system, because they limit rather than expand our transportation options.

Nashville tops inglorious list of sprawliest sprawlers

While putting regional sprawl and transportation in an original and important perspective, a new comparative study of sprawl, Driven Apart: How sprawl is lengthening our commutes and why misleading mobility measures are making things worse, is not good news for Nashville:

A new report from CEOs for Cities unveils the real reason Americans spend so much time in traffic and offers a dramatic critique of the 25 year old industry standard created by the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report (UMR) - often used to justify billions of dollars in expenditures to build new roads and highways. The surprising analysis by Joseph Cortright, senior policy advisor for CEOs for Cities, says the solution to this problem has much more to do with how we build our cities than how we build our roads ....

Driven Apart ranks how long residents in the nation’s largest 51 metropolitan areas spend in peak hour traffic, and in some cases the rankings are almost the opposite of those listed in the 2009 Urban Mobility Report.

For instance, the UMR depicts Chicago as having some of the worst travel delays, when it actually has the shortest time spent in peak hour traffic of any major US metro area. In contrast, Nashville jumped from 31st to first on the list of those with the longest peak travel times.

Did I mention this is not good? Nashville sprawls like it was head-smacked by Cortland Finnegan. It is malaise that local devotion to untrammeled growth minus commitments to thoughtful and inclusive planning brings Nashvillians. We deserve better.

HT: Fortworthology

Hope Gardens announces Greyhound terminal open house for concerned Downtown-North End residents

Hope Gardens association president Jason Powell announced the following today on the community e-list:

The Greyhound Bus company will be holding an open house for Hope Gardens and the other surrounding neighborhoods. Following our public forum and demands about the operation of the temporary bus terminal, Greyhound agreed to an open house where neighbors could see the new location and address any concerns. Please plan on stopping by the open house.

According to the announcement the open house is scheduled for August 24, 2010 from 5pm to 6:30pm at north Downtown's interim Greyhound bus terminal.

A notice from Jason also went out to the Historic Germantown, Historic Buena Vista, and Salemtown associations.

Terminal pain: CM Erica Gilmore still catching heat for her handling of community concerns about Greyhound

Downtown CM Erica Gilmore is still facing tough times with constituents over the Greyhound terminal relocation due to Music City Center construction. Local response to a recent Tennessean interview on the relocation to 11th and Charlotte generated more expression of frustration from nearby Hope Gardens.

Here is an interview excerpt:

Councilwoman Erica Gilmore said it was her understanding that Greyound [sic] would not move to its temporary location at 11th and Charlotte until a future permanent site was selected ...

“I heard they were moving into a temporary station soon, which I guess would mean they found a permanent location,” Gilmore said. “I think they did a good job of keeping their word. It’s a relief.”

A Hope Gardens leader who was involved in organizing the original community meeting with Greyhound and the Convention Center Authority, which was not organized or attended by CM Gilmore, copied me on a response that he had to her interview:

How can you simply assume, or in your words “guess” that Greyhound has secured a permanent location? Have you called Greyhound, MDHA, the Mayor’s Office, or the MCC to ensure that they have kept their assurances to our communities? Quite, in fact, Greyhound told us that there would be a public announcement of their permanent location before they moved to the temporary one. NO PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT WAS MADE!

Once again, I think the future of our neighborhood is too important to leave up to your “guesswork”. You may be “relieved”, but I assure you that many of your constituents are still deeply concerned. Any first hand information that you might be able to share with us in the coming days would be greatly appreciated.

Likewise, when CM Gilmore replied via e-mail to the neighborhood leader, I was CC'ed again:

Always feel free to discus [sic] any of the issues or concerns you have anytime. As it relates to Greyhound, I will forward on the information so that they can provide you with the information as it relates to the announcement.

CM Gilmore's hands-off approach to zoning issues and Metro power moves does not seem to be working with those leading constituents most affected.

When bloggers merely blog to repeat news, they better divide it rightly

Yesterday local content-scraper, Nashvillest, incorrectly conveyed facts concerning the relocation of the Downtown Greyhound terminal:

The 8th Avenue Greyhound bus station is finally moseying its sweet self down to a temporary location on Charlotte so that crews can get on with the Music City Center construction. The bus station was pretty much the last thing standing in the way of the construction site.

Blogger Christy Frink makes the situation sound like the terminal has the project itself in gridlock. It's been my understanding that the Greyhound terminal only blocked construction on a small corner of the Music City Center site. Other than that patch, construction has gone on as planned. I confirmed this with the City Paper editor, Stephen George. CP journo Joey Garrison gave a more accurate reporting of the scope of the delays than Nashvillest did.

Is Christy's mistake heinous? Not by any means. But popular content scrapers should be a lot more judicious about conveying the news content they are scraping. Christy's spin on the story has the potential to create the impression that slow-walk deliberation of the relocation of Greyhound throws a wrench in the MCC project wholly, not partially. Because of its large following, Nashvillest has a long reach and can multiply misperception.

The lineage of Nashvillest posts on Greyhound terminal relocation hints that they are positively disposed to moving it anywhere but the Music City Center site. Along the way they have seemed displeased with delays. The bloggers are entitled to their opinions on this, but this reader wishes that they would not let their predisposition cloud the facts in this news. It is not too much to ask that the content scrapers be as detached to the relocation story as they were to the news that North End neighbors were upset about the furtive moves to spirit the blighted terminal closer to us.


UPDATE: Salemtown's Hutch points out that the Nashvillest coverage of the Greyhound move is also misleading insofar as the bloggers insinuate that Greyhound was lolly-gagging.

Greyhound terminal moves north on Wednesday; permanent location announced

Joey Garrison reports that the Music City Center's relocation of the Downtown Greyhound bus station to a point proximate to Hope Gardens is immanent. And they now have a permanent location elsewhere:

Come Wednesday, the company will operate its Nashville terminal at the former Hansen Chrysler location at 1022 Charlotte Ave. ....

Greyhound secured the temporary bus terminal site in May. The move stalled because Greyhound and Metro Development Agency officials had failed to land a permanent site for the company’s long-term relocation.

According to sources, an announcement for Greyhound’s eventual move to property at Lafayette Street and Fifth Avenue is expected in the coming weeks.

I suppose that those of us who were affected by clandestine moves that Metro took to spirit the blighted terminal out of Downtown and closer to residential neighborhoods in the north can breathe a sign of relief that it will not be permanent. Hopefully locals understand the lengths to which the Mayor's Office will go to accommodate the business interests Downtown. We also witnessed the limitations of our council member to speak up for us against the powers that be. Knowing what Ms. Gilmore cannot or will not do gives us a head start next time.

Where do Convention Center Authority minutes reflect the decision to relocate the Greyhound bus terminal northward to make way for Music City Center?

After pointing out that the Convention Center Authority meeting agendas do not clearly notify the community of action to move the Greyhound bus terminal to Charlotte and 11th, I went back and looked through all of the minutes to see if the official CCA records reflect authorization for a new lease with Greyhound (signed on May 5).

I cannot see any record of authorization in the minutes; in fact, I cannot find a single mention of Greyhound in any of the minutes of CCA going back to October 2009 or in those of CCA's Construction Committee going back to February 2010. The Tennessean provides an unofficial written record in an op-ed written by CCA's Marty Dickens and MDHA's Phil Ryan, who along with CM Erica Gilmore tried last Friday to tamp down North Nashville frustrations over the hushed and veiled signing of the relocation lease. Here is what they wrote:

All these factors were thoroughly discussed at a meeting of the Convention Center Authority’s construction committee, before a recommendation went to the full authority for approval of a 13-month lease, with the option to extend the lease for an additional three months.

Note that these Courthouse insiders had problems recalling dates themselves, and they obviously could not depend on the meeting minutes to get their timeline straight between them.

Other actions CCA took are specifically described:

• "Mark Arnold made a motion to approve the Commonwealth Development Group, Inc. and Bone McAliester Norton, PLLC contract amendments" (misspellings not corrected)
• "Leo Waters made a motion to approve the lease agreement between MDHA and the CCA memorializing the Convention Center Authority's right to be on MDHA's property"
• "Leo Waters made a motion authorizing the Authority to accept the guaranteed maximum price in an amount not to exceed $415 million"

It seems curious and strange to me that the minutes would reflect in copious detail the other actions of the CCA and its committees, and yet not refer specifically to the Greyhound decision. Can you find any specific reference in the minutes?

There are a number of vague transcriptions where I guess the relocation discussion could be hidden. Here is one passage that tells us next to nothing and looks like a waste of space:

Leo Waters, Chair of the Construction and Development Committee, was then asked by Mr. Dickens to report. Mr. Waters gave an overview of what the committee had discussed. Larry Atema was asked to give a project update. There was discussion about the project and land.

Unless the Greyhound bus terminal situation lies somewhere between "project and land," there is no official evidence in the Metro meeting minutes that relocation or a lease were authorized. If the authorization happened, why was the CCA so bashful about publicizing it before the media found it and the community dragged the details out in the May 27 meeting? Did the Music City Center honchos figure it was so toxic that any mention of it would draw undue and unfriendly attention to it?

Neighborhood concerns about increased crime around Greyhound bus terminal supported by media's statistical analysis

SouthComm's Stephen George has the numbers comparing the old Greyhound site to the new one at Charlotte & 11th:

in blog posts and at public meetings, many have argued that the Greyhound station will be a magnet for crime in their area. According to statistics The City Paper obtained from Metro police, it seems they’re right — at least to some degree.

A comparison of crime statistics stretching from Jan. 1, 2009, through May 27 shows that nearly 17 times more crimes and potential criminal activity were phoned in to Metro police from the current Greyhound location than the area around the proposed new one.

Most of the 314 reported incidents at Greyhound involved public intoxications, thefts and assaults. The 19 incidents at the new site were similar in nature.

What I learned from tonight's cover-your-ass-in-public meeting on the Greyhound relocation lease

My impressions of Erica Gilmore's public meeting on Greyhound's relocation held earlier tonight:

1. The best way to control imagined "You lie!" incivility in controversial zoning issues is to treat the few locals yokels who show up (a large number of attendees seemed to be Metro employees, politicos, and news media) as if they are in detention, restricting them to 1 minute each to ask questions and make comments.
2. If urban neighborhoods wanted to stop this specific Greyhound/Music City Center relocation, they had their chance during the Downtown Code community meetings a few years ago.
3. Given #2: any future community plan (e.g., the North Nashville Plan) better be formulated only by those leaders in the community who are psychic and can predict exactly where and when the Mayor's Office will be relocating businesses they don't want to see by their tourism attractions Downtown.
4. Neighborhoods lost opportunities to be informed by not being prescient enough to attend public meetings of the Convention Center Authority (CCA) where they could not give feedback, even if they were not informed by CM Gilmore (who has said that she only heard things in passing and found out about the decision in the media rather than by attending CCA meetings).
5. The CCA publicizes their agenda; community leaders can look at the agenda and clearly see when the Greyhound bus terminal relocation will be discussed if they exercise extrasensory perception (note an example agenda below):
   
   
   
   
6. The CCA meets the first Thursday of every month, and if working Nashville citizens want to burn vacation or sick days away from the job each of those Thursdays after 8:00 a.m., then they have the chance to find out more about controversial relocations by attending.
7. Greyhound has picked an undisclosed permanent location; you still don't have any say over it; your 1 minute for a question is up, next question.
8. I don't know how to interpret the conspicuous absence of Hope Gardens neighborhood leaders (who organized the well-attended and angry May 27 public meeting) at tonight's meeting.
9. CCA rep Holly McCall failed to follow through on her May 27 promise to release the Greyhound lease to the public. Instead, she sent it to CM Gilmore.
10. Given #9: I'm disappointed that CM Gilmore did not forward a copy of the lease to me given that she should have a May 27 e-mail from me requesting a copy of that lease from MDHA's Joe Cain as well as Mr. Cain's reply saying that CCA had it. Nevertheless, she promises to release it tomorrow.