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.

Davidson county can have rail any time they want... just put it up for a vote and let the Metro tax payers decide. What's that you say? They already did that and the tax payers voted "No"? Well, then I don't feel sorry for them at all, and they definitely don't deserve to receive anybody else's money for rail if they are unwilling to pay for it themselves!

I think the high interest rates are working to put a floor under rental prices because there are certain people who could have afforded a home a couple years ago who are now firmly locked into the rental market. The continued high price of houses even in the face of higher interest rates represents yet another obstacle to home ownership... thus, rents remain higher. Also, there were a lot of residential properties purchased by investors during the last run-up in prices. They really have no choice but to remain firm on their rental prices, otherwise they will have to write-down the value of those assets. That is also putting a floor under home prices, and by extension, rental prices (by locking border-line buyers out of the ownership market). As an example, if Mom & Pop with two rental units get desperate, they may lower the rent on one to fill the unit. But then a few months later they see ABC Corporate ownership renter hasn't changed any of their prices, so Mom & Pop don't come down on the second unit when it comes up for renewal because they see the market is mostly unchanged. Meanwhile, ABC Corporate is not motivated to change pricing by Mom & Pop's move of desperation because their market share is immaterial. At this point, I think the only thing that would meaningfully lower home (and rental) prices would be drastic changes in zoning laws and building codes that would allow for more density. Maybe also the construction of tiny homes and non-traditional construction styles.

So what does everyone think? Will we see a 2nd crane raised and concrete poured for the tower before the end of 2023?

Why are they filling in holes with gravel on the tower foundation part of this project? Should we be worried that only the YMCA addition is currently under construction and the tower is on hold pending an improved economic/interest rate situation?

Have they released a rendering of the south or west sides of the building yet? I'm curious to know if there will be some small windows on those sides, which should be there, in my opinion. I think the chances of other buildings being built there in the near/medium term are minimal. Hopefully there is not some fire code that precludes the inclusion of windows on those sides since they are building right up to the property line. On the other hand, if there are no windows at all, this building will be notable for being a windowless mystery building when viewed from the south & west... which is also kind of cool. It would be cool if they covered the west-facing wall in a 30-story tall LED screen (but some NIMBY's would probably oppose that).

Thanks for the photo update! Someone should change the tile of this thread to reflect the actual finished floor count. Right now the thread says 38-floors, but as you noted above, they are already beyond that and several more to go.

Blasphemer! The Tempo Yucca has more integrity in one little leaf than the entire metro council. Tempo Yucca for Mayor!!!

The only losers are the residents of city lights, and I think we can all agree they deserve to lose everything. Now I just hope in addition to this and all the other proposals surrounding city lights coming to fruition, that someone will buy all the land between city lights and Hermitage Ave and build a monolithic rectangle that blocks their view of the river completely!

Just saw your response. No, a libertarian is opposed to the government-funded convention center. The state was asleep-at-the-wheel when they allowed the city to use public funds to build the convention center, they should have passed a law in the state legislature preventing that. But I have to assume they didn't because they are just as corrupt as the metro government. So it's red team v/s blue team but both are equally corrupt as far as I can tell. There is nothing about libertarianism that elevates local governments to a moral high-ground above state or national governments. There is only freedom, and I will cheer for any entity that is protecting individual liberty regardless of the partisan politics involved. Ha! I welcome your personal attacks because it means you are utterly defeated on the issue at hand. Keep it coming As I mentioned above, I place no importance on the federal/state/local government involved in a particular issue. I evaluate every issue on its merits when it comes to increasing or decreasing personal liberty. Since you're out of the discussion now though, can I at least get an anonymous BNABreaker laughing emoji on this post? If you respect them so much, why not join them and become a Libertarian? Team Yellow! In all seriousness though, I take it as a point of pride that my opinion on any issue prompts you to contemplate the merits of a freedom-focused political affiliation, regardless of how you interpret that concept. If we have now reached the point in the argument where we are debating who loves freedom more, then we are on the right track. You are arguing against the Republican position on this issue... That's not me. I don't believe in publicly funded roads. They should all be private roads, and most of the highways would be toll roads in that scenario. I believe in privately owned rail. Keep in mind, it was the government that built all these massive highways and encouraged suburbanization. Government policies that pushed people out into the suburbs whether via zoning or taxes or schools. Remember the Nashville Streetcars? Those were all private companies driven out of business by a corrupt government that was funding roads and attempting to control the electrical infrastructure (NES is a government-backed monopoly). The term "Rural Communities" is code for "Rural Government" in your dialogue. I prefer to focus on Rural Residents... Let's talk about what they have. Do they generate trash? Yes, they haul it to the dump. Do they generate sewage? Yes, it goes into the sceptic tank. Do they have city water? No, they get it from a well. When it comes to electricity, just about every rural residence is connected to the electrical grid, but some new "off-grid" residences are designed to use solar or wind power, so even that is not as universal as it once was. These rural residents have decided they don't need their government to provide any of those services, and they like it that way because they don't have to pay taxes for those services. Everyone takes care of their own needs - - true individual freedom in that regard. Wrong! The "rural lifestyle" is not dependent upon government price regulations. The affordability is actually due to the lack of government regulation because it allows people the freedom to live how they want and in the cheapest way possible, without anyone else having an ability to stop them because they disagree with their manner of living. Many people in Tennessee like to live on large tracts of land that put ample distance between them and their neighbors. That physical distance keeps everyone out of everyone else's business, and so a wonderous variety of cheap living styles flourish back in the boondocks - - many of which would be illegal in a city like Nashville. That is a classic socialist argument against the free market. Here is how it usually goes: "We can't have a bunch of private companies providing services to the people! It will be mass chaos! Better to have one company building the houses, one company making the cars, and one company baking the bread. And it avoids the wasted expense of advertising that all these companies spend to compete with each other!" Of course, we all know that the benefit of multiple companies is that they do not work together most of the time, but rather, they compete and try to drive the other out of business by offering the best product at the lowest price. So the consumer benefits, blah, blah, blah. The story is no different with any utility service. I wish you would have gone into it because I have no idea what you're talking about. What agencies? And how do they affect the climate? Sounds to me like you agree with my idea of making all those highways toll roads so they are self-sustaining entities. That way all the resources can stay in the urban areas. Let's get the state out of the business of road building and leave that to the road building companies. Heck, you might even come to love the libertarian economy where most people live close to the city and ride privately-owned street cars to avoid the expense of tolls and car ownership, which will help pay for the private schools their kids attend. I haven't read much about that political convention you guys keep mentioning (I did see something about in in an article covering the airport authority), so I'll just state this as plainly as possible: The state should not be involved in hosting any events, or lobbying for any events, or funding any events, or funding the construction of any event venues. If the people of Tennessee and the companies located here want to host an event - Great! Let them organize it and put on a fancy show. That sort of business endeavor is not a legitimate function of government.

They should bring back the ability to see who is laughing, and also they should bring back the downvote with a name attached to it. I'm also a huge believer in putting names next to reactions and also allowing negative reactions.