In the interest of full disclosure

Several years ago Hope Gardens association president Jason Powell contacted North End community leaders to bring together "champions" whom he said could give life to a plan for a new ballpark in the North Capitol area. The "champions" never really materialized as a bona fide grassroots movement here. The "champions'" Facebook page lay dormant for 2 years before cranking up again with the Mayor's formal announcement several weeks ago. Now, as a prominent Democrat and State Representative from south Davidson County's 53rd District (but still a cheerleader without a grassroots ballpark movement), he celebrates news of the Mayor's Sulphur Dell announcement:

It may very well be a big fly for local property owners, especially since the news media is passing around projections that land values here will soar:

The impact a new ballpark could have on that area will be similar... [to] the ripple effect Music City Center had on SoBro, where property values have in some cases tripled in recent years.

If the project becomes official, look for property values to initially jump around 15 percent, [real estate broker Grant] Hammond said. Once construction is underway, Hammond expects prices to climb again, about 25 percent higher than now. Once completed and the buzz of the new stadium is at its peak, Hammond anticipates values will be up about 50 percent from today.

Hammond, who was planning on selling one of his investment properties in Germantown next spring, said he now plans to hold on to the condo until the first season of baseball in the new stadium.

“It could be a remarkable little ride for Germantown,” Hammond said.

With Germantown already flourishing, the biggest impact might be most noticeable in the area’s other neighborhoods.

“Hope Gardens and Buena Vista are seriously underdeveloped,” Hammond said. “That all turns around the moment they open the stadium doors. Those neighborhoods need some sort of big development to be the spark.”

After looking at the Metro property records, I can certainly understand why State Representative Jason Powell is excited about a new ballpark; he co-owns 3 properties located in Hope Gardens and 1 located at Buena Vista Heights/Jones Buena Vista. These are both neighborhoods that are identified as the biggest gainers from a new ballpark. Hope Gardens itself lies blocks away. String half-a-dozen Prince Fielder home runs together end-to-end, and Hope Gardens is that close to Sulphur Dell.

All of us who own property close to a new ballpark stand to benefit financially from a rise in property values a new development would bring. So, I do not blame the Democrat for acquiring investment properties over the last 4 years with hopes that their values will rise even though he does not dwell here any more. However, those of us who continue to live here have to worry about more than a return on real estate. We have to worry about protecting our families' quality of life from malignant growth and shortsighted planning. We have to demand smart, managed growth and planning for sustainability and respect for community character.

I'll say it again: I acknowledge Jason Powell's right to buy up as many properties as he wants and maximize their value to his heart's content. It is America, after all. I also acknowledge his right as a state legislator to maximize his relationship with the coattails of Mayor Karl Dean, who admittedly is the Tennessee Democratic Party's great red-state hope to beat a Republican somewhere sometime in the future. Bucking Karl Dean on a ballpark would not help a guy still fresh in his first state office (after running and losing here in our North Nashville district) and still flush with political aspirations.

But the quaintly walkable tableau that Jason Powell illustrated 3 years ago--as a spokesperson from my community to a Tennessean audience--now rings hollow, given that he presently lives close to the Nashville Zoo and leaves his real estate next to Sulphur Dell:

The neighborhoods, businesses and developments around Sulphur Dell are vibrant, supportive of a new ball park and poised for further growth. Downtown work­ers and residents, in addition to the surrounding neighborhoods of Germantown, Buena Vista, Salemtown and Hope Gardens and condos in the Sulphur Dell area, have the popula­tion to anchor attendance at games.

The location is already well-suited for professional baseball. Imagine grabbing a meal in Ger­mantown or at the Farmers Market, then relaxing at Bicentennial Mall before strolling to the ballpark to catch a game ....

If you build it we will stroll. Well, some of us will stroll. Rep. Powell will not because he no longer lives here. He owns property here. He will be driving to Sounds games at Sulphur Dell.

That is a proposition different than what our neighborhoods will actually face with the onslaught of traffic, the absence of transit plans, the ulterior motives of developers and the shifting goalposts of the community planning process along with the politicians who debase it. At least he has the certainty of greater property value without the challenges of living next to a large entertainment venue. Even so, he also should disclose the fact of his holdings whenever he uses the visibility of his office to tout the new Sulphur Dell.

Whether or not a Sulphur Dell ballpark might be a home run for all of us who live around it is still up in the air. For State Representative Powell it would appear to be more of a walk-off home run.


UPDATE: I guess none of us should be surprised that on opening day of the ballpark (April 17, 2015), Jason Powell is gushing about First Tennessee Park.

Putting himself center: Jason Powell

I think back to those heady days of "Friends of Sulphur Dell" when he was gathering a few friendly neighborhood representatives (ignoring those with questions) and touting his movement as "grassroots," never characterizing it as his own. I suppose it is a lesson in the idea that winners write history, but now Mr. Powell is claiming "the push" for himself. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised by this either:

Elected officials are known for shameless self-promotion, but in this case Mr. Powell should be more honest and concede that he had very little to do with the building of the ballpark. In 2013, it became obvious to all that the real puppet master was Karl Dean. Everything else was pure theater.

Cohousing project planned for Germantown

In the past few weeks, details have been finalized for a cohousing community in North End's Germantown neighborhood at the corner of 5th Av N and Taylor St. According to the New American Village Facebook page, approximately 20 homes and a "common house" (for social gatherings, meals, etc) will be built, and there were 32 people on the "interested list" a little over 2 weeks ago. According to the Nashville Cohousing website, the homes will be priced on the lower end of the "going rate" for Germantown: $150,000 - $300,000, depending on the size of the units.

Cohousing.org describes cohousing thusly:

Cohousing is a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods.

Cohousing residents are consciously committed to living as a community. The physical design encourages both social contact and individual space. Private homes contain all the features of conventional homes, but residents also have access to extensive common facilities such as open space, courtyards, a playground and a common house.

It appears to me that one of the reasons the Germantown site was chosen was that it is a walkable community proximate to coffee shops, restaurants, farmer's market, a public park, and a greenway. This is validation that the more Metro government funds and maintains infrastructure to support sustainable balance, the closer attractive, community-orient development follows.

Before we spend public money on stadiums and convention centers we should obligate revenues to supportive infrastructure in walkable neighborhoods to spur this kind of smart growth. Metro government could be the trendsetter instead of forever following behind developers.

A friend who attended one of the organizing meetings for the Germantown site told me that she was extremely impressed with the potential of the development. I cannot help but believe that this will be a net positive for our small part of Nashville.

Oregon Study Supports Some of Claims of New Urbanists

EcoHome found some empirical evidence supporting a couple of claims of New Urbanists regarding walkable neighborhoods:

[A] recent study by sociology professor Bruce Podobnik of Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore., suggests that new urbanists might be right in two out of the three cases.

Residents surveyed in the new urbanist community Orenco Station in Hillsboro, Ore., said their community is friendlier and offers more of a sense of community than other places they have lived, that they walk more often to the store, and occasionally use public transportation.

“Overall, this study lends support to the assertion that new urbanist communities can foster more socially cohesive and healthier lifestyles within urban environments,” Podobnik said in introducing his study, "Assessing the Social and Environmental Achievements of New Urbanism: Evidence from Portland, Ore."

However, it’s clear that even Orenco Station residents are nowhere near giving up their cars for public transit to any great degree.

Banks Block Path to Walkable Neighborhoods

StreetsBlog notes that that bank lenders, who are generally bullish on parking lots and driveways over pedestrians and mass transit, are the primary obstructionists to designing and building walkable neighborhoods.

"Walkability" is not a plan, but a buzzword

A Seattleite uses his community as a case for showing the arrogance of urban planning and the slippery terms of New Urbanism:

Urban planners, often in a theoretical world by themselves, say they are attempting to create a more functional city. They talk about walkability associated with transportation planning while others point to creating sustainable high-density neighborhoods. Unfortunately, as much as urban planners and lawmakers bandy about the term, it still has meanings that change depending on who you ask, where you ask, and how affluent is the person you ask ....

Is it possible to draw a circle on a map, designate it as a sustainable walkable neighborhood, and have it be economically viable for the small business person? Planners say, “sure, just create more housing units.” New jargon calls them “urban villages,” “urban centers,” TODs (transit-oriented developments), sustainable communities, or walkable neighborhoods ....

They didn’t come to grips with the reality that they can’t force a business to locate or thrive in these new areas. Most urban planners and most elected officials have never run a small business. They simply don’t understand what it takes to operate a retail store successfully ....

If walkability and healthy neighborhoods are the goal, then planners need to make some major changes in how they do their job. The first logical step might be to incorporate the Hippocratic oath into their decision-making: “Do no harm.” That means hanging on to the neighborhoods and stores that still function ....

If a neighborhood is thriving, talk to the shopkeepers who have been successful for a number of years. Listen to them. More important is not doing something that makes success more difficult. Maybe the city should pay less attention to the big downtown business leaders and the Chamber of Commerce. They may know how to run WAMU or sell luxury downtown condos, but not many know how to run small shops in neighborhoods any more than do planners. And, though it should be obvious, not all neighborhoods are alike. Each has its own demographic and character and neighborhood mainstays.

It is strong arguments like this that have had me re-thinking my own commitments to New Urbanism. If nothing else, looking at the problems of detached urban planning cause me to show more chastened and qualified support for New Urbanism. Walkability seems to be a term that holds a gaggle of unjustified class and culture assumptions that should not go unchallenged or untested.

The Purchase of Hyperreality

We took our chances spending the past week on vacation in Florida, what with it being Spring Break and all. We hedged our bets by staying with a friend in Melbourne, along the “Space Coast.” It was hedging, because Melbourne seems to lie inconspicuously between and out of the way of hot Breaker destinations like Daytona and Fort Lauderdale. I spent a quiet couple of days at Melbourne Beach and even enjoyed the unhurried life of Historic Downtown Melbourne, where I sat at a quiet café table imbibing Black and Tans and puffing on pre-embargo Cuban cigars.

But what would vacation be without a hyperreal excursion? And so, we also burned one of our days on Disney World. On our way to Orlando, we drove through a planned “conservation community” called “Harmony.” Also called “neo-traditional,” this suburban town (30 minutes from both Orlando and Melbourne) assimilates some of the characteristics of New Urbanism, including detached garages with back-alley access and neighborhoods within walkable distances to schools and to markets (yet to be built) at the town center. Most of the lots in Harmony seem to be sold, so interest in this suburban denial of suburbia looks high.

Our visit to Disney’s “Main Street, USA” afforded our second foray into the hyperreal. As walkable neighborhoods were lucky to survive the automotive age, Walt Disney nodded to nostalgia and created a faux urban façade in the form of a turn-of-the-century street car neighborhood. Now the Disney Empire charges over $60 a head just to experience Main Street, USA’s performative urbanism. As such, Main Street, USA represents the commodification of community, and it salves suburban anomie and alienation from community.

The repackaging and marketing of communities in America, typified by places like Harmony, FL and Main Street, USA, suggest that we have no sense of place, or at least a very slippery sense of place that shifts with market values. The drive to make money seems stronger than the will to preserve in the first place space that enhances community. In his recently published book, American Vertigo, Bernard-Henri Levy observes America’s willingness to allow cities like New Orleans and Detroit to die and writes, “That a city could die, for a European, that is unthinkable.” I am also reminded of the recent comments of the owner of Vandyland on West End when a reporter asked him his feelings about the diner's closure; he spoke with wonder about buildings existing in Europe for hundreds of years, and he conveyed his disappointment that the same cannot be said of American preservation. We don't seem to need community; we merely wipe space clean and market its hyperreality while we stage the bare perception of community at higher prices.

Ripping Out The Bottom Of The Bag

cul-de-sac .... a dead end street .... an impasse .... ETYMOLOGY: French : cul, bottom (from Old French, from Latin cūlus; see culet ) + de, of (from Old French, from Latin dē; see de- ) + sac, sack (from Old French, from Latin saccus; see sack) [Source].

The city of Charlotte, NC is about to hold workshops to generate "ideas on how to make cul-de-sacs more accessable to pedestrians and to reduce the need for cars." This feature of New Urbanism is a laudable idea. But try as they might, can suburbia be saved by applying urban ideas or are they just too sprawled and too far flung so that a pedestrian culture is nothing more than wishful thinking?