theplanetsaved

MPO public hearings at Children Science Museum Monday November 29th starting at 5:00 PM. Public input is important.

I do not think developers are ignoring downtown. Projects have been built recently downtown and many more were proposed till the economy tanked. Once the economy gets on solid ground there will be a lot of new activity downtown- An office building, condo's again and maybe some retail. Look at how much downtown nashville has changed recently. Just a few years ago there was basically no residential downtown. I know reducing the carbon footprint of nashville is important and infill in nashville's core is important. But the reality is that there are only a couple thousand people living in downtown and one and a half million people live outside downtown in the suburbs and almost all of them do not shop and most do not work downtown. When the people demand to shop, work or live downtown then developers will build a lot more downtown. Developers have to respond to the market and it's demands. If you build it and the people are not ready for it goes bankrupt and that would be bad for our downtown. It is a slow process. The reason developers build suburban office buildings is because that is what the market and people want. And if you do not build suburban office buildings in nashville then the market and people go to the surrounding counties where they are building suburban office buildings.

I think you are missing the point the may town project is about creating jobs and attracting corporate relocations to davidson county. Davidson co. does not have 50 acre corporate campus sites-even the mayor recently acknowledged this. The surrounding counties have these sites and in a good economy they have been successfully attracting them. Davidson county needs to get its fair share of corporate relocations and in the past 10 years we have not-something has to change or davidson co will economically suffer if we continue this same pattern for another 10 years. Unfortunately there are only a couple thousand acres of buildable land left in davidson co. Most are a few acres in size and only a handful are over 100 acres. New development downtown is great. But downtown development is less than 10% of the davidson co. economy. What about the other 90% of development in davidson co. Are we going to continue letting almost all of it go to the surrounding counties? That has been the trend. Shouldn't we think about new ideas? Don't we we need to increase our tax base and provide new jobs. Developing HHM might seem like a good idea to some, but are they not in financial trouble out there currently? Would you invest your money let alone10's of millions dollars? I do not think companies from CA, MI or where ever are looking to locate in HHM. There is hope for HHM-I just do not know what it is. The mayor thinks it is a flee market run by metro.

About the balconies. They were only say about 5 feet by 10 feet and had a glass railing wall. Only a few people would go out on such a small balcony with a glass railing wall on the 30th or say the 45th floor anyway. Most people would be to scared to walk out on a balcony that high. This way that balcony space can be added to the interior and with the omission of the balconies the elevation will look better. Balconies make a lot more sense on low rise buildings where they can be large enough to enjoy.

I think you may have miss typed your numbers. I read that MTC is proposing that after maybe 25 years of development there could be 2 or 3 billion dollars of mix use development. I also thought Giarratana said that most of the SF is for Corporate campuses. I don't think downtown Nashville has ever gotten any 50 acre corporate campuses. I do know that Cool Springs has gotten about a dozen or more corporate campuses in the last 15 years.