PruneTracy

It really wasn't, with the exception of the playground, or the few years the Bellevue Picnic was hosted on-site. The mall actually picked up a fair amount of regional traffic, especially before Cool Springs and Green Hills really took off. Once you got inside, you might see someone you know a little more often, but it was just as detached and generic as any other shopping center. As noted by others, I think the sentiment is voiced primarily by the twenty- and thirty-somethings who were either store employees or mall rats in its heyday. Most of it appears to be tongue-in-cheek, in any case. I spent a lot of time in that mall and I wouldn't want to keep it around for anything but a Blues Brothers filmset. Hickory Hollow received a lot of assistance from the NSCC satellite campus, a library branch, and the Ford Ice Center. A few years ago, Crosland Southeast intended to redevelop the existing building at about the same time that Metro tossed around the idea of siting a library branch and/or a reopened Bellevue High School in or around it. Those schemes obviously never came to fruition, but it's not a stretch to think seeing the latter through would have helped along the former considerably.

Laugh it up, we'll see who's missing the stockade the first few times some tourists get scalped.

I don't know how building a subway in 19th-century New York City compares to rapid transit here and now; it was much easier then to acquire property rights, labor was cheap, the regulatory bureaucracy was nowhere near as burdensome, and in any case a subway in pretty much any part of New York City, even a century ago, is going to be a boon to mobility. I agree that it shouldn't take as long as it does to get a project off the ground today, but it's a necessity in our social and political climate. Some of the procedures and regulations are a waste of time; for example, even projects that obviously would not have an environmental impact still require, per NEPA, a fairly substantial document just to state that. Others are partially so, like alternatives analyses for projects where only one feasible alternative exists, or where the client only wants one alternative (though admittedly the Amp's AA apparently convinced MTA to ditch streetcars for much cheaper BRT). I get it, due diligence and such, save the snail darters, but it's a drag on time and cost. That being said, it does take a lot of planning work to determine what's going to work, particularly in cities like Nashville, where improved transit is (hold your fire) not critically needed for the transportation system to function at the moment. For the Amp, for example, there was a lot of obsessing over resident and job density, not just the sheer number but where people were coming and going, since forcing riders to transfer to slow buses at Music City Central kind of defeats the purpose of rapid transit. This is where cheaper, more versatile systems such as BRT shine, as they require less hard infrastructure, so if the system doesn't pan out, the sunk cost is less. What I find most frustrating about the current state of rapid transit in the city is that the West End corridor is an absolute no-brainer for a pilot project. The density and traffic generators are unmatched, even the development patterns, the clusters of density, favor a transit line. We basically have transit-oriented development without the transit. And we still can't make it work.

"Breaking ground on a rapid-transit project by 2020" is unrealistic even if such a project passed through Council and the state legislature tomorrow, unless it was Amp 2.0 and recycled the planning and environmental work. A for effort, though.

I would have taken two through lanes before the parking. The traffic volumes don't appear to support six lanes and the on-street parking is beneficial for loading/unloading operations as well as pedestrians (providing a buffer to traffic and allowing for bump-outs at intersections to reduce crossing distance). I posted to this effect a couple of times on this forum already, but the width of the roadway would allow for many improvements to the overall streetscape, back-in angle parking, landscaped median, wider sidewalks with more landscaping, etc. while retaining four travel lanes.

Some of the much-discussed (on this forum, anyway) pedestrian improvements are coming to Lower Broadway.

Probably to the existing garage or the "old" hospital as they are located between the new garage and the new office building.

Not trying to start something but whether LifeWay pays federal taxes doesn't have a lot of bearing on the purpose of TIF, i.e., keeping their headquarters downtown. Their employees still get paid in taxable income, they still pay property taxes wherever they live around here, and unless they live off communion wafers and grape juice they pay sales tax on everything they buy locally. Their cars would hypothetically take up just as much space on I-65 heading to Cool Springs as that of an employee of a non-religious for-profit. The sprawl wouldn't be any less. I'm not a big fan of handing out what amounts to bribes either but the end effect is the same whether the business in question pays taxes or not.

You could pick up some seats by expanding the south end asymetrically over the parking garage. It would be ugly but effective. If Pittsburgh was able to cram 16,000 seats in a 10,000-seat arena (the old Civic Center), Bridgestone can add a couple thousand. But I think the trend will be towards reducing capacity by replacing prole seats with special, high-end sections like the Lexus Lounge. This is more evident in open-air venues such as Neyland Stadium and Nissan Stadium but is applicable to indoor arenas as well. I love going to Predators games but I can see why, in this age of big-screen HDTVs and such, that a significant subset of people would rather watch at home than fool with parking, legroom, and drunk Hawks fans who can't keep beer in a cup. Hence the trend towards amenities that started with luxury boxes at the Astrodome and has continued into club seats, open restaurants and bars, and player-level seating. Really the defining circumstance in the lifespan of sports venues over the past few decades has been the maintenance costs of the old venue versus the amount of local and state subsidies for construction of a new stadium. Clubs build new stadiums and arenas because the public (or their dear leaders) is willing to pay for it, not because their old home was unserviceable or didn't have the latest fads. If everyone stops throwing money at them, they'll settle in for longer than a couple of decades. Tragedy of the commons, I guess. In any case with the deal the Predators get to operate Bridgestone it should be around for a long while.

I like the increase in office space and addition of a hotel. Both are sorely needed in Bellevue. Still not wild about the sprawltastic design, though.

Curious as to how a proposed hotel would preserve the arena's front office and conference areas (6,000 square feet). I know the venue is sandwiched between two convention centers but it makes sense for it to have space on-site. There's a lot of potential for a unique hotel there that incorporates office and conference space for the arena. You could include a new entrance for the arena opening into the upper concourse, as well as retail in the vein of Tavern '96 or fronting both the concourse and streets. Depending on the level of luxury, being both on-site and close to Broadway I could see teams and performers staying there for events at the arena. I'm not too worried about the height or presence. Once the old convention center and the First Baptist properties get built out it'll fit right in with the area.

I haven't recently been to any events at the Car Hole (still working on a nickname) beyond a few Titans games in the past couple of years, but it seems like the game-day experience has been suffering as of late. Scout had an article about this today also. Don't mean to pile onto the troubles of the franchise recently, but I'd guess it all goes back to ownership being in DGAF mode since Bud passed. It's a shame as Nissan Stadium should be our premier outdoor venue, not just for NFL, CMA Fest, and the odd UT game but more spring/summer concerts, beyond the Stones and Kenny Chesney.

It's better because there's more money on the table. I'm not trashing La Vergne and half my family's from Dickson, but the companies setting up shop in those two communities, among others, and the ones setting up shop in north central Williamson are two very different types of companies. I make this point just to say that some of the money spent on the window dressing could be redirected to more urban infrastructure. Emery's development above could be built on half the acreage, at more cost, of course, but still aesthetically pleasing and more functional, instead of items such as on-street parking a quarter-mile from the nearest building, or an amphitheater surrounded by empty land. It's one thing when businesses need one-story buildings in featureless suburban office parks for the reduced cost, and another when they build high-rises in private parks. That being said, it's obviously what people want, given the explosive growth of the area, and I'm not going to try to tell them what to do with their property. I just have serious reservations about the long-term sustainability of that type of growth.

As I noted on another thread the TDOT traffic volumes for Broadway downtown are borderline four-lane, not six with parking. And I think musicians and deliveries could use a travel lane when necessary as they wouldn't generally need the space during peak commuting hours. Broadway is exceptionally, uh... broad as main streets go and it's a waste to use the majority of it for vehicular traffic when it's such an important pedestrian area.

They have a time and place; two-lane roadways typically get an operations boost from the addition of a two-way left turn lane with a decrease in injury and fatal crashes, and multi-lane roads can benefit as well depending on traffic volumes and patterns. I agree that many roadways in Tennessee could, and should, do without TWLTL, and the "road diet" on the Church Street viaduct defies logic (though after seeing the bridge report for that structure I'm not sure I'd want to do anything more intensive to it that didn't involve explosives). The problem, though, with removing or not using TWLTL is that you also have to restrict access for their absence to not degrade safety or performance. TDOT is only now getting the teeth to enforce access management on their roadways, after decades of getting beat up by politics over the matter. Many of the safety problems I've seen on roadways could have been substantially improved just by keeping the strip malls and gas stations from having four driveways apiece. Ironically the Amp would have done quite a bit to improve traffic flows along West End, removing left turns, some driveways, most of the unsignalized intersections with side roads, and the frustratingly intermittent on-street parking (read: lots and lots of conflict points). Traffic operations are a lot more nuanced than simple matters of laneage, which is unfortunately overlooked by the public.

May have something to do with the fact that the Titans played at the generic Coliseum for the same number of seasons as they played at Adelphia Coliseum (four apiece). Adelphia wasn't even in this market, anyway. I suppose it's a moot point as I doubt random strangers on the Internet were the first to consider the possiblity of branding the stadium as "Nissan Coliseum". Perhaps "Coliseums" are becoming out of fashion? The only one in the NFL is the relic in Oakland and most of the others I know of are aging arenas in mid-size cities. Shame, as it makes sense for our Greco-Roman inspirations.

The look from Google Street View implies it's active. The corner foundation is in. Of course, that was two months ago...

As much as I hate to agree with the Tennessean's peanut gallery, I would have gone with "Nissan Coliseum" or comparable just because there was already a Nissan Stadium in Yokohama. Gotta own the name, can't have people Googling you and ending up with split results. And a reference to their full-size truck (e.g., "Nissan Titans Coliseum", "Nissan Titan Coliseum") would have been neat without diluting the brand.

It was Welch's campus and most of the buildings were converted houses. Not sure about their historical value. I had originally hoped that the developer would keep the houses and build more in between them, but looking back at Google Street View I see there wasn't enough room for that. As is, this development should increase density while keeping the single-family home feel on that side of West End. Just wish they would accommodate a wider roadway for future BRT.

I think the hang-up on that is that developers generally build the parking around the structural requirements for the building, not vice versa. If you go ahead and build out a car hole without a firm idea of the design of the structure above, you're likely to constrain its architecture, which could be a dealbreaker for an anchor tenant or buyer. Parking in that area is also not terribly scarce so it's unlikely a structure would net a positive return. On its own, it's a sunk cost, and as I noted elsewhere Palmer threw enough money away demolishing and excavating the site before he had a done deal.

Two possibilities: 1) The mayoral candidates legitimately don't realize that all of their transportation-related "ideas" have been studied in far more detail than they have themselves developed, which is unlikely; or 2) They are well aware that their transportation platforms consist mostly either of works in progress or discarded alternatives from previous studies, but continue to bring them up because they understand there are more people who have no idea what's going on and will applaud their ideas as profound than those who understand they are full of crap, which pretty much describes every poitician I've ever encountered. Personally, I'd volunteer for the first candidate who says, "I'm going to let the MPO, MTA, and Public Works decide where and how to upgrade our infrastructure, since they're the ones who study it to death." No one's ever won an office talking about how to pay for stuff.

I'd be willing to bet the soccer/football/rugby/cowboy polo field was an afterthought. Of the handful of sites I've laid out with large, open spaces, I've dropped in field boundaries for each one, just to see how it looks. After all, you wouldn't want your subdivision to have a chance to host the North American Senior Hurling Championship, only to be forced to pass on the opportunity because you'd have to put the goalposts five meters deep in the Robinsons' petunias. What I don't get about the layout of the amphitheater is that, even if you wanted to reserve green space outside the venue area, that green space still has more utility behind the lawn seating as a sometimes-overflow area than it does directly behind the stage. I get that they probably wanted the park space closer in than the edge of KVB but there would have been ways to lay out the park to make more of a multi-purpose area. That goes for the lawn seating, too, in its present layout it's not really good for anything except supporting butts during concerts.

Perhaps we could form an agency tasked with developing transportation plans for the greater Nashville area. We could call it... a metropolitan planning organization.

1818 Church has a tower crane; it's only supposed to be six stories tall. The Dallas (on Elliston Place) had one at seven. It's a function of site layout, convenience, and of course cost, not necessarily height.

They need the height variance to build the Matlock Expressway over the building.