GregH

Not really related but I am giving extreme side-eye to "The Gulch East" on that map.

Now paint a mural on that blank wall!

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I believe both of those are owned by Eugene Nelson who has done some other stuff in the neighborhood (owns the El Paseo property too) so he's probably mostly just sitting on them until something interesting comes along.

Wow that seems really big for 2 units. I guess zoning there wouldn't allow 4 or 6? edit: looks like it's actually 4 and they're all STR

Largely closing city center to cars seems pretty cool and worth working towards but I think we're a long way from being able to do something so big without catastrophic backlash. What I'd like to see would be a commitment to some incremental moves, closing or limiting small bits at a time but definitely adding at least SOMETHING every year. So year 1 we get the lowest of low-hanging fruit and permanently close off the lower few blocks of broadway to through traffic. Then maybe year 2 (just spitballing here) close 11th in the Gulch between 12th and Laurel. As we progress we can learn what sort of closures work in Nashville, and build credibility for future closures, because the world didn't end with the first ones.

The Pepperfire hot chicken at 5104c Centennial is finally open.

I spend a lot of time in that area on foot and it's not so bad outside of the highest-traffic times. That strip has three relatively close options to cross the street with lights at 46th, 49th, and 51st. The McDonald's and Hugh Baby's turn-ins are the most dangerous parts. I'm more concerned about the 31st-46th stretch where there are much bigger gaps in safe crossing points and I see a lot of people making questionable jaywalking decisions (and I am a generally pro-jaywalking person). Especially since there are a lot of new alcohol-serving businesses on either side of the street in that section, I'm worried a pedestrian is going to be killed sooner or later.

As someone who has biked in Nashville a lot, I think it is both true that Nashville is a better biking city than most people realize or give it credit for, and that some of the "bike infrastructure" is really bad and/or misguided. If I'm reading that map right, it considers Hillsboro Pike between 440 and Green Hills to be a bikeway. That's a 40 mph 5-lane road with no shoulder that is slammed with cars at all hours and honestly somewhat terrifying to even drive on. Similarly, even though parts of Gallatin and Charlotte have bike lanes, if you are occasionally spitting bikers out into a sharrow situation on a busy road you are setting them up to have a bad time that will scare them and make them not want to bike, no matter how nice and protected other portions of the route are. If you're slapping a sharrow on a street with a 40 mph speed limit you've already lost and you're just wasting paint. They should focus efforts on finding and marking routes on quiet side streets, even if they're less direct.

I stayed there the first time I came to Nashville, in 2006, and it was a Best Western then.

Music City Star 2/24

Inventory is incredibly, historically low right now https://twitter.com/mikesimonsen/status/1493301452726575107 according to this research company there were only around 250k houses available in the whole country which is ~1/3 or less the amount of "normal" seasonal lows. I think / hope that the current price trajectory can't last long and now is just an exceptionally bad time to be buying a house.

I guess if you were a merely-affluent (not stinking rich) person approaching retirement with a comfortable investment portfolio, you've probably had astoundingly-good returns in the last 4 years or so that would have increased your worth by quite a bit so there are probably relatively a lot of people feeling flush and willing to splash out for their kids.

This is the justification for that under the highway bit. I know they have some formula to prioritize sidewalk projects, maybe being a choke point under the interstate adds bonus value, though there was a (crappy) existing sidewalk there already.

The lot at 711 51st Ave N in the Nations (next to Sherwin Williams) is for sale. Not a big lot but would be cool to see something more interesting on a relatively prime Nations location. https://www.nashvillesmls.com/listing/2349353-711-51st-ave-n-nashville-tn-37209/

The BBQ is by Rodney Scott who is a pretty big deal in BBQ https://www.southernliving.com/news/eric-church-nashville-restaurant-chiefs-rodney-scott-bbq

I wonder how long all the builders lots along 44th and on top of the hill on Kentucky will hold out, seems like that land with a view must be pretty valuable. I guess half the view is the phosphate plant.

Yeah I think the neighborhood is plenty dense to support foot-delivered mail (which USPS does in the Belmont/Hillsboro area, for example) but I suspect they won't do it in places with such spotty sidewalk coverage. One issue I think with the mailboxes is that most of the new builds put the mailbox directly in front of each house's front doors, so if you need to allow 5 clear ft on either side of the box, that's 20 ft of road space unavailable to parking. If instead the builders had put the two boxes right next to each other, they'd be slightly off-center from the houses but it would only block (almost) half as much potential parking space.

Something I think about a lot is how many more housing options our city could provide with mostly the same amount of buildings if zoning was more flexible. I live in the Nations which has transformed into a neighborhood of tall skinnies over the past year, but would it have been so bad if instead of splitting a lot into 2 2000+ sq ft SFHs, there was instead an option to do 4 1000 sq ft condos? The buildings could look almost the same as they do now. People could still build SFHs if they wanted but there would be some more of that missing middle option for people to still live in the city even if they are unable or willing to get a $700,000 mortgage for a large house when they don't have kids. I think maybe the main problem with this is that cars just take up a stupid amount of space and there's a bad middle ground of density where it's not so dense that it's a common choice to go car-free but it IS dense enough that car storage becomes a problem. I'm not positive where the break point where it really becomes a problem lies, but I know there's already friction in the parts of the Nations with street parking and mailboxes etc (though I think a lot of this is more of a mailbox layout / USPS problem than there not being enough street parking). I think my dream would be for some large part of more-dense Nashville (the whole Urban Services Area?) get a blanket upzoning to double the by-right unit count on every residential street lot but maybe retain or keep close to any building size restrictions to retain the visual low-rise neighborhoody character. Along with that allow by-right 5 story multi-unit on all pikes and other main roads. Not entirely related but I think it might be cool to have retail/office/restaurant allowed by right in residential areas with the same building size restrictions but there are probably more potential downsides here.

It's a joke in our house that West Nashville always gets the 2nd (or 3rd etc) location of all the local faves from elsewhere in town rather than producing our own, but I am extremely excited for this particular one!

Hopefully The Great Escape is able to find a new location.

edit: oops somehow I overlooked the this was pointed out hours ago. Though yeah, hard to turn down that sale price I imagine.

apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere already but Metro is suspending curbside recycling because of issues with the trash collection contractor https://www.newschannel5.com/news/curbside-recycling-in-metro-nashville-temporarily-suspended

This might have been posted somewhere already but the old Rohr Chabad house at Vanderbilt (111 23rd Ave. N) has been demolished and is being replaced by a new building, the Lubeck Center for Jewish Life https://chabadvanderbilt.com/chabadhouse

If I recall correctly, there are apartments in the tower for the faculty head of house as well as other apartments for short-term distinguished visitors. I think the top floor might be a meeting room for the Chancellor / Board of Trust.