RonCamp

I'm obviously much newer to the city than many of you, so I completely defer to you and others with more seniority regarding your first point. Hopefully we've at least reached a time where there are more people clamoring more loudly for improvements. Regarding your second point, I completely agree. Traffic management systems and mass/rapid transit both need to happen. I guess I should have said that more clearly; the gist of what I was trying to get across was just that the former can be accomplished more quickly and more cheaply than the latter.

This comment is not meant to be an endorsement of any particular candidate. That said, Linda Eskind Rebrovick's idea of a "smart grid" traffic management system is much-needed here. Coordination of traffic lights, with traffic cameras, in-ground and pole mounted speed and congestion monitors, etc., would be highly beneficial for the CBD / Midtown / West End area. This likely wouldn't cost any more than the AMP was supposed to and would provide more benefit for more people. It's surprising to me that the Nashville area does not have a traffic management system already.

There's an old saying in the urban planning world that says roughly, "if you plan cities for people and places, you get people and places; if you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic." The corollary is the reminder that the true mission of the Department of Transportation is to move people, not cars. As cities grow and mature, car-based transit systems run out of room and capacity, as noted in the recent NashvilleNext draft. The focus then must shift to a complete transit solution, that accommodates vehicular traffic along with pedestrians, bikers, traditional buses, bus rapid transit and dedicated bus lanes, light rail, commuter rail, streetcars, subways (not in Nashville because of our limestone), carpooling, car sharing, ride-on-demand services like Uber, etc. Cities as spread out as Nashville will never overcome the car as the primary means of transportation, but providing other options is crucial. When your non-single occupancy car commuters are such a small share of the overall pie significant growth of this mode is easily achieved. Though I am sure to AnotherOption in the comment above car travel seems inexpensive or even "free," it is not. Americans will learn over the long term what other developed societies have long realized - public transit is expensive, but so is automobile travel. It has simply been so heavily subsidized by the government here for so long that we have relatively little understanding of what it really costs.

I understand the desire for upscale, "world-class" hotel projects. However, any major city has hotels at all manner of price points - and if we want to continue our growth in tourism we need those tourists to be able to afford to stay here, in the downtown core, not at the city's periphery. Fall football weekends easily see $700+/night rates at the Omni, which not everyone can afford. In a city where the Gulch Fairfield Inn commands an ADR of $175+, this Holiday Inn will easily top $200/night on a regular basis. This looks to be a well-designed, relatively tall, streetscape-friendly addition to SoBro on what was previously a surface parking lot. That's a win. Let's not forget we have a JW Marriott and an Ace Hotel headed our way in the near future as well. Are they the Ritz? No, but we're getting there. Edited to correct the location (not on KVB).

Hopefully this aerial helps clarify exactly what is supposed to be included in this sale:

Noticed this morning that an on-street parking space on 11th Ave S across from Bar Louie has recently been paved with concrete and raised to sidewalk height. This is the same "pad" setup that the previous station had. Hopefully this will be the new B-Cycle station.

Doe anyone know if the B-Cycle station in the Gulch is going to reappear somewhere? It was removed for the Thompson construction, and I haven't heard anything from B-Cycle since I emailed them about it.

Does anyone have a render of this? I am interested to know what the ground floor / streetscape looks like on this one. Is there a retail component? Right now it's a pretty desolate stretch of Division St, especially with the back side of 1505 Demonbreun being nothing but garage entrances, dumpsters, and brick walls. Would be great to see some storefronts or other components to activate the street.

I may be mistaken but I don't believe the Atlanta project and the Nashville project are related - they are being proposed by different people.

Considering Nashville's floods in 2010 and the effect they had on SoBro, I can’t imagine any developer that understands the price of risk (read: insurance premiums) would decide to build a nine story underground parking garage on this site. That means we get primarily above ground parking. Some takeaways: Replacement of a surface parking lot with a mixed use, class A, office development that will bring an additional 1,000+ office workers to downtown. This means increased demand for retail, increased demand for downtown living, what will hopefully be more walking and biking commutes that reduce automobile reliance, and ultimately increased demand for regional transit solutions – all positives. Excellent street-facing design, including retail facing the entirety of the lot’s frontage along the new riverfront amphitheater park and retail facing the new apartment tower currently under construction. Very little service/vehicular/dead frontage along the street (unlike the Omni’s entire face along 4th Ave S. which is just awful). All positives. Return of Hines, a well-respected international developer, to Nashville’s real estate scene. Will compress cap rates for sure, which is tough luck for those searching for yield in secondary markets, but overall great for our city. Positive. The fact is that Hines wouldn't build a downtown building without supplying what any building in Nashville that charges $40 psf simply has to have, which is at least a 3/1,000 parking ratio. This design incorporates 25,000 sf floorplates, which are standard and found in every Cool Springs office building because they lay out very efficiently, and delivers the required parking to match all while staying underneath what I understand to be a Rutledge Hill 300’ maximum height requirement. I’d say the architects did pretty well. Is it the sexiest design in the world? No. But the positives here far outweigh the negatives. We can hold out hope that the parking garage façade is handled in an attractive way… not to mention that the offices on the river-facing side of the 11th floor will be some of the coolest in the city once that roofdeck opens for business. Edited to add "in Nashville"

Details on the Thompson Gulch construction timeline: First Week of March-Fence /Permanent Road Closure on part of Pine Street March 2015 – Erect Tower Crane April 2015 – Road closure for utility work August 2015 – Erect Material Hoist October 2015 – Structure Top Out November 2015 – Remove Tower Crane February 2016 – Complete Exterior Skin on Tower July 2016 – Substantial Completion Projected Fall 2016 Opening Unclear if "permanent road closure on part of Pine Street" means permanent forever, or permanent through the end of the construction project. I hope the latter.

Saw this morning that the block of Pine Street between 11th and 12th has been closed off with barricades and construction fencing. Wonder if this is temporary or will it last through the entire construction period?

Update on this project in the Tennessean today: http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2015/02/25/creative-concept-project-beacon-finds-home-sobro/23996547/

That concept is being developed by a guy named Adam Rosenberg out of NYC - different than the Guesthouse concept we are talking about here. I think he was calling it Project Beacon Nashville (www.theprojectbeacon.com). His firm is called Manhattan Ventures. I know he's been in and out of town raising money for it, but I'm not sure if he was ever able to line up the debt piece. Last I heard he was scouting a couple sites in SoBro.

Just to push back on this a bit - the long-term traffic implications would likely not be as severe as you predict (fudge or otherwise, ha). Closures of lower Broadway such as the one currently in effect for Swimville cause massive traffic mayhem because they are temporary. Despite best efforts of authorities, many people don't know they're happening, so there is confusion, people don't avoid the area as they should, and the roads that do remain open are not designed for the traffic patterns required of them during the closure period. If lower Broadway were to be shut down between the river and 5th Ave, a comprehensive re-calibration of all the roads, signals, traffic directions, lane markings, etc., would have to be undertaken for the downtown zone within a few blocks of the affected section of lower Broadway. By combining this redesigned and improved infrastructure with the collective institutional knowledge that drivers would learn over time (i.e. they know it will never be open, and to change how they approach driving downtown) the traffic effects would likely be drastically less than many would predict. This is the opposite effect of induced demand, which takes place when additional lanes are added to existing multi-lane highways. In that case, the additional supply creates additional demand. In this case, drivers understand that there is less supply, and they reduce trips into the area when they can. That combined with better surrounding roadway infrastructure to handle the changed patterns can drastically reduce major traffic problems in the medium- and long term. Also, to echo what others have said, it is likely that some lanes for vehicles like beer delivery trucks, band equipment vans, taxis, other for-hire vehicles, and mass transit and emergency services would have to be either put down the middle of a redesigned Broadway, or incorporated into the medians of the N-S Avenues like on Lincoln Rd. in Miami Beach.

Yeah, this FirstBank building is really disappointing. 19th and West End is such a great location that's primed for more density. Wonder how much FAR they are leaving on the table by building this without anything above it? Seems like someone's HBU analysis was pretty flawed.

Recent Vanderbilt Hustler opinion column regarding the gentrification of Nashville: http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/opinion/article_ce9cf3aa-abf5-11e4-a6ea-5fcd6f0f0e3a.html Music pulses through these streets like blood through arteries; it is the heart of the town, even as industries like health care and banking diversify the economy and drive prosperity. This increasing wealth is a good thing — if it is applied the right way. Urban development in this city doesn’t need to replace such unique and character-laden places as 12th & Porter; at the very least, the venue could have been left in place, and planners could have surrounded it with new apartments, building a community around a hub of live music and entertainment. Such a move might not have made quite as much money in the short run as will the current redevelopment plans, but it would have kept intact a core principle powering immigration to Nashville: that it has managed to hold fast to the cultural qualities that separate it from other similar cities while simultaneously hosting a booming job market. Remove the idiosyncratic culture, and Nashville is no longer a special place.

The equity piece of the cap stack is not yet fully accounted for but there is a significant equity commitment in place from an established and well-capitalized NYC investment firm. Therefore I'd argue that, though not a done deal, this one is much closer to groundbreaking than wishful thinking.

Sad news indeed. I am unabashedly pro-development and pro-growth, but moments like this (thinking about the loss of 12th and Porter, the Rutledge, the various Printers Alley bars - and the almost-loss of Studio A) force us all as students of cities, real estate, placemaking and the built environment, to consider what is lost when so many places that make Nashville special close or go the way of the wrecking ball. As smeagolsfree mentions above there is something special about Nashville. It's a vibe; something subjective. Part of it is the spirit of the people, the city's unpretentious attitude and endless creativity. But much of that vibe is enabled by the built environment. It's encouraged, nurtured and fostered by places like 12th and Porter and the people that run them, patronize them, and perform in them. As we continue to grow we have to figure out ways to both encourage growth and to balance it with other, competing priorities like historic preservation, the special need that Nashville has to protect musical and creative venues, transportation (private vehicle, ride-sharing, pedestrian, bike, mass transit), park/greenway/civic space implementation, education, and affordable housing. Many of us here would love to see more big name hotels, office towers, luxury apartments and condos, retail plazas, density and height. I know I would! But the people to fill those buildings will only continue to move here if we retain the vibe that made Nashville attractive in the first place. I'm not suggesting I have an answer here. Only saying that this is something for us all to think about. As a group of people on this board that care about and are in many ways invested in Nashville's growth and its real estate, it's something we all have to start addressing in a serious way.

It's not a perfect piece, but this article from ULI Magazine over the summer provides a reasonably good overview of TIF for those who may be interested. http://urbanland.uli.org/economy-markets-trends/tax-increment-financing-tweaking-tif-21st-century/

Agree. Typical new hotel construction, floor-to-ceiling, is usually somewhere between 9'6" all the way up to 12' depending on the desired star rating and brand standards. This can also depend on the type of flooring and ceilings you see installed, as some warm-climate and beach destinations that may include a luxurious tile or marbled floor, for instance, would require more slab-to-slab space due to the required thickness of that flooring install.

Thanks for the updated renderings and plans. Much more architecturally interesting to be sure, but some of the apartment layouts suffer a bit in terms of livability. Classic example of designing a building from the outside in. Interesting that the average sf per unit appears to be only approx. 720 in the tower (approx. 785 in the base). 720 sf per unit seems a little low for Nashville, though obviously you have a strong amenity package to compensate. In particular, unit type 5B in the base is going to be pretty tough to rent. I've never been a fan of studios with closets bigger than the bed alcove - but the intrusion of the parking garage and the tower core doesn't really give you a lot of options there.

From the renderings (granted, one can usually take renderings with a grain of salt) it does appear to be quite slim: http://giarratana.com/live-at-sobro#1 I can't imagine it wouldn't be a double-loaded corridor tower, so assuming it is, the northern (Demonbreun) facing apartments would appear to be very narrow from the rendering. You occasionally see residential buildings on narrow lots with double-loaded corridors that have the apartments on the "narrow" side oriented horizontally, i.e. with longer dimensions of rooms along the window line than along interior column lines. Perhaps that's the case here? The balconies shown on the renderings are longer on the northern side which would give some credence to this theory. If we knew the lot dimensions, tower setback requirements, and FAR we could probably figure out the tower floor plate width (I assume the length of the tower to be essentially the length of the lot, based on the renderings). I am not familiar enough with the downtown zoning code to provide this information. Any other posters have more info?

Agree the second story terrace has great potential, but the roof deck possibilities excite me even more (see http://www.thompsonhotels.com/hotels/thompson-toronto/eat-and-drink/rooftop-lounge). The Thompson Toronto actually shares several characteristics of the proposed Gulch Thompson, especially the location in a formerly industrial neighborhood that's equal parts residential, retail, and F&B, yet outside the main core of the downtown CBD. The Toronto hotel has a roof with killer views, a pool, terraces for suites, and a nightclub. It also has a basement nightclub leased to a third party operator. It will be interesting to see if a similar feature is included here. Toronto's Thompson also has a late night dining option that's very popular with the post-club crowd (also leased to a third party operator IIRC). With all the recent controversy around the SoBro diner project, that may get less play in Nashville, though I believe more late night dining options that don't require a drive through are sorely needed. Regardless, it's an excellent brand addition to the Gulch, giving the neighborhood more cachet than it has ever had. The fact that some heavy hitters like AJ (strong players in luxury hospitality private equity) and Berger (well-known for their numerous hotel projects in New Orleans, both new construction and office conversion) are involved makes me that much more excited.