AronG

I mean, who knows, but these people paid $5 million for a similar size parking lot at 2nd & Broadway, and that was 4 years ago: https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/real-estate/2015/05/downtown-nashvileland-prices-just-hit-a-crazy-high.html. I think they were going to use it to stage trolley bus tours or something? Point is, sticking a bunch of money into urban parking lots is an easy investment strategy for rich people who don't want to have to pay any attention to it. But it's not beneficial for the city, so it seems like tax policy should discourage it. One could also apply the higher rate to under-utilized land (e.g. giant car lots across from skyscrapers).

Yeah, I bet it's less than $1K/day, but it's all gravy anyway, because he can still sell the land for more than the original price. Nashville should apply a higher property tax rate on downtown surface parking lots to discourage land speculation/banking.

Isn't the phrasing kind of suspect though? Like, obviously Cooper's doing everything he can right now to generate media coverage with the theme that he's cutting, slashing, we're bankrupt, etc. But if you dig into a lot of it, it's almost all cosmetic or rhetorical. For example, this statement could just as easily mean that they're negotiating with Oracle with an expectation to announce in July, right? 6 months is not that long.

Isn't this part of where they're envisioning a "walk and roll loop"? Is that just a wide sidewalk?

Found that oddly depressing. 9.6 miles (very similar to our inner interstate ring), 17 stations, new public squares, 24-hour service, fully automated so it's low cost to operate, peak frequency of *100 seconds* between trains. Took 8 years to build and cost $3.2 billion. The rest of the world is getting better and better at building vibrant cities that move people around without storing their 4,000 lb vehicles everywhere they go. We're getting better and better at building... these:

I cross 8th there to get to the Y and it definitely needs some attention from public works. People treat Rosa Parks here like an interstate on-ramp. At some point they're gonna have to re-engineer RP/James Robertson so it doesn't feel like a super-highway.

Downtown's certainly gonna have lots of parking in the mix for the foreseeable future, but it seems like there's at least room now to reconsider the way we approach it. In a lot of ways it seems like perceptions on the topic are locked in based on conditions 30 or 40 years ago, when downtown was blighted and crumbling and the city was desperate for anything that would keep the lights on during the day. Back then the only developments we got were 100% built around suburban drive-in/drive-out commuters, so that's what the city catered to. They built pedestrian-hostile super-roads through downtown, created MDHA policies to subsidize giant parking garages, and stopped paying any attention to the sidewalk network. But we have a lot more leeway now to decide what kind of city to build. The downtown population is skyrocketing, and it's more viable than it has been in 60 years to start redeveloping a real urban ecosystem of businesses and residential spaces that target local foot/bike traffic and transit riders. But whether and how fast that takes off is going to depend a lot on what kind of developments we encourage. We have plenty (333, LC sobro, 805 Lea, Paramount, various hotels) that are pushing the boundaries of how much parking they need to provide. This one and 1222 Demonbreun seem like the opposite end of the spectrum. To me the city gets a lot more benefit from developments that are focused more on people than they are on cars.

13 floors of parking in a 25 story building... These towers along the inner loop are really leaning into suburban commuters. Traffic's gonna be a sh*tshow.

Man, do I have mixed feelings about this one. Cooper is on a roll killing things that would have been great for the city if we could've gotten them done. He's indicated that Briley's commitment to fund the Cayce/Napier/Sudekum redevelopment is dead in the water. He killed the gulch pedestrian bridge. Now he's killing this one, which would've been a generational change on the east side. But the thing is, so far he's made a pretty compelling case each time. Briley didn't properly fund that commitment. CSX was allegedly stonewalling the bridge. And as much as I'd love to not have to bike through a long stretch of belching pollution to get downtown, the idea that Icahn is basically shaking the city down for tens of millions of dollars of public money before he does the obvious thing is pretty galling. PSC is an enormous 45 acre junkyard in close proximity to a booming downtown area where land goes for north of $10 million/acre. If the city finances were in better shape, maybe it would be OK to grit our teeth and pay the ransom to get him out of there. As it stands we're just going to have to hope he eventually gets scared of a downturn and sells. It's still disappointing though. My biggest fear is that Cooper's going to spend a year ostentatiously killing off all these potential projects and getting the yearly financial statement cleaned up (painful, but arguably necessary). Then, because all the substantive improvements to the city would cost a lot of money, which would require him to fix the property tax rate, he's going to announce some populist county-wide project that appeals to people but is actually a terrible idea. Like "We're finally going to fix the interstates once and for all by doubling the number of lanes!" People hate their commute and would applaud, the state loves road projects and would probably help pay for it. But the actual result would be detrimental to everyone that lives within five miles of downtown, setting us back a decade in trying to recover the city's livability after decades of blight and sprawl. Here's hoping that whenever he does switch from killing projects to proposing them, he demonstrates a long-term vision that will leave the city better than he found it.

This is kinda fascinating. A 1,000 person "car-free" mixed-use development in Phoenix, built around a light rail stop. They're incorporating rideshare pickup spots around the perimeter, dedicated space for bikes/scooters, a small mini-lot for hourly zipcars, and lots of green space because they don't have to provide parking everywhere. Opens in Fall 2020. https://medium.com/culdesac/introducing-culdesac-3fbfe7c4219c

Love the changes east of the roundabout. Totally agree that the western stretch needs just as much attention. Of course, it's more constrained on right-of-way. For my money, I think this is one of the best spots in the city to try a dutch-style woonerf. Give up on that "separated" bike lane, it's worthless. Let's just design the street to drastically slow down the cars and share the space with pedestrians/bikes/scooters.

Of all the development choices Nashville is making right now, good and bad, the huge amount of public money MDHA keeps pouring into parking garages is the stupidest self-inflicted wound. They've already subsidized a giant 1,000-car lot under the peabody building (presumably a big part of why they accepted such an un-ambitious project). Now they're going to foot the bill for 400 more a block away? Why in the world is this something public money should be involved in? It's not just wasteful, it's worse than lighting the money on fire. Dumping tens of millions of public dollars into parking completely distorts the market value of downtown space dedicated to parking, destroying the natural incentives that would otherwise motivate people to walk/bike, or take transit into and around downtown. We will never develop an urban ecosystem of employers and retailers that target non-drivers if we keep throwing tens of millions of dollars into parking garages every year. If businesses want to cater to drivers, that's totally fine, but why in the world does it make sense for metro to provide parking for them as a public service when we can barely pay for schools and sidewalks?

Yeah, I think the real dissonant thing about this design is the "stroad" phenomenon, of which the large setback is just a symptom. You can't really design a streetscape for people *and* for high-speed, high-throughput vehicle traffic. It's like putting a sidewalk beside the interstate. It will never feel comfortable to walk out your front door or stroll down a sidewalk when you're a couple of feet away from 4,000 lb vehicles flying by at 60 mph. Until West End gets reworked to slow down the cars (narrower lanes, more intersections, etc.) they might as well focus their pedestrian efforts a block away, i.e. on Richland.

Yup. I feel like 99% of this design is great and it was on track to be one of the surprisingly more tasteful new additions. Then they effed it all up at the very end by botching the color and their god awful font/sign. Oh well, it's still way better than the Westin.

Right, but I'm saying that Lee is interested in making something happen; this is substantive and wouldn't cost much; and (most importantly) it can now be framed as the conservative alternative to the liberal light rail plan. If he gets behind it, TDOT will have no problem with it at all.

If Cooper wants to be rational, our next steps shouldn't be hard to figure out. (1) Dedicated bus lanes on the 5 major arterials (can do dedicated queue hops just outside of downtown where we don't need a full lane). (2) Commit to run buses every 10 or 15 minutes. (3) Upzone the areas around the bus stops and use the property tax money to make much better bus stops. Virtually everyone in transportation agrees that this is how you build transit ridership, and it doesn't cost that much to implement. The problem is growing a pair to stand up to the status quo backlash on car lanes. Do we have enough resolve now to get the Amp 2 over the hump? Of course, there's also the state legislature, but it seems like the Governor may be primed to help with that.

Super lame to discover the Post is closing. Their efforts to host musicians, poets, community events, etc. have enriched the neighborhood. Here's hoping Frothy Monkey tries to keep it going. With the new office across the street I'm hoping more of the retail space around it gets converted to better uses. On the 1012 Main St project, it just goes to show that with almost any proposed project in East Nashville, the loudest voices are always going to be the complainers. The first proposal would have provided a lot more retail and street activation, and included parking—but it was taller (gasp). I went to the meetings and was interested to participate, but the whole process was dominated by loud, knee-jerk negativity that was completely divorced from any context that Nashville is a dynamic, growing city, and Five Points has the capacity to be the center of a bustling, walkable district. So instead we get this bland, under-utilized project, on what should be a prime piece of real estate. And the reaction is... still b*tching and moaning. About parking, no less. The only time people around here seem to have rational conversations about how our neighborhoods should evolve is when you stop looking at specific projects, and instead ask them what kind of neighborhood they want to live in. When people have to look through a few representative neighborhood streetscapes in Brooklyn, Houston, Portland, Phoenix, etc. and choose which ones we should target, they inevitably choose the ones with a little more density, which allows for more pedestrian and neighborhood amenities. When our feedback process is balanced towards this perspective (e.g. NashvilleNext), we make reasonable choices. When it's balanced towards whoever's motivated to show up on a Tuesday night to actualize their insecurities in an ever-changing world by shaking a pitchfork at some developer, we make short-sighted choices that lead to a less pleasant neighborhood.

A Y would be a great addition to Cayce. All the new apartments are starting to reshape the area, but until there's more stuff to walk to it's not going to really feel like a new neighborhood. The Tennessean article mentions that a grocery market and health clinic are supposedly in the plans, I wonder if that's actually going to happen.

Perhaps not, although if someone forced it through on lower Broadway I'd bet a million dollars it would be a beloved public space within a year. What I would hope is that our city leaders can start to acknowledge that more investment in car infrastructure is an urban planning dead end. European cities really started tipping on this a few years ago, recognizing that dedicating 90% of public space to the noisiest, most dangerous, most polluting, and least efficient way of moving people around is a self-crippling mistake (Oslo, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Barcelona, etc.). North American cities have taken longer to figure this out, but now the dam is finally starting to break. Just in the last year or two we have King St in Toronto, the NYC 14th St Busway and the upcoming congestion charge, SF Market St... Of course Nashville's in a very different place, but I think the recognition could start to percolate through, that the ultimate goal for our urbanized areas is to dedicate space and resources to pedestrian/bike/transit infrastructure, not traffic lanes and parking. The cities that figure this out sooner are going to be the most attractive places to live and work over the next decades, and are going to be the ones that sustain their growth and livability.

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To me this seems like the best solution for everything from buses to trolleys to trams. Stick only enough batteries in them to go a few miles, then outfit the biggest stop every mile or so with an overhead line to charge it and have them pause for a minute to top up. Doesn't require stringing overhead lines throughout the city, allows you to get away with much smaller batteries in the rolling stock (making them lighter and cheaper), gets all the benefit of quiet emission-free transport...

Where's the super wide walk/bike path? You just mean the campus green?

Such a waste...

No idea what their specific plan is, but that parcel's in the Rutledge Hill Subdistrict, subject to the Dowtown Code, which explicitly has no parking requirement. If they think there's a market for it, they're free to use more of their space for other purposes (which is how it ought to be be everywhere). As far as Airbnbs go, I believe an increasing number of them are not bringing personal vehicles (i.e. they uber from the airport).

Hi Brett, thanks for the info. Gotta say it seems insane for me that we have to wait for "pedestrian strikes" (aka dead people) to guide our street design, but I guess that's Nashville in 2019. The factors that induce drivers to hit people are super well-known, and as much as we all like to blame Nashville drivers, unfortunately it has much more to do with the pushback you describe from Public Works. Those guys are trapped in a mentality from 30 years ago, when 98% of street design was about maximizing car throughput for suburban commuters. When we can't even put in a crosswalk without it getting smashed up, it's the most blatant possible evidence that we've created a violent safety hazard in our public spaces and need to revisit the design choices that got us there. It's not like this is some kind of mysterious problem; the solutions have been documented repeatedly by organizations like the NACTO (https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/). But right now Public Works cares more about easy maintenance than our dozens of dead pedestrians every year, and they continue to ignore modern urban design guidelines and best practices unless there's specific pressure on each project. I know the systemic problems are out of your control, but I hope you'll use the influence you have on D6 design choices to push things in the right direction. Eastland and Chapel was one example where Public Works started with an incredibly ignorant design, and still only managed to get it about halfway fixed based on pushback. We'll eventually join the rest of the urban areas of the world in designing our intersections for people instead of cars, but until then every project is an opportunity to improve neighborhood safety.