A couple of quick Friday ballpark thoughts

During his speechifying on a new Sulphur Dell ballpark a few days ago, CM at-Large Jerry Maynard called the project the first major economic investment on Jefferson Street. For your consideration:

• It seems to me that the National Museum of African American Music that had been slated for the state-owned property at the corner of Jeff St. and Rosa Parks Boulevard (currently a parking lot) could have been the first major economic investment, but its leaders bailed on the site when Karl Dean allowed the project to languish and then declared that he wanted to move it downtown (after his Med Mart plan crashed and burned). How did CM Maynard respond? By supporting the Mayor and defending NMAAM's abandonment of Jeff St.
• Given the contaminated soil down the street at the 5th and Jeff intersection next to the proposed ballpark properties, I'm left wondering what lies in the soil at Jeff St. and Rosa Parks. Given that this intersection has been a magnet for gas stations, I'm tempted to search for what was on that corner before the state acquired it. It is pure speculation on my part now, but what are the chances that the soil there could be contaminated to the point where clean up would be too expensive to allow museum construction?

UPDATE: I'm not the only one peeved by the apparent wish of ballpark supporters that working people with families to support in the local community not be allowed to weigh in on a new Sulphur Dell.

State announces meeting to offer the public a chance to comment on land deal for Sulphur Dell ballpark

This hit my email box earlier this afternoon:

State of Tennessee                       Secretary of State Tre Hargett                           State Comptroller Justin P. Wilson                        State Treasurer David H. Lillard, Jr.

For Immediate Release: Nov. 21, 2013

Media Advisory: State Building Commission to Offer Opportunity for Public Comment

on New Sounds Stadium Deal November 25

WHAT: The State Building Commission’s executive subcommittee is scheduled to discuss a land transaction related to the planned construction of a new stadium at Sulphur Dell for the Nashville Sounds minor league baseball team. The committee intends for there to be an opportunity for members of the public to provide comment during that meeting prior to consideration of action on the proposed sale agreement.

WHEN: Monday, November 25 at 10:30 a.m.

WHERE: Hearing Room 30 of the Legislative Plaza in downtown Nashville

A link to the full meeting agenda can be found at: www.tn.gov/finance/OSA/documents/NovSUB13.pdf  (See pages 11 and 12 for the relevant agenda item)

Media contact: Blake Fontenay, Communications Director, (615) 253-2668 or blake.fontenay@tn.gov

The politician displayed ballpark cynicism

Since the project I started yesterday (to crowdsource a list of community meetings that Rev. Jerry Maynard claims ballpark supporters held many times over the last few years) seems to be failing miserably, I'm starting to assume that readers are just as unaware of any of these forums as I am. Maybe no neighborhood-oriented meetings were held (beyond the one I attended in 2010 that was designed to drum up support).

As regrettable as CM Maynard's claims about community meetings are, I want to skip today to something else he told council, which came across as cynical to me with a second look at the tape:

We're not doing anything we haven't done in the past .... I got to tell you, I'm troubled because, this is the fir- as council lady Gilmore said, this is the first time we've had major economic investment in North Nashville, and to pull this one when we haven't pulled anything else after all these years. I just think we need to move forward on this.

I never lose faith in CM Maynard's ability to stretch the truth beyond anything I might recognize, but once again, it is not factual that the council has not pulled any other bills on first reading after all these years. I've blogged about several times the council has pulled bills off the consent agenda on first reading. I can remember other times bills have been pulled on first reading for discussion. It is rare, but it happens. I've always assumed it remains in the by-laws because the members see its utility even in its rarity.

So, how many times does CM Maynard have to make stuff up before someone in council or in the news media calls his bluff?

But I digress from my original point: the cynicism of CM Maynard's argument in light of the fact that community meetings really have not happened much if at all. Why do I consider his comments cynical? Because I hear within them an implicit deal of "I won't pull your big capital spending bills if you don't pull my expensive pet projects." Instead of at least going through the motions of holding community meetings and bringing concerns to the council (even if disingenuously brought), CM Maynard seems to be conceding that Metro Council is not so much Nashville's representative body as they are what they have been called by others before: "40 jealous whores" fighting over turf, over influence. "You don't pull/I don't pull" comes across to me an acknowledgement that this council is more focused on whatever plums might fall from the master's table, leaving the crumbs for their constituents (who are otherwise out of sight, out of mind in these deliberations)

Playing the role of CM Maynard's enabler was Ronnie Steine, who did not particularly care for the way the council was tending to "move forward' on the ballpark bill. So, he counseled "backing up" and lectured the council about being on the same team with a united interest that he did not define. I'll have to assume that he meant the same old "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" interest they share. After he got a round of the council's applause, CM Steine launched into bill opponents for doing something he claims he always opposes, pulling bills on first reading. While he backed off his erroneous charge that opponents were breaking rules, he insinuated that they were breaking council tradition. But remember, they're on the same team:

You can call me a hypocrite on this one. I opposed pulling any bill on first reading .... I would argue whether you're for or against it that you honor this council and how we operate.

Whether or not I can call him a hypocrite may be up for debate, but calling him inaccurate is not. During one of those past moments where a fellow did indeed pull a bill off of the consent agenda during first reading, CM Steine had such a conniption that he threatened to pull every other bill off that same agenda for debate. Threatening to pull every bill on first reading to prove a point is still a contradiction of one's commitment never to pull any bill on first reading. Wouldn't the at-Large CM be better served, that is if he honestly is opposed to pulling bills off the consent agenda, by making a motion or introducing a resolution to change the by-laws and charter to prohibit pulling those bills? Even having a "consent agenda" implies that consent is freely given. If not, it's not a consent agenda, and fabricated tradition be damned.

The cynicism was on full display Monday night in the council discussion on a new ballpark for the Nashville Sounds. I guess I was expecting it, but I keep hoping for something more noble, even after all of these years.

RIP, John Egerton

Nashville resident and author of southern culture, John Egerton has died according to local news reports. Mr. Egerton's civil rights writing touched on the history of Salemtown with his narrative to the film, A Child Shall Lead Them. In 2009, I started blogging on the history of desegregation at Salemtown's Fehr School with an interest in getting Metro to preserve and protect that historic building as a living civil rights museum. Nearly all of my information on Fehr came from John Egerton. I can say without a doubt that Mr. Egerton made preservation of the Fehr School building possible. Please join me in grateful remembrance of John Egerton.

Erica Gilmore schedules community meeting on ballpark, but it looks right out of the developers' playbook for discouraging public turnout

Last night I sent an email to all council members requesting a longer time for approval on Sulphur Dell to allow for more community meetings. CM at-Large Charlie Tygard replied to my email this morning by acknowledging my concerns and asking CM Gilmore to schedule a community meeting "convenient" to her and "the neighborhoods" before the council committees consider her Sulphur Dell bill on December 2 and 3. She replied this afternoon by announcing that she is scheduling a community meeting on the ballpark plan for the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, November 30, at 9 in the morning at the Goodwill Industries on Herman Street in Hope Gardens.

There should be no whining out there just because you have been given about a week to change last-minute any family Thanksgiving plans you might have had in order to study up on a bill that was introduced in council a couple weeks ago (some council members may not even grasp it yet). You should come Saturday morning, holidays or not, prepared to ask your questions and then just go away so that the council can move this bill through committee when the Mayor tells them to pass it, as is their "tradition." Jump through the hoop and then move on. What do you expect? A participatory democracy? C'mon.

Never mind that it is a developer's dream to have a community meeting on a controversial bill involving a huge and historic Metro expenditure while everyone else affected is likely on vacation.


UPDATE: no sooner did I post this than CM at-Large Tygard replied to CM Gilmore's scheduling with word that he would not be able to attend Saturday morning because of his family's Thanksgiving plans.

Let's make a list of the ballpark meetings held

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

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

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

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

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

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

Metro has not planned to test for and properly dispose of contaminated soil found on ballpark site

Look what we dug up!

Earlier this year, Metro was caught by the news media quietly dumping toxin-laced water treatment building debris and contaminated soil into a new landfill near Salemtown and Germantown. They were also busted for downplaying the levels of toxicity in the soil. At the time, the Mayor's Office minimized the level of contamination and possible exposure of neighbors and watershed by saying something to the effect that he had been told by his underlings that everything was fine. Nothing to see here.

And so Metro Water Services continued to dump contaminates in a hole near the Cumberland River and around the corner from our home; and everybody moved on.

Except that now we are hearing about more soil in the area found to be contaminated by barium and lead (removed by the state). The location of the findings: adjacent to the proposed Sulphur Dell ballpark site. In the name of public safety and environmental stewardship the common sense thing to do before construction starts is to test the ballpark site for heavy metals and other toxins, right?

"Wrong!" says the Mayor. Someone forgot to tell Hizzoner that it's not easy being green:

In spite of the problems, Mayor Karl Dean does not plan for environmental studies on the land under the ballpark.

"Well, we've already been in communication with the state about the environmental issues. But the environmental issues are what you would find almost anywhere downtown," Dean said.

Dean was asked if the city budget for the project includes money for soil remediation, should the city find it has to remove contaminated soil from underneath the Sulphur Dell stadium.

"Right now, we think we're in fine shape," Dean said.

Hidden costs are already a concern to some members of Metro Council.

Mayor Dean's pass-the-buck refrain sounds familiar for those of us following the Metro Water landfill. Then Metro Water argued that high levels of toxins could be found in bricks bought from Home Depot. No big deal. Likewise, contaminated soil can be found anywhere downtown. Feel safe now, downtown residents? Metro Water had not budgeted to truck their toxic soil to approved landfills. It was cheaper to bury it in the basement of a demolished building on their property. Likewise, the Mayor has not budgeted money for testing and remediation of soil on an historically industrial site next to brownfields found to be contaminated and possessing an unstable landfill. This is like a broken record skipping back to the same refrains when health and safety is at stake: money trumps environmental protection and political accountability.

I certainly hope that concerned members of the Metro Council step up and start to put stipulations on Erica Gilmore's Sulphur Dell bill that make the Mayor more accountable for the risks of this project.

For my part, I wrote another letter to CM Gilmore to do just that with her bill:

CM Gilmore:

On their 6:00 report tonight, Channel 4 reported that the state has found soil on properties adjacent to the proposed ballpark site at Sulphur Dell that contains toxins and heavy metals. They also reported that Metro does not plan to test the ballpark site soil for contaminants in order to properly dispose of them.

Given the recent fiasco at Metro Water Service's new landfill near Salemtown in which they were reportedly dumping soil known in the past to be toxic without testing it again, I am concerned that this sort of dumping could be repeated with possibly tainted soil from ballpark construction. I am particularly concerned that the soil could be added to MWS's recent dump between the Cumberland and Salemtown without any of us ever being warned by Metro officials.

Please amend any ballpark legislation to include requirements and funding for properly testing soil for contaminants and for disposing of any contaminated soil in approved landfills. Public safety and protection of our environment are worth the costs of proper disposal.

Thanks.

Regards,
Mike Byrd

Given her silence on Metro Water's toxic dump, I would not be surprised if she ignored me on this one, too.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are odd times to have community meetings, too

I realize that 2:00 is a bit of an odd time to have a community meeting.

--Doug Sloan, Deputy Director, Metro Planning Commission

How about planning a bona fide
community meeting?

Three weeks ago today, Mr. Sloan spoke those words to a couple of hundred people gathered in what turned out to be more of a press conference on a new Sulphur Dell ballpark than a community meeting. If his comments were not obvious acknowledgement of criticism at the impossible scheduling for a community of ordinary people with working obligations, the response by Planning's information officer, Craig Owensby was:

We hope as many interested citizens as possible can attend the meeting, but we recognize that it is difficult to find a time that works for everyone’s schedule .... We also hope to offer more community meetings as this process continues to give additional opportunities for community questions and comments.

Yes, it was odd to hold a "community meeting" in the middle of a weekday afternoon. More odd to me is the fact that three weeks have passed, and Metro Planning has not delivered on the promise to have more community meetings. You may remember that Mayor Karl Dean wants the Planning Commission and Metro Council to approve this proposal before 2013 gives way to 2014. That is exactly six weeks from today.

At this point, the only way that community meetings can happen are either hastily announced for the next week (which will translate to poor attendance) or scheduled during and between the battle-fatigued, mind-numbing, attention-deficit holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas (which will translate to poor attendance). One of the tricks in the "developers' playbook" is to hold public hearings of controversial projects as close to holidays as possible to minimize and mitigate any hard looks at those projects. Let's hope the lack of community meetings in the preceding three weeks does not constitute such a trick on the part of Metro planners.

At this point, they would do us all better to extend the Mayor's timeline into 2014 and hold community meetings after New Year's Day. However, who knows what kind of arm-twisting is being conducted by the Mayor's Office to minimize community input?

On a related note, I sent CM Erica Gilmore the following letter. I'll update if she responds.

CM Gilmore:

Three weeks have now passed since a media event to promote a new Sulphur Dell ballpark occurred at the Farmers' Market, and I am disappointed that no community meetings on the question have been held for the neighborhoods immediately affected by the proposed development. My disappointment is compounded by the fact that several important questions were asked by community leaders at the end of the October media event, but they have yet to be addressed by ballpark supporters such as yourself.

Some of us in your district who would have to bear immediate negative (as well as the positive) consequences of a new ballpark should have our concerns addressed in forums open to the public. And those meetings--unlike the one at Farmers' Market--should be held at times and on days when working people are free to attend. Given that Mayor Karl Dean intends the council to rush to approve of a new ballpark in the next six weeks, I am concerned that, if scheduled, the next meetings are going to fall among Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years holidays, when many people with family and work obligations do not have time to attend them. Rather than schedule more inopportune meetings and ridiculous times, Metro leaders should extend the timeline for consideration of the ballpark into 2014, after the holidays when turn-out to community meetings can be maximized.

In the meantime, please address these questions that are preying on my mind:

1. This entire development is being built on historic flood plain. Most of it will be built to withstand future floods, which means that the displaced water will be pushed further up into the surrounding neighborhoods in such catastrophes. In 2010 the Cumberland River crested within a block of my home. How can I be sure that future flood water displaced from a Sulphur Dell development won't end up in my home?

2. You once told me that you are opposed to reserved residential parking on streets. A new Sulphur Dell ballpark will attract thousands on game nights and not all of those people will want to park in a parking garage. With huge new apartment dwellings and popular restaurants, Germantown parking is approaching a choke point. Are you willing to reconsider your opposition to reserved street parking in adjacent neighborhoods if a ballpark is built? If not, what legislation can you offer to protect our parking needs? Please explain how your reconcile you opposition to on-street reserved parking in your district when it exists in other parts.

3. Many of us here spent a long time working on the North Nashville Community Plan and we would hate to see it sacrificed due to the aspirations of developers and club owners. What assurances can you give us that a new Sulphur Dell will protect the quality-of-life elements that we put into the community plan? How will the ballpark compliment rather than undermine our plan?

4. What safeguards will you support to keep taxpayers from having to bear the load of the costs of a new ballpark if either the Sounds or developers refuse to pay their share of the $150 million?

5. It is my understanding that Salemtown Neighbors--which has not officially taken a stance one way or the other on a new ballpark--formally requested a community meeting from you. Are you working on scheduling a meeting with the association? If not, why not?

I honestly hope that you will make every effort to insure that all of your constituents are represented in the public dialogue on this huge capital project. Bringing probing questions to the table should not disqualify any of us from participating in this decision.

Regards,
Mike Byrd

UPDATE:  On Tuesday evening a new wrinkle emerges as Channel 4 News is reporting that properties adjacent to the site on which the new ballpark would sit have tested positive for soil contamination in the past. A reporter was told by the Mayor that Metro has no plans to test the soil on which the ballpark would sit for toxins or heavy metals. Maybe it would break his budget to test in the name of public safety, but nonetheless, this is an interesting position for a county executive who has claimed to be a "green Mayor" in the past.

I see a bad MOON arising

When former Democratic Party campaign strategist Courtney Wheeler took over the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods earlier this year, I predicted that MOON--which was originally created as a community-oriented advocate connecting people with Metro bureaucrats and municipal services to solve community problems--would become a campaign/marketing mechanism to sell the Mayor's brand to consumers (a.k.a., his constituents). While we have yet to see whether her work will assist future Dean campaigns for higher office, in the wake of what MOON has done so far, I have to say now that sometimes I really hate being right.

Ms. Wheeler cranked up MOON's social media soon after taking the wheel. Her office joined Twitter and created a PR engine sending out Mayor's Office releases to members of NextDoor (a private social networking site marketed to neighborhoods). While not a member of latter, I have been following @moon_nashville since its beginning. Its primary bent has little to do with troubleshooting and problem-solving at a community level. It has not really been focused on connecting people with Metro services.

The MOON Twitter stream devotes at least as much space if not more to the Mayor's appearances around town and his pet projects as it does to neighborhoods. Here is a sampling of tweets having nothing to do with neighborhoods:

 

MOON social media promote Hizzoner's appearances with celebrities like Jack White, Jimmy Fallon, Taylor Swift and Garrison Keillor. They hawk a new riverfront amphitheater and The Amp. They preach us up to lose weight, pick up litter, and then lose more weight.

In the meantime, the nods to neighborhoods are marginal at best. They are just as likely to virtually wink at the Chamber of Commerce. The few and infrequent statements about neighborhoods tend to be vacuous ones about how Mayor's Office officials had a "great time" meeting with neighbors of wherever they appeared next.

The Office of Neighborhoods' social media strategy seems oriented to neighborhoods in name only. Kind of what you would expect when a campaign strategist steers the ship.

(While I did not say much about Hizzoner's use of NextDoor in particular, if you are interested, you can find more on it over here after the jump).

A few thoughts on Sulphur Dell since the Mayor's financing plan is introduced

You cannot look to ballpark supporters for sober cost-benefit analysis on the question of financing a new Sulphur Dell and subsidizing the Nashville Sounds in the process. I have a few observations about the events of the past few days in the spirit of being more rational about that process:

• The Friday late afternoon news dump of this story last week was curious. A couple of hours before today's ballpark meeting was announced GOP State House Speaker Beth Harwell announced to the news media that she would not support dedicating $35 million in state funding for Karl Dean's new bus rapid transit east-west Nashville connector, "The Amp". That can always change, but for the time being it is a blow to the Dean infrastructure priority list. It is a blow to his brick-and-mortarmentum. The Sulphur Dell announcement could have been planned all along or it could have been announced to soften the PR blow on and divert news media attention from a limping Amp plan.
• It is obvious that Karl Dean's modus operandi is to move ahead with these voluptuous capital budget plans with minimal popular input. He pursued the new convention center even though local opinion polls indicated that Nashvillians did not support it. He threatened to demolish a popular working-class entertainment venue, the State Fairgrounds, and sell off most of the land to private developers until there was impressive public backlash threatening to rip Metro Council limb-from-limb. Hizzoner could have eliminated most of the strong, organized popular opposition to the AMP by moving bus rapid transit north to Charlotte, but he dug in his heels and all but dared state Republicans to kill funding. They are able to embrace popular opposition, and the Amp is on the verge of unraveling. Likewise, he is ramming the ballpark plan through the Sports Authority and Metro Council with no regard to public questions or feedback. We will see if he can push this before any organized opposition gains the footing necessary to slow or stop the ballpark.
• In the context of today's meeting announcing the financing plan, the October 24 "community meeting" continues to appear to have nothing to do with the community. None of the questions asked by the community are being considered. Everything is running to script and any of the concerns that many of us have about traffic, parking, flooding, fireworks, etc. are generally being ignored, even by the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods. Buoyed by Metro's offer to build them a garage, the state is fully on board now. If Metro will not listen to community concerns, what chance do we have the state?
• Our council member, Erica Gilmore, is ignoring the questions from the October community meeting. She does not seem to care to represent all of us. During tonight's council proceedings, she was described by one reporter as "celebratory" about the ballpark plan. Not a concern in the world about community impact. She seems to have checked out on some of us.
• Before people start waxing on about how historic and "uniquely Nashville" the Sulphur Dell agreement is, they need to keep this in mind: the Metro Finance Director admits that the plan for Metro subsidizing the Sounds' new digs is based on the practices of other cities. Metro taxpayers are going to cough up $65 million to help pro baseball owners get wealthier because other cities do exactly the same thing. Ironically, being like other cities violates Metro Planning's first guiding principle: Be Nashville.
• Seven years ago I expressed qualified support for the previous administration's plan to increase Metro operating budget spending $250,000 per year in maintenance costs for a new ballpark at the old downtown thermal plant site. It seemed like a fair trade-off, given that Greer Stadium required $5 million to bring it up to ADA compliance (completed in 2009 after the old deal fell through). I was more open previously to tax-increment financing (also a part of Dean's deal). I have had a change of heart about TIF, which I find to be overused and abused by opportunistic politicians nowadays. The Mayor's current proposal to carve out $345,000 from the annual operating budgets may not seem much more than the older plan, but we live in different times: cash flow to Metro services seems more strapped as the years go by. And a ballpark at the thermal site generated fewer questions about the potential negative impact on residential neighborhoods than the Sulphur Dell site does. Any support I express for a new Sulphur Dell has even more qualifications than my previous support.
• The Mayor admits that the Nashville Sounds baseball club will not be contractually obligated to pay the $50 million that he plans on them paying for development. So, why would they need to hire a big-money lobbyist when they are not even required to pay for the development?

After going through the financials, I am still not ready to support a new Sulphur Dell without some assurances that Salemtown's quality of life will be protected. I am also not satisfied with how the concerns of the community, democratically expressed, are being overlooked and ignored by those we elect to represent us.

And this guy claims to be Mayor of all Nashville?

I do not think that the Mayor's Office realizes just how polarizing their justification for not planning rapid transit for North Nashville is. I do not believe that this administration grasps how their cavalier response expresses the idea that Nashville is not one city, but a fractured arena of interests competing for Hizzoner's good graces. Or maybe they get it, but they just don't care. Their cynical replies to a reporter are not even subtle in sovereign tone:

community activists and council members from North Nashville soon took up the chorus, suggesting their part of town was getting screwed yet again on a major public investment. As recently as April, state Rep. Brenda Gilmore floated the mention of a lawsuit if the route was not altered.

All were valid concerns. The problem, to the Dean administration, was that they were coming years too late. By that point, according to the mayor's office and Metro transit officials, foundational decisions about the project had been set in stone.

So, if North Nashvillians wanted bus rapid transit we should have bellied up to the trough with our power and money like the wealthy West End business interests and leveraged the Metro Transit Authority budget decisions in our favor. Never mind that it would have been more ethical for the executive branch to insure that infrastructure was distributed fairly around the city in the real absence of greater influence and wealth.

In truth, many of us who have attended these "public" meetings know that there are 1,000-and-1 ways to use meetings to mask and to misdirect. Procedural tricks are used all the time by those who have mastered rules and bylaws to allow hidden agendas under the guise of transparency with deniability intact (see the excuse, "All of the meetings were public", as if the public can attend all of the meetings along with every other public meeting Metro holds).

Now, claiming that we are too late to the party is part of the confidence game. The Mayor's Office has it both ways. This thing is only set in stone now because meetings and decisions were orchestrated to foster impenetrability. And now we are the chumps who did not see it coming. As if we ever could have.

In my opinion MTA has already pulled a fast one on us by not publicizing the alternatives analysis (and I don't mean modes of transit alternatives under consideration). Had North Nashville leaders been able to see the results for studies outside the east-west corridor, they likely would have been mobilized to fight Karl Dean's exclusive reservation of BRT for West End.

But in this administration's preconceived notion of Nashville as a social Darwinist theater of winner-take-all, such popular mobilization is discouraged.

Richland Creek Watershed Alliance: call for volunteers

A call for volunteers for this weekend and the next from a worthy group to our west:

TO PLANT TREES ALONG RICHLAND CREEK!

Saturday, November 9 10:30 am - West Precinct, 5500 Charlotte Pike

Saturday, November 16 10:30 am - 5634 Meadowcrest Lane

Plan to have fun, dress for the weather and to work in the dirt! Tools and refreshments provided.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. "Complete Streets" and parking?

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

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


2. The North Nashville Community Plan?

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

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


3. Flood mitigation and neighborhood impact?

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


4. Mass transit strategy?

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


5. Jobs strategy?

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


6. Youth programs and service opportunities?

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

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

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

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

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

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


 

In his zeal for a ballpark, Jerry Maynard rewrites our history

Last night I started a post on my impressions of yesterday's Sulphur Dell ballpark community meeting, but it is not in a place where I am satisfied with it. In the meantime, I have been reading the media coverage and noted this:

No one was happier Thursday than At-Large Councilman Jerry Maynard, who at one point before the meeting began, could be seen standing on a chair proclaiming strong support for the project and directing a crowd to pick up red Friends of Sulphur Dell shirts.

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

If Friends of Sulphur Dell started in 2008, it is news to me and I have been blogging on North End news since 2005. The group was not announced in Salemtown until 2010, and it was my distinct impression that it was being founded at that time. 2010 was definitely the year that Salemtown Neighbors was invited to participate. The website for Friends of Sulphur Dell was not started until 2011.

CM Maynard's claim that all of the neighborhood associations "fought hard" for a new ballpark in the area is an outright fabrication, misstatement, error and any other word synonymous with "falsehood". Salemtown Neighbors has always expressed a willingness to consider a ballpark as long as all of its questions and concerns were addressed. SNNA appointed me to be one of its representatives to the Sulphur Dell group.

On April 13, 2010, a few days before this group that would become Friends of Sulphur Dell convened at Farmers' Market, Freddie sent a message to the Salemtown Neighbors listserv about a Tennessean reporter incorrectly saying that everyone in our community supported a new ballpark at the early stage:

it seems like the narrative is already that the North End supports Sulphur Dell. He called me yesterday, and I explained that we were not going to take a position till after Saturday's meeting, if at all, and I'm glad he noted that in the story.

After I made it clear in the Sulphur Dell meeting that we were on the fence and that we had particular questions about traffic and parking, and when I asked that we set up community meetings, I stopped being included in the group's proceedings (assuming they had many more after that; the website went quiet in 2011 and did not become active again until August 2013, when news media reported that the Mayor wanted Sulphur Dell).

Where Jerry Maynard now gets the idea (or the gall) to misrepresent Salemtown's support, ambivalence or opposition to a new ballpark is beyond me.

His rewrite of our history is supported by nothing I can find in my records. I received an email saying that Karl Dean told a Hope Gardens resident in 2010 that Sulphur Dell was his preferred location. I was also told by an insider whom I trust that, while the news media was reporting Sulphur Dell as only one option among others the Mayor was considering, the push for finding grassroots support for Sulphur Dell that year came top-down from the Mayor's Office. Around that same time Freddie made it clear to me that he shared concerns the association had about negative quality of life impacts of a new ballpark on Salemtown. He also told me that if Salemtown Neighbors chose to oppose Friends of Sulphur Dell, then it would be a "stumbling block to the unified approach" the boosters were trying to project.

Obviously the council member at-large has taken that disingenuous approach to heart. I hope Freddie took the time yesterday to pull Reverend Jerry Maynard to the curb and to correct his fast-and-loose abuse of the truth in his zeal for a ballpark concept that may or may not be worthy. The record should be set straight.

It's almost like they do not want the community to attend a community meeting

It is bad enough that this afternoon's ballpark community meeting was announced by Metro Planning with short lead time and scheduled at an hour when most people who pay their own bills are at work (2:00), but the poor communication of it by accountable Metro officials since last week's announcement is even worse.

Two parties who should have been taking the lead on notifying the neighborhoods most affected by a new Sulphur Dell ballpark have done very little to lead.

The only word I have received from our council member, Erica Gilmore, was an email sent last night (a little over 12 hours before the meeting convenes at Farmers' Market). The email was nothing but a cut and paste job of last week's Metro Planning announcement, which she could have cut and paste and sent out last week. Waiting for developing news on the project before emailing constituents is one thing, but dragging her feet on an announcement that was nothing but week-old cut and paste is irresponsible in light of the fact that this is a community meeting on a project that she has consistently touted in communications before.

Like gangbusters in August email blast

In August, no more than 24 hours after the news media broke the story and nearly 3 weeks before the Mayor officially unveiled his plan for Sulphur Dell, CM Gilmore sent out a "media advisory" email to her list declaring her unequivocal, unqualified support for a ballpark that had not been expressed in plan, design or community impact yet. In that declaration, she also speculated that all of her constituents were "thrilled" with the idea. Not that we were open to it. Not that we were willing to listen and provide feedback. Not even that many were thrilled but that she hoped that those who were unsure might hop on board after considering the plans. No. She took it upon herself to speak for us as if she had actually polled us (I have not seen a survey yet). She shot from the hip in August, despite the fact that she has at least one neighborhood association that remains unclear whether it supports a Sulphur Dell ballpark.

The point I am trying to make is that CM Gilmore came out with announcements of support like a house afire, and she presumed to speak for the community at that time. Now that community meetings are being held where there might actually be popular reactions to the plan she supports, she is late with her announcements to the community. I have talked to at least two other constituents since I got the email who have heard nothing from CM Gilmore about this meeting.

The second party who should have been communicating today's event to the neighborhoods is the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods. Outside of 2 or 3 tweets on the subject, they have done nothing that I am aware of to communicate the Sulphur Dell community meeting. I cannot even find any news on their static website. And yet, this is the Mayor's initiative. The fact that MOON would drop the ball on this means either that they do not care about neighborhoods or that they are more concerned to control the community reaction by discouraging citizen attendance, which still means that they do not care about the neighborhoods.

The poor communication by Metro officials on today's community meeting is disgraceful. I would not be surprised if I walked into a room full of developers, bureaucrats, politicos and the flacks that support them. That may be how Mayor Dean wants it: as undemocratic and as exclusive as possible.

6 important questions I would ask planners of a new Sulphur Dell ballpark

These are questions I am hoping will be answered at next week's community meeting on a new Sulphur Dell ballpark sponsored by Metro Planning. They are in no particular order:

1. Please tell us how you are going to incorporate the idea of "Complete Streets" (that is, making streets safe for all forms of transportation besides cars) into the ballpark development.





Complete streets at Fenway:
2 sidewalks, 3 planters & 1 rain garden!

• Karl Dean paid lip service to Complete Streets consistently throughout his tenure. He should not have a problem demonstrating that the redevelopment around the Sulphur Dell site will place limits on auto traffic while installing amenities for bicycle and pedestrian traffic. In their stories on Dean's ballpark designs, the news media is fond of dropping the factoid that the Mayor is a big Red Sox fan. If Dean fails to include complete streets in his design, would it be too much for the media to point to redevelopments around Boston's Fenway Park that have aggressively incorporated Complete Streets and to ask about the lack of consistency at Sulphur Dell?


2. How does a new Sulphur Dell fit alongside the North Nashville Community Plan?


• Pick your plan. 2002: traffic calming along the major roads and a diversity of housing stock to attract diverse groups of residents including lower density options. 2010: parking solutions for busy urban corridors, leaving flood plain undeveloped, conserving green space, restricting taller buildings to major corridors. The community has a clear track record of expressing how they would prefer growth to be managed rather than be permitted to run amuck. A new ballpark plan should be consistent and sensitive to already formulated community plans, which represent the most significant democratic brake on the power of money and on Johnny-come-lately political influence.


3. What measures are taken to incorporate flood mitigation into this ballpark plan? What will be the impact on the North Nashville neighborhoods of Sulphur Dell flood mitigation in the event of another catastrophic flood?


• This is a simple equation: the old Sulphur Dell flooded because the ballpark sat on flood plain. In May 2010 the area flooded again. Metro plans to do what it tries to prohibit Nashvillians from doing since 2010: build on flood plain. If they do not take measures for mitigation, the new Sulphur Dell will likely be inundated in a catastrophe. If they do mitigate future floods, the water will have to go somewhere. The most obvious place it will go is higher into the surrounding neighborhoods.


4. What is the mass transit plan for the North Capitol area to MetroCenter on game and event days/nights at a new ballpark? If the only plan is to build more parking for car owners on site, what plans do you have for alleviating overflow parking and congestion in the nearby neighborhoods?


• Parking is already becoming a huge challenge with the rapid wave of mixed-use developments sweeping the area, including massive apartment complexes. The stadium plan includes even more mixed-use residential along with the entertainment complex itself. The strain on on-street parking, our primary mode of parking, will only grow more intense. If the Mayor is committed to Complete Streets in more than just words, Jefferson Street will become a choke point of cars, bikes and people without a mass transit strategy that he has yet to divulge (if he has one).


5. Besides uncertain, pie-in-the-sky predictions of local job growth with new businesses around a new ballpark, what job strategies do you have for hiring people from North Nashville for every phase from construction to team operations?


• Watchdogs of another of Mayor Dean's immense capital projects, the Music City Center, discovered during the construction phase that Hizzoner did not follow through on promises to extend contracts to local companies and that jobs created by MCC looked lousy. The planners of a new ballpark should have to explain why North Nashville can expect more from the development than Music City Center offered our community.


6. What commitments can we get from the Nashville Sounds baseball club that they will provide programs and service opportunities for North Nashville youth (for example, inner city baseball training programs)?


• I am not aware of anything that the Sounds are working on with neighborhoods around Greer Stadium. North Nashville needs the ball club to commit to be more involved here.

Those are six I have off the top of my head and a good start toward formulating other important questions. Look forward to hearing from others who are concerned about our quality of life.


UPDATE:  Nashville Scene reporter Steven Hale gets Metro Planning to explain why they would schedule a community meeting on the ballpark in the middle of a weekday afternoon when most people cannot attend the meeting. Planning's response to Hale indicates to me that this meeting may be more of a pitch of a done deal to the community and less of an invitation to influence the ballpark plan:

This was the first meeting Metro and the State could schedule that could work for all of the speakers, and we wanted to get the conversation started.

For those unable to attend, we plan to tape the meeting so that they can view the presentation online and make comments and ask questions. We also hope to offer more community meetings as this process continues to give additional opportunities for community questions and comments.

So, there is a slate of speakers and they are going to tape for the "benefit" of those who cannot attend. It does not sound like to me that they are enlisting the community's participation in the formulation of this plan. In fact, it is reasonable to assume that since the unnamed speakers' attendance is more important than the community's attendance, the plan has been agreed upon between Metro and the State without reference to community planning. Yesterday in an email exchange with Planning's Craig Owensby about the meeting I asked him whether such a perception was correct. I received no response from him on that particular question.

Salemtown association walks a delicate, but firm line on the way to a Sulphur Dell ballpark

I find it interesting that Metro Planning's announcement of a community meeting to discuss a new ballpark at Sulphur Dell is coming on the heels of some notable conclusions that Salemtown Neighbors recently came to. SNNA had a business meeting a couple of weeks ago, and a new Sulphur Dell was on the agenda. The members present expressed concerns about unanswered questions about impact of the development, and they agreed that a community meeting with Metro officials to address their questions was necessary.

In my opinion, SNNA has generally been the most reflective and inquiring of a ballpark of any of the four neighborhood associations in the North End. Both Germantown and Hope Gardens hopped aboard the Mayor's ballpark bandwagon without a second thought to quality of life questions. I am not absolutely certain of the differences that would cause SNNA to be more circumspect about a ballpark, but I do know that their past stances on preservation, conservation and quality of life could make an all-in embrace of a new ballpark an uncharacteristic stretch.

Salemtown Neighbors is just coming off a long and contentious bid to pass a conservation overlay, which set height limits to protect the residential character of the neighborhood. That hard, but successful conservation struggle should have sensitized members to the important questions about untrammeled growth and its negative effects on community development. But an uncritical and blind acceptance of a ballpark would also be at odds with our association's history. After a period of open discussion and debate about impact, SNNA expressed support for Germantown's historic overlay in 2008. In 2005, SNNA opposed the closing of historic Jones Paideia Elementary School in support of their PTO's struggles with Metro Nashville Public Schools. To break with our past of exercised thoughtfulness about demolition and development would be inconsistent with who we have been.

If this ballpark plan passes, it should not do so without officials honestly answering serious questions about its long-term impact on our quality of life. You can bet that politicians with power interests, property owners with real estate interests and developers with exclusive interests in the financial bottom line will all show up to next week's community meeting. They will not be the ones asking the critical questions. They will be too busy bandwagoning and cheerleading this project. The process will need level-headed, sober community leaders to ask adult questions about this project. And SNNA's history on development has been one about cutting through childishness and asking the grown-up questions.

The news media tends to focus on the unabashed boosters and to ignore those with serious questions. And yet the latter are the ones who will eventually be the most effective catalysts of a sustainable and contextually-consistent ballpark integrated rather than at-odds with community life. Amid positive comments, the media parrots the Mayor's points that a ballpark would be an economic boon for the Jefferson Street business corridor. And yet, who will speak up for preserving the quality of life around our homes off Jeff St as economic development spreads if not the neighborhood associations? The Mayor has responded in the past that the neighborhood associations would be brought in at some point, but that a ballpark belongs to all of Nashville. Likewise, shouldn't the ballpark's impact on community development in Salemtown, Germantown, Hope Gardens and Buena Vista matter at least as much as the economic development for Jefferson Street's merchant association? The ballpark's beneficiaries should not begin and end at Jeff St.

If you look around different parts of Nashville, there are communities recently in upheaval after economic development in the business sector outstripped quality of life in the neighborhoods. We know that the Mayor and the powerful interests who are largely free to show up at next week's mid-afternoon community meeting at the Farmers' Market are going to breathlessly booster a ballpark. If the neighborhoods fail to warn the city to step back in order to take deeper breaths before taking the plunge, there will not be anyone left to do so.

Sulphur Dell ballpark "community meeting" announced

I, like many of you, just received the following in my box:

Information session and community meeting to discuss new baseball stadium

The Metro Planning Department will hold an information session and community meeting to discuss the proposed new baseball stadium in Sulphur Dell (south of Jefferson/Jackson Street, west of Third Avenue North, north of Harrison Street, and east of Fifth Avenue North).

Sulphur Dell is the historic home of professional baseball in Nashville.

This event will include discussions about the stadium project, site and building design, street design, and operational impacts. Community members will have the opportunity to submit questions and comments.

The information session and community meeting will take place on Thursday, October 24, from 2 pm to 3:30 pm at the Nashville Farmers' Market, 900 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard, Nashville, TN 37208.

I guess I should be pleased that they are going to have a community meeting, but can it really be a bona fide community meeting if most of the working people in the community are not free to leave work to attend at 2:00 in the afternoon?

And I am withholding judgment on what is meant by the public having the opportunity to "submit questions and comments". Hopefully, this means that the community will have influence over the development, just as it did the North Nashville and Downtown community plans. We will see.

Reflections on last weekend's Germantown Oktoberfest (and Germantown Street Fest)

Munich's Paulaner friar now a relic of Oktoberfests past

Having just passed my 9th straight year of attending Oktoberfest celebrations a few blocks down from my home I have a few reflections on the 2013 version just past:

• The split of the two festivals from one Germantown Oktoberfest into the Oktoberfest and the Germantown Street Festival gets more regrettable each year. In their interactions with me over the years Historic Germantown leaders have tended to play their motives for breaking with the churches over the community-congregation fundraiser close to the vest. They would not share their reasons even when they expressed dissatisfaction with mine as a local blogger on the subject. (There has been drama, too).
• The split continues to strike me as lacking any détente. This year Oktoberfest leaders but up an inflatable arch between the street fest and their celebration with a banner that read: "Nashville's Original German Festival". When entertainer Lari White posted on Twitter that she would be appearing at Oktoberfest, Oktoberfest tweeted back confusion about her appearance. Ms. White was actually slated to appear at Germantown Street Fest. Do the two sides appear to have any diplomatic relations at this point?
• There are profound cultural and class differences that could be a wedge between these two festivals. Oktoberfest continues to be a homecoming for former Germantown residents. It tends to showcase German folk and country music. Germantown Street Fest has little "German" and a lot of "street fest". It inclines to popular music as well as more high-brow jazz (to go with that glass of wine). One Oktoberfest leader told me of personal concerns that there is an exclusive demographic moving into Germantown with less diverse tastes and less interested in preserving the community's history and character: young childless adults who likely will not lay down roots here and likewise are not concerned about the roots from whence Germantown sprang.



Funds preserve historic churches

• The decision by Oktoberfest organizers to start their celebration on Friday evening (5p-9p) is a winner. If they do it again next year, I'll be back. The turnout was better than I expected for the limited offerings they had (mostly biergarten fare and polka music), but it had the feel of being more for the locals than Saturday's blitzkrieg of festival goers. If Germantown Street Fest organizers want to keep up, they might consider kicking off on Friday night as well. I can see the Friday Oktoberfest pre-party becoming its own thing.
• How can they hold an authentic German Oktoberfest and not have authentic German beer on draft? The sponsor for Oktoberfest was American brewer Sam Adams. The sponsor of the Germantown Street Festival was local brewing company Yazoo Brew. I am not an opponent of either buying American or buying local, but I was disappointed that my only choice at a German festival was between Sam and Yazoo. One Germantown Street Fest beer puller offered the information that they did put the beer in Spaten cups (left over from last year?). Great. A veneer for my beer. When I bought my Paulaner stein filled with Paulaner beer here years ago I was told that Germany's festival sponsor shipped unused steins directly from Munich's Oktoberfest, which ended the week before Germantown's celebration. I always thought that was cool. I'm not demanding Reinheitsgebot, and I acknowledge that beers made in the German style make this a slippery question, but come on; no German beers offered at these German festivals? Really?

I usually record past impressions of Oktoberfest in photos, jump to see them.

Bus rapid transit plan being sold as tried and true even though it is a convoluted experiment hemmed in by straw men

Vanderbilt professor Malcolm Getz sent a letter opposing the plan to fund bus rapid transit down West End to Metro Council a little over a week ago. His comments are relevant to my views of the BRT proposal:

The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) sent a funding request to the FTA prematurely. The MTA systematically suppresses critical documents and misrepresents the effects of its proposal. We have filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for the original Parson's-Brinkerhoff study, and have not received it. We have received (through FOIA) the Alternatives Analysis and the Preliminary Engineering Report (118 pp. and 333 pp. respectively.) All of these reports were taxpayer funded and none have been made available to the public. The reports published on the MTA website are merely excerpts and summaries, and do not reflect the facts presented in the full reports. The MTA claims public involvement and implies public approval.

The MTA’s letter to the Council today refers to the "Alternatives Analysis" for the corridor begun in 2011, which forms the basis for the MTA Board’s January 2012 recommendation to advance the current plan. The plan removes lanes from traffic to dedicate them to buses. The Metro Council, State officials, and the Federal Transit Administration should insist on seeing the Alternatives Analysis. I have discussed the lack of public access to the full report with Mr. Peter Rogoff, the Federal Transit Administrator.

A pivotal issue is increased traffic congestion. The project removes two lanes of traffic and a turn lane from key sections of the highway between 440 and 5th Avenue. As a consequence, the project will dramatically increase traffic congestion, creating choke points. This effect will begin immediately as construction begins and will remain at a higher level after the project is complete. Although a number of other cities have deployed limited-stop bus rapid transit, only a few have provided lanes just for buses, and among these, none have taken lanes from major arterial roadways in the center of the city where no alternate routes are available for traffic. The AMP proposal is an experiment, but is presented as "tried and true."

The MTA claims that the new bus service will enhance access to the three major hospitals between 440 and 40 but the plan provides no bus stops at any of the three hospitals. Travelers face transfers to other vehicles or long walks to complete their journeys. Indeed, the bus stops are a block or more from major cross streets that provide connection to these major destinations. The quality of bus service to major mid-town destinations will be inferior to that provided today. This information is not included in the Summary Reports.

The primary effect of the project for bus riders is to move people from today’s cost effective service to a less convenient and more expensive service. The MTA claims the project will serve 4,500 weekday riders daily. But its own ridership estimates demonstrate that the vast majority of these riders are already making trips by bus. A very high level of expenditure per added local bus rider means the project is not cost effective.

The MTA proposes to dramatically reduce the frequency of the local bus service, making bus service less convenient for many people who make short bus trips and value being able to enter and exit buses at any blue bus stop sign. A major reduction in local bus service means that access to mid-town hotels and restaurants will degrade. The proposed limited stop bus service will not appeal to convention visitors.

I have spoken to many groups about this project and found that, once people understand the details, even many enthusiastic supporters of better public transportation for Nashville—and I count myself among them—become skeptical of this plan. It serves Nashville poorly. The MTA should make the public documents available for review and reconsider the issues of traffic congestion and bus ridership.

I have made it clear before that my opposition to Nashville's "Amp" as proposed by Mayor Karl Dean is based on the fact that alternatives analysis of routes has not been made public for scrutiny. We cannot thoroughly judge the validity of the claims of Metro Transit deciders (for instance, that West End is the best route for bus rapid transit) until we have access to the data collected from all routes. It would be interesting to know whether there is something to hide about Charlotte Pike and other alternatives that might make the West End corridor less compelling than the Mayor's supporters let on. (One other interesting question raised by CM Josh Stites is whether the HCA jobs projections, now sinking into refilling Lake Palmer, were included in MTA's filed proposal for federal funds).

The failure to be forthcoming is magnified by the fact that Metro Nashville has a tradition of neglecting North Nashville and of concentrating resources and infrastructure west and east. While the new "Amp Coalition" represents a rebranding of the mission to build an east-west connector and an attempt to flip the script to say that West End is merely the first move to provide BRT for everyone, I can see no good reason to have faith that North Nashville is even on the agenda of these hip transit nexters.

For his part the Mayor, rather than simply ordering that all analyses be made public, has taken to tilting at windmills:

The strongest case for The Amp would seem to be that as the mayor says, worse traffic is coming no matter what. West End, a corridor that is already often congested, will only get more and more crowded as the Middle Tennessee region grows (according to the city's oft-cited projection) by a million people between now and 2035. A transit option without a dedicated lane does little to solve this, the mayor and project supporters reasonably argue, because it would be subject to the same worsening congestion.

Unfortunately, the mayor wields this argument against an opponent unrecognizable to anyone who's been following the debate over The Amp. Call it "Dean to Straw Man: Drop Dead."

Sure, people may say, "Let's just leave everything alone, let's change nothing" — but largely they aren't saying that. There are those who strongly support investing in transit but think that we should start on Charlotte Avenue (and include parts of North Nashville, where many people depend on public transit). There are others who say a BRT Lite system — like those in operation on Gallatin Road and Murfreesboro Road — would be a better option on West End.

Why is Hizzoner acting so quixotic on an issue he should be winning? Steven Hale goes on to suggest a possibility: Mr. Dean may be expecting us to buy into Amp not on the basis of its merits, but simply because he himself as Mayor expects us to. If this is mayoral hubris, it is further indication to some of us who have not seen alternative data that West End might not be able to stand on its own merits.