Armacing

I would but the cost of coming into the inner solar system has gone up due to inflation! Have you figured out what was wrong with the settings on the forum? I remember you were trying to get my old Kheldane account un-banned but you had to ask Neo about something, I think. Whatever happened to RuralKing anyway? That guy was fun to talk to, although admittedly, the "fun" aspect may have been one-sided on my part. Personal observation: I think the level of intellectual discourse on urban planet has advanced dramatically since those days. Personally, I have a lot of respect for the posters on this forum because they are a smart group of people who are not afraid to discuss complex subjects, and I would like to especially recognize ruraljuror, samsonh, and Bos2Nash in particular... I always enjoy hearing their opinions...I wish they had been around back during the early 2000's to add their commentary to the dialogue happening at that time. I give credit where credit is due: even UTgrad09's comment was a well-placed jab at my shadow-hold comment... No offence taken on my part. Now, back to our regular fare of benign commentary... Here, I'll get us started: New tallest tower! Can't wait for this baby to start rising out of the ground... Tony does it again! This will make up for the Signature tower debacle, and I hope it encourages him to reach even higher... right up to the 750 foot FAA limit. Minimal parking associated with this tower! Will there be street-level retail? How will this tower activate the northwest corner of Church and Platform Way? I wish this tower had a spire!

Are we supposed to believe that Tony excavated the foundation of a 60-story tower without any financing in place? I tend to give the guy a lot more credit than that. You observation that I don't know is obvious. It's called speculation, and in case you haven't noticed, everybody on this forum engages in speculation on a daily basis. My "grasping at straws" comment that annoyed you was directed towards the couple of posts asserting that the foundation holes were re-filled with gravel in an effort to stabilize the ground before the foundation was poured. This is obviously not the case and everyone else was just letting that narrative slide because nobody wanted to speculate that there could be a real delay with the project. In a way, we all got beotchslapped by the news that Tony only now secured financing because the fact that this tower previously had *no financing* was not part of the forum narrative. And by the way... nothing about the news of financing being secured invalidates any of the speculation that I made. It's entirely possible for everything I guessed at to be 100% accurate and Tony's team still managed to secure financing in spite of the many challenges I outlined - and I'm glad they did! In conclusion, if your only contribution is to say that I don't know anything, then I say "guilty as charged". Will that stop me from speculating? No. Am I troubled by the news that you don't respect my opinion? No. If this forum was based on the idea that you never post anything unless you know it for sure and everyone respects your opinion, this would be a barren, empty wasteland of a forum.

If you want to challenge any of the points I made in previous posts, then why don 't you do it Mr. Expert?

Pessimism aside, I still find your "explanation" for why they filled the holes with gravel severely lacking. That text you dredged up about using gravel to stabilize the foundation is completely irrelevant to the building conditions in Nashville where practically every tall tower is built directly on top of bedrock. We may never know the real reason why they re-filled the holes, but if they did so knowing that they were going to start construction soon, it must have been a safety precaution or to create a staging platform for materials used on the YMCA portion of the project. As far as I recall, we have not seen the foundation holes re-filled with gravel on any other recent projects. I'm just saying there is a difference between unfounded pessimism and pessimism based on legitimate observations of unfavorable indicators. If any of you guys on the ground are down there asking the construction crews when the tower will start, please ask them about the gravel filled holes so we can all learn the truth behind this anomaly.

I would say we haven't seen any concrete poured yet, but I don't want to jinx it because nobody wants this tower to rise more than me. It's just that I was burned by the signature tower debacle and there's no denying that this tower could have been much further along by now if they had not been slow-walking the construction process. I hope it rises as fast as possible, but the fear is real!

You guys keep posting that but those descriptions of dig & fill with gravel relate to a structure built on soil, not solid bedrock. You are grasping at straws at this point... All we have to do is use our short term memory to review the process for the 10 other towers built here in Nashville recently and none of them dug & re-filled because that is unnecessary when you are building on solid bedrock. The tower portion is obviously on hold for very valid economic reasons. This is called a shadow hold: On hold without announcing it's on hold. Amazon tower 2 is vacant and filled with moth balls. Amazon tower 3 is missing-in-action. Asurion is still on the skids. Amazon is still laying people off. Oracle is on hold. No corporate relocations in the pipeline because employees can't afford to move and get a new mortgage with higher interest rates. Commercial real estate in melt-down. Work from home/ hybrid attendance still going strong. Alcove needs to fill. Prime needs to fill. The new twin towers on Commerce Street need to fill. Given all of that uncertainty, I wouldn't blame Giarrantana if he decided to wait a year or two in order to figure out just how much residential demand there is on that street corner. Now, that being said, I still think he should quickly re-design and start construction ASAP. Here are the re-design parameters: 1) Bump height up to 750 foot FAA ceiling 2) Double the # of units and cut the square footage of each unit in half 3) Double the price per square foot 4) Sell them all as Condos with no limitations on STR My thinking on bullet #4 is that if commercial is dead and residential is soft, why not capitalize on tourism which seems to still be holding strong, then later on when people decide to live there instead of rent it out, the neighborhood will convert gradually and organically.

No theory here, samsonh, just cold hard facts.

I said housing and medical expenses went up faster than CPI, not fuel. This is widely known, but here a couple links if you don't already know this: Medical Cost Inflation: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/how-does-medical-inflation-compare-to-inflation-in-the-rest-of-the-economy/#Cumulative%20percent%20change%20in%20Consumer%20Price%20Index%20for%20All%20Urban%20Consumers%20(CPI-U)%20for%20medical%20care%20and%20for%20all%20goods%20and%20services,%20January%202000%20-June%202023 Housing Cost Inflation: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/579523f003596e94b46ce214/0b6aeb8b-d39e-4ec0-a736-861f11fdc83a/Slide1.JPG?format=2500w https://www.bankingstrategist.com/housing-prices-hpi-vs-cpi Also, your income chart is adjusted for CPI, but I'm saying CPI is both rigged to show lower inflation and diluted with products that are not inflating as fast as the categories I mentioned. And here's the real give-away that you've been chugging the kool-aid way too hard: Your 2nd chart tracks inflation-adjusted income for *full time employees*. News flash: There are a large number of Americans living on fixed incomes, retirement savings, and part-time job incomes that have not kept up with inflation. See if you can answer this question: If the Fed wasn't planning to loot the savings of hard-working Americans by devaluing their cash holdings via unlimited money printing, then why did they make owning gold illegal in 1933 and force everyone to turn in their gold in exchange for federal reserve notes? What were they afraid of? That Americans would dump the rapidly devaluing federal reserve note and go back to a reliable store of wealth like gold? That one event is all the proof we need to know that the financial system in America is not designed to promote and protect wealth accumulation by lower income people who often save cash, but rather to perpetuate the wealth of rich people who own a lot of non-cash assets that rise in value with inflation, and also benefit from the expansion of available credit thanks to their access to financing since they are deemed "credit worthy".

The ratios are not the same. The standard of living has definitely gone down. A family used to live comfortably on one income, now they struggle with two incomes. The Fed has been consistently inflating the money supply over the past 60 years to prop up wall street asset values and create the mother-of-all credit bubbles and that has been financed by the savings of everyday Americans. The Fed's target inflation rate is above the interest rate they set for bank deposits, so what does that tell you? They don't want you to save... but who can save, really? The cost of essentials like housing and medical care (both of which suffer from artificial supply constraints imposed by the government) has risen much faster than the widely referenced "Consumer Price Index".

To me it's obvious they are intentionally "slow-walking" the construction of the main tower... The "why" is trickier to deduce... Could they be waiting on lower interest rates? Could they be waiting for more collapse in the commercial office construction business to strengthen their hand in negotiations with desperate contractors? Do they have a reason to think the cost of steel will be coming down? Are they trying to reassess Amazon's expansion plans in a post-covid/work-from-home reality... specifically, when will Amazon Tower 2 start build-out and what are the prospects for Amazon Tower 3? Have they seen some worrying trends with rentals at Alcove and Prime that make them doubt the viability of bringing a 3rd residential tower online at that intersection... knowing that the twin towers of Nashville Yards also need to be filled? Are they re-doing the math to see what happens if it's 100% condos instead of rental (remember, the endeavor towner in gulch south made this change recently and that was a market-driven decision)? There's no doubt there is plenty of uncertainty in the economy at large, but the new realities of work-from-home are, in my opinion, the biggest factor that will re-shape cities and residential investment over the near/medium term. The North Gulch area is not that touristy, so the residential development there was designed to cater to workers who wanted to live close. But do they NEED to live close? Why rent when you can own? Why pay downtown prices when you can live in Bucksnort or Bugtussle and build equity by purchasing a home (with a yard). Would someone who works on West End or in Cool Springs feel motivated to live downtown? Would someone who works downtown but only comes to the office 1 day per week feel motivated to live downtown? I'm just struggling to identify who the target market for these units will be if Asurion is still on the skids (not growing), Amazon has stalled out (in Nashville), and the corporate relocation pipeline has dried up (as it appears to have done). With interest rates this high and housing costs remaining high, companies are having a hard time getting employees to relocate, so everything feels frozen in place at the moment. I just hope Tony has the foresight to see past this period of uncertainty and build this tower for the future when (presumably) growth will return to Nashville.

As far as brick smoke stacks working, check out the Carlex Glass plant on the west side of town... Easily visible from Briley Parkway.

Remember when "grit" was a selling point for new urbanism? We just need more neon lighting to enhance the dystopian ambiance of 8th South & Lafayette. Rather than a dark stygian void filled with eldritch mutants lurking in shadows, let's embrace the macabre spectacle and illuminate the whole scene in vibrant magenta and blue lighting. Step #1 is to cut down the "Sticks" art installation. Step 2: Neon everywhere. Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit!!!

Maybe they are finally going to develop that lot on the JW Marriott campus (that is currently a private park for events) into a real tower?

I hope it does pass. I would love to see Davidson County self-finance the entire system and leave the rest of the state out of their plans... That way we can avoid a huge inter-regional political battle within the state government and just let everyone pay for their own rail/bus projects at the local level. The only thing the state of TN needs to do is allow for the construction of toll roads. Orlando is the perfect model for how this could work. Also, I agree with the other poster who said TN needs to finish the North Loop of 840... That's a no-brainer.

I meant changes to zoning to allow for building more density, not rent control. Rent control is definitely not going to happen, nor should it because it would only restrict the supply of housing further. The only answer to high prices is to increase the supply, because the demand for housing is not going to go down. The thing about all that new rental capacity coming online now is it is priced on the high end of the market. Nobody is building low-budget rental properties today. They are building luxury units in massive complexes with lots of amenities. Those new properties will definitely be focused on ROI and maintaining the value of their investment, which I see as a strong disincentive to lowering the rental rates. I think their tolerance for vacancy is higher than you think.