colemangaines

I wanted to follow up on the new bus service to/from ATL. I took it round trip for Thanksgiving and it was 10/10 a great experience. I'd much prefer regular intercity train service in America, but this seems like a much more realistic option that could be widely available in the short-term. Pickup was in front of the Omni hotel. I appreciate how the routes are from city center to city center, while an airport is typically far outside a city. Check in took about 5 seconds. I showed them my drivers license, they checked it against the passenger list, and I walked on. 2+1 seating layout. Overhead storage comparable to an airplane. The seats were extremely comfortable. Often on flights I try to nap and fail, but this ride is the first trip I've ever had where I tried to stay awake and failed. Power outlets and wifi are available for free. The wifi was slow-ish but I was able to stream a movie with no problems. Tons and tons of leg room. I'm 5' 8" and my feet could barely reach the seat in front if I stretched out. There's also a fold-down leg rest and a tray table that attaches to your armrests. The seat reclines A LOT. I didn't have anyone in front of me but it would probably be annoying to be behind somebody fully reclined. As soon as I got settled the attendant unloaded all of these freebies on me. The things on the left are an eye mask and an inflatable neck pillow. Dinner, which was also free. I didn't know what to expect for bus food but it was very tasty. The attendant also had a snack/drink basket he brought through frequently, and you could take whatever you wanted for free. Tea and coffee were available on request. Hot towel after dinner, made me feel all fancy. Also after dark the bus was VERY blue and it's a little off putting. It was difficult to get a good picture but the bathroom was VERY nice. I couldn't believe this was on a bus.

Vonlane, an upscale bus line from Texas, has started service between Nashville and Atlanta. It looks like they run three busses per day, every day, directly from the Nashville Omni to the Grand Hyatt in Buckhead. Meals and snacks provided. I just bought tickets to head down to ATL for Thanksgiving - if anyone's interested I can follow up afterwards.

Does this take effect immediately? Will we see any pending proposals reshuffled to remove or reduce parking?

Once the weather warms up in spring, would anyone be interested in a bike ride around downtown to look at proposed/under construction projects? I'm very familiar with biking in Nashville and often give tours this way, as I'm sure others on here do too, but this would be open to all skill levels of riding. Below is a basic route that covers several projects around downtown as well as cruising through older, less active parts of downtown for fun. It's about 10 miles and very frequently uses protected bike lanes or greenways. If this happened I'm thinking we could start at the farmer's market, where people could rent a B-Cycle if needed (they have e-bikes available too). If anyone's interested, let me know what you think or which projects you'd like to ride by.

You can ride Davidson Street > Shelby Bottoms Greenway > Stones River Greenway > Percy Priest Dam. It's an excellent ride. I highly recommend giving it a try either by bike or e-bike on a nice day.

There will likely be some segregation between monthly pass holders (office workers), public parking, and valet parking. I think Fifth and Broadway is set up that way as well.

I think the language is often confusing - sometimes when people say "ban SFH" they literally mean don't allow single family homes to be built, but sometimes people (and I'm guilty of this) will use that same phrase to mean banning zoning that only allows single family homes and nothing else - maybe a better term would be deregulating single family zoning. I think that would be a huge move for middle TN. If developers could build duplexes, triplexes, rowhomes, etc. anywhere in the Nashville MSA, it could do a lot to control housing prices by letting the free market set home values instead of regulations giving them an artificial bump.

Sorry I'm out of the loop - is this removing parking minimums in the downtown core?

A company called LIFTbuild is experimenting in Detroit with constructing a building from the top down. Floors are fabricated at ground level, then lifted up into place and fastened to the concrete core. They claim the cost savings in labor, productivity, and liability insurance make it up to 30% cheaper than traditional construction.

This picture makes me happy. We have an entire mid-sized city's skyline worth of towers slated for one neighborhood.

Did I miss this news or is this the first we're hearing of it? I thought the tallest planned for Reed was in the 400's. Also, great article. It reads like a succinct summary of Nashville's build situation for those who aren't following it closely.

The video on Giarratana's website shows a stand-in rendering for this site. I'm sure it isn't representative of what it'll end up looking like but it's still cool to see a tower on that lot.

Does anyone else see some reference to the MCC here? If so was that intentional? Either way I love it!

@markhollin Thanks for sharing all these pics. From the photos of the office and residential towers it looks like streetfront activation is kind of meh. What was your experience walking around? Did it seem pretty pedestrian-friendly?

Probably more related to their acquisition of One Medical. Seems like more of a pivot in strategy than abandoning the healthcare business altogether. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-24/amazon-plans-to-shut-down-primary-care-and-telehealth-service

I would love it if this is how the roads end up looking. Not sure if you already saw this in the full report, but they mentioned a feasibility study in the works to redirect this traffic. Just going off of their sketch, it looks like they're proposing to connect these two rail lines. I'm no expert on any of this but the elevation difference between those two lines looks challenging.

300 units on 15 acres? Yikes. Even Haven had 300 units on around a tenth of the land. I know there's some background with it being Metrocenter, being so swampy and everything. But that still seems low.

I would 100% prefer that to an empty lot. The 10 story proposal would've been perfect though. What a lot of these people don't realize (looking at you city lights) is if you get these projects delayed or canceled, including this one at the Cumulus site, it just means it'll likely come back as something even bigger in 5-10 years. If the naysayers had gotten this project canceled but everything from KVB to the highway was built out as proposed, it would make this lot a prime spot for a 700 or 800 ft tower.

Totally agree. I think a lot of it is compensating for a lack of missing middle housing. Look at Brooklyn for example, you have 2.7 million people living in 97 sq. mi. with relatively few skyscrapers compared to Nashville's 700k people living in 525 sq. mi. I know a lot of that is due to the consolidated city-county government, but the wide prevalence of row houses, townhomes, low-rise condo buildings, etc. does wonders to pack people in. That's why I'd much prefer more projects like Capitol View or all the mixed use/residential going up in Wedgewood-Houston. Make the entire city a bit more urban, dense, and livable instead of cramming everything into a dozen blocks downtown surrounded by SFH like some cities do.

I agree with the point you're making, but I do think it's important to remember that we're losing more than just adult book stores and dilapidated buildings. I've lost some of my favorite college hangouts over the last several years: The Sub Shop was replaced with Skyhouse And Noshville, J&J's, and the Corner Pub (don't miss this one too much) were consumed by Vanderbilt Once again, I fully agree with the point you're making, but I think it's important to acknowledge that sometimes these things come at a cost. And it's especially important to bear that in mind if we want to convince more of Nashville's citizens to view these projects more amiably.

Don't forget vertical window trim alternating every other floor (805 Lea, Alcove, the Moore Building, etc.)

That is awesome! This entire stretch on the west side of the highway from Church to Demonbreun will be its own skyline in a few years. I remember when driving down the highway there felt distinctly like you were outside of downtown and you could see it in the distance, now it'll feel like you're driving through the middle of the city.

These 3 residences will be: 1. On top of a bar 2. Next to some rail road tracks 3. Practically under a bridge I'm a big fan of mixed used development but maybe this one shouldn't have a residential component.

That's a good point, I didn't even think about the climate benefit. The CEO (who doesn't look old enough to drink) also made a good point about the time benefit. Sure the flight may be 6 hours door to door, but it's time you can't use for anything else. As opposed to a 10.5 hour drive where you can sleep, get work done, watch a movie, etc. Personally I would love to see more of this for routes of this distance, I would use it all the time.