Inner Loop - CBD, Downtown, East Bank, Germantown, Gulch, Rutledge

[Nashvilletitans]

16 hours ago, markhollin said:

The owners of the 64 various lots highlighted in yellow on the map below are soliciting with the Nashville Planning Commission for a June 9th decision to...

"...amend the Downtown Community Plan Special Policies 09-T6-DN-LF-01and 09-T6-DN-GS-01 to allow high rise development in the policy study area, for various properties located between 8th Avenue South and Lafayette Street and north of I-65 North (54.1 acres), zoned DTC."
 

Obviously, this goes far beyond the one plot owned by Smithfield LLC, who had intentions for the 4 tall buildings on the Ash and 6th Ave. South block (which is now dead in the water).  I guess all the folks in the neighborhood decided to band together and approach the city about getting an across-the-board ruling on no height limits for that section which some of us now refer to as LoLa ("Lower Lafayette" as opposed to "Pie Town"), as well as the eastern edge of The Gulch.  Will be interesting to see if the Planning Commission gives the OK, which could keep things popping along the northern edge of the inner belt. 



 

I guess I am in the minority but I am not in favor of 30 story buildings this far from the core.  Of course the owners of the property are in favor of this because it makes their potential land value double triple or more in value if you can go vertical.  

Hate to be negative on big development but there already are so many parcels that are already zoned for high rise.   

My biggest concern is how can nashville come up with a cohesive bus transit concept for downtown if 30 story buildings can   randomly be almost anywhere in such a large area.  This area is clearly a random area on the perimeter of the core. Our downtown should be somewhat walkable and this is to far from church street , state capital and even broadway. If this area can be high rise then why not let every parcel within the interstate loop be high rise.  This would be a terrible precedent.

 

 

[PaulChinetti]

Gotta disagree @Nashvilletitans , from Bridgestone to City Winery is .6 miles. If people can't walk that, then what is an acceptable distance? If we want everything to be walkable we need that density in the inner core.

I live in Chestnut Hill and would definitely walk to this development from my house (a little over a mile from my house to City Winery). Hell I've walked to Broadway just to not have to deal with parking. I think the sooner we change everyone's idea of what is walkable then the sooner downtown will be better!

[nashwatcher]

Got to disagree as well. The height limits should be removed for the inner loop. Our population is growing rapidly and Nashville is going to become a big boy city in the decades to come. Our urban core needs to be able to develop fully.

The area is not that large. I could easily walk from PieTown to Broadway. Allow investors with big pocket books to invest their money in the future of our downtown.

[Nashvilletitans]

12 minutes ago, PaulChinetti said:

Gotta disagree @Nashvilletitans , from Bridgestone to City Winery is .6 miles. If people can't walk that, then what is an acceptable distance? If we want everything to be walkable we need that density in the inner core.

I live in Chestnut Hill and would definitely walk to this development from my house (a little over a mile from my house to City Winery). Hell I've walked to Broadway just to not have to deal with parking. I think the sooner we change everyone's idea of what is walkable then the sooner downtown will be better!

I agree we need to get people to walk.  And I am sure you could walk two or three miles but that is not what the definition of walkable is especially in 90 degree weather.  If you feel this way then where is the new boundary for thirty stories.  Doesn't it make sense to keep taller building close to the core.  Especially from the concept of servicing the core with mass transit.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Nashvilletitans

[PaulChinetti]

I guess it's just a definition of "the core" I guess anything from Charlotte on the North side to I-40 on the South side is the core in my mind. 

I agree it should all be kept in there for sure. What does everyone else think of as "the core"?

[Nashvilletitans]

Nashville future mass transit will need to deliver people to the core.   If the core is so large with buildings somewhat randomly all over the large core then people will need transportation within the core to get to work or play.  it will be to difficult to design mass transit in the core if densities are not grouped in some way.  If you allow density in rings or sections then transportation can deliver people to those density.  There is no rush to increase the density area at this time. Just a few years ago our core was very small now it has grown maybe by ten fold in size.  we should fill this in before expanding so soon.

[PillowTalk4]

For me the real core is from Jefferson Street to the inner loop on the south side of the CBD, bound by the inner loop on the east and the west.  I think some people have been limited to thinking the core is where the tallest buildings exist.  The core can be expanded and appropriate mass transit should be factored into that growth. People who chose to live and work in the growing CBD will learn to walk, cab, Uber or drive within the core as necessary.  Just as they do in major cities far far bigger than Nashville.  I've walked from Rutledge Hill down to Broadway and it didn't bother me the least bit.  I know longer live in Nashville, but the friend that I have that used to live in that area also walked to the arena and restaurants all the time and he said plenty of other people living in the area did the same.  

[markhollin]

From Nashville Post this afternoon:

Full start looms for Solis North Gulch

The North Capitol site eyed for apartment building Solis North Gulch is being prepped for the project’s start. All AT&T equipment has been removed from the 3-acre site, which sits at the northeast corner of the intersection of 11th Avenue North and Jo Johnston Avenue.

Charlotte-based Terwilliger Pappas Multifamily Partners will develop the 271-unit Solis North Gulch (pictured) after having recently paid AT&T $10 million for the property. The project is expected to carry a price tag of $64 million.

The location sits adjacent to the 32-acre Capitol View site, on which Northwestern Mutual and Boyle Nashville are undertaking various developments, including a 17-story tower for HCA and an 10-story building for LifeWay Christian Resources.

Here are some pics of the site I took over the weekend:

Looking west from the corner of 11th Ave. North and Clinton.  That's the Marathon Village water tower in the distance on the other side of the raised portion of I-40/65.

 

Looking east towards CBD from corner of 11th Ave. North and Clinton.  

 

Looking north from the corner of 11th Ave. North and Clinton. This is the central junction of the winged property. They will have to do some work with CSX on noise issues as the train tracks and steel wheels cause tremendous screeching on this curve. Maybe they will have to build a 20-foot sound-absorbing wall to limit the noise. The tracks curve all along the east to north side of the property and carry a lot of freight traffic.

[markhollin]

From Nashville Post this afternoon:

On-site work undertaken for proposed SoBro storage project

Environmental sampling work was recently undertaken on the SoBro site at which Nashville-based Natchez Group wants to develop an eight-story storage facility. The property is located catty-corner from the building home to live 3rd & Lindsley and has an address of 825 Third Ave. S. If built, the storage building would be the tallest in Nashville.

[titanhog]

To me, this area is definitely in the inner core...and it won't be long until all of that area from the MCC to I-40 contains high rises.  KVB is only 5 blocks from the edge of the inner loop (I-40).

[nashwatcher]

This area is part of the core now, and will especially be considering Nashville's future growth. It'll all be pedestrian friendly and connected the way we're going.

[smeagolsfree]

Mass transit would deliver people to the core and then a bus or street car system would get the people around from there. That is the hope of all the planning going onto mass transit. Lets say you get off the train at the riverfront, and you work in Capitol view, you would need a way to get there. If you look at the distance, then the area called Pie-town is actually closer than Capitol View.

 

I am in favor of all height restrictions being eliminated from all areas inside the inner loop and the with the borders as follows.

 

I 40 on the south

the river on the east

James Robertson directly north and then down to the Gulch and the RR tracks to as a western border

 

The only exception would be the historic part of downtown that the historic overlays already exists.

[BnaBreaker]

Not to repeat myself and beat a dead horse, but as I said on the previous page nashvilletitans, every single city that is larger and denser than Nashville, and there are a lot of them, have already been confronted with this issue in the past, and each of them have tackled it with solutions that work for them, and Nashville will do the same when that time comes.  There's no need to worry, my friend.  Cities grow and evolve and get larger and taller and denser.  It's just the nature of the beast.  What you do is to find ways to make the city's new form work and function for the people that live in it.  What you don't do is to halt growth because it presents increasingly complex puzzles.  

As for your question about what constitutes "the core", I think we would all agree that high rises don't belong just anywhere, but I think they are appropriate in the core, and in my opinion the core in Nashville would be all areas inside the inner loop that have long since been paved over and built upon, which I guess would be everything inside the inner loop on both sides of the river SOUTH of Jefferson Street, EXCEPT for Rutledge Hill, Rolling Mill Hill, and Hope Gardens.  That might seem like a unworkable area, but it really wouldn't take more than half an hour or so to walk from one end to the other. 

Edited June 3, 2016 by BnaBreaker

[Nashvilletitans]

1 hour ago, smeagolsfree said:

Mass transit would deliver people to the core and then a bus or street car system would get the people around from there. That is the hope of all the planning going onto mass transit. Lets say you get off the train at the riverfront, and you work in Capitol view, you would need a way to get there. If you look at the distance, then the area called Pie-town is actually closer than Capitol View.

 

I am in favor of all height restrictions being eliminated from all areas inside the inner loop and the with the borders as follows.

 

I 40 on the south

the river on the east

James Robertson directly north and then down to the Gulch and the RR tracks to as a western border

 

The only exception would be the historic part of downtown that the historic overlays already exists.

I understand that most people reading and posting on this site are willing to walk and that most people on this site are against having height restrictions.  But you guys are not typical nashvillians.  You are progressive thinkers.   

If nashville is going to have a successful mass transit system taking people to the core from the burbs they have to be able to get to there destination downtown without a car or they will not use the mass transit at all and will drive their own car. The more people that the downtown loop transit can convienant serve the more riders it can potentially attract.  The future downtown loop cannot go everywhere in the down town loop.  It makes sense that the more clustered the buildings downtown the more pople the downtown transit system can serve.  it is already difficult enough to design a efficient downtown transit system.   If you spread the buildings out everywhere as well as the perimeter good luck.  remember we are trying to build a system from scratch.  also add the fact that our downtown is going to get allot worse due to development to the transit system will be to slow for riders to want to get on it perhaps.  we may need dedicated lanes for transit.  these lanes cannot be everywhere to get to these new 30 story buildings.  Look how difficult it was to get one transit concept down west end ave.  Nashvillians said no to that.  

Also if You where to zone all the loop to high rises then there would be developers who would the new cheaper property and put buildings up randomly all over the place because the property is cheaper.  The transition of this happening is not good urban planning.  There would be no control.  Most developers do not care about good urban planning.  They need land to put a building on that there numbers work they make money.  They are sellers not planners.   Nashville would have lots of bad development.  Once it is built nashville is stuck with it.  I would not trust 40 urban developers to determine to a cohesive urban plan.  All they  care about is there project and getting the numbers to work and sell.  They do not have to worry about the after effect of the project.   I think good planning has better chance.  It is about quality of life not just building 40  buildings anywhere.  Transit is a difficult solution to solve and takes a good plan.   Ideally you design a transit concept and put density centers within that system.

[PruneTracy]

59 minutes ago, BnaBreaker said:

As for your question about what constitutes "the core", I think we would all agree that high rises don't belong just anywhere, but I think they are appropriate in the core, and in my opinion the core in Nashville would be all areas inside the inner loop that have long since been paved over and built upon, which I guess would be everything inside the inner loop on both sides of the river SOUTH of Jefferson Street, EXCEPT for Rutledge Hill, Rolling Mill Hill, and Hope Gardens.  That might seem like a unworkable area, but it really wouldn't take more than half an hour or so to walk from one end to the other. 

To put numbers to this, if we move the western boundary to the CSX line rather than I-40 (excluding the Gulch), we have an area roughly a mile and a half long north-south and three-quarters of a mile east-west.

A downtown circulator that used Fourth Avenue, Lafayette Street, Eighth Avenue, and James Robertson Parkway would be about three miles in length and would be within about 1,000 feet of nearly every parcel in this area. These are extremely doable numbers even by Nashville standards.

I get the desire to limit high-rise development in the name of good planning but it's not reasonable to try to confine it to the existing set of high-rises. Between historic buildings and other constraints, most of us on here struggle to name a half-dozen practical sites for new high-rise buildings in the First/Eighth/Broadway/Church square. Meanwhile, there's plenty of underdeveloped lots in SoBro and PIE TOWN that could handle all sizes of new development.

If we want to talk about a lack of development planning leading to transit woes, let's talk about Cool Springs. When it comes to downtown, let them build now and we'll figure out the rest later. Walkable or not, I'd still rather see infill here than twenty miles down I-65.

[BnaBreaker]

So basically nashvilletitans, what you're saying is that we should just ban all large scale urban development so that some people won't have to adapt to the monumental task of occasionally walking a couple blocks more than they're used to?  Needless to say, I disagree, but I guess I just don't understand where the disconnect is here.  

 

Edited June 4, 2016 by BnaBreaker

[rookzie]

19 hours ago, markhollin said:

Heading down to Bicentennial Mall's Greek Amphitheater to see the Symphony perform under the stars tonight (Friday, June 3 at 8 PM).  Will be performing pieces by Rossini, Bernstein, Bizet, Dvorak, and Williams.  'Tis free.  Another one of the great benefits of living in a vibrant, artistic, cosmopolitan community!

My guess is that the trains just have to stop passing on the berm behind the amphitheater, during such a performance, lest spectators cry foul, with the noise. [Uh-huh...]  And even though the crossings at 2nd and nearby 3rd are now quiet-zones, CSX engineers still are required blow for operating-rules signals, such as starting from stop (2 short blasts for proceed forward; 3 shorts for reverse).

9 hours ago, markhollin said:

Looking north from the corner of 11th Ave. North and Clinton. This is the central junction of the winged property. They will have to do some work with CSX on noise issues as the train tracks and steel wheels cause tremendous screeching on this curve. Maybe they will have to build a 20-foot sound-absorbing wall to limit the noise. The tracks curve all along the east to north side of the property and carry a lot of freight traffic.

And even on slightly curved or even tangent (straight) track, with respect to those freights, such tonnage with fully loaded double-stacks and mineral loads in high-sided gondolas are the dynamics behind those multiple wheel flanges squealing like hell on those rails ─ all that compounded by the typical long length of the entire train under draft tension with lateral forces from the sweeping curves on either side of that wye split just south of Charlotte Ave.

So it'll be interesting to watch the outcries from wayside residents, especially when both sides of the tracks become developed to canyonize the RoWs and reverb the squeal and slack-buffering.  I reckon we'll just have to write a little letter to CSX for them to stop running at night and on weekends, and to tell them to paint their swing-bridge, while we're at it.

[nashvillwill]

Seattle does something that I think the MTA should adopt. All busses are free within their CBD. Incoming/outgoing cost a fare, but if you stay within the CBD, it's free. I think this is a better solution that the green buses we currently have. Think of how often you see busses in the CBD, it's constant. You could catch any bus, going any direction and as long as you know where to get off, it's no charge. 

Of course, in order to work, that would require riders use a tag in/out system with a personal transit card. Why this isn't being used already is beyond me. 

[Hey_Hey]

I believe the next major system upgrade is going to be modernization of the payment system.  I would hope that it will be app based with Apple Pay/Android Pay capability and geotagged using the new GPS system each bus has.  That would let individual fares be priced based on distance travelled (there is currently an incentive to take your car for short trips because it costs more to take the bus) and would allow free transit zones.  Of course the data produced on routes, rider frequency and bus stops would be enormous and could be utilized to taylor service, alter schedules/stops, and even subsidize tickets through advertising fees (imagine a discounted service that you could use if you were willing to watch marketing for a business near the bus stops you frequent). 

[Flatrock]

15 minutes ago, nashvillwill said:

Seattle does something that I think the MTA should adopt. All busses are free within their CBD. Incoming/outgoing cost a fare, but if you stay within the CBD, it's free. I think this is a better solution that the green buses we currently have. Think of how often you see busses in the CBD, it's constant. You could catch any bus, going any direction and as long as you know where to get off, it's no charge. 

Of course, in order to work, that would require riders use a tag in/out system with a personal transit card. Why this isn't being used already is beyond me. 

I've been thinking along similar lines Nashvillewill, but with an electric (quiet, no fumes) 'trolley car' / bus hybrid. A vehicle that's easy to hop on/off....runs constantly thru the CBD...is free, safe...and runs on extended (late night) hours Thurs - Sat. 

[Hey_Hey]

5 minutes ago, Flatrock said:

I've been thinking along similar lines Nashvillewill, but with an electric (quiet, no fumes) 'trolley car' / bus hybrid. A vehicle that's easy to hop on/off....runs constantly thru the CBD...is free, safe...and runs on extended (late night) hours Thurs - Sat. 

You have described the Music City Circuit perfectly.

[Flatrock]

5 minutes ago, Hey_Hey said:

You have described the Music City Circuit perfectly.

You're right, of course. :-) However, I NEVER see it where or when I want it. Never. And I'm in the CBD a lot. 

[Nashvilletitans]

16 hours ago, BnaBreaker said:

So basically nashvilletitans, what you're saying is that we should just ban all large scale urban development so that some people won't have to adapt to the monumental task of occasionally walking a couple blocks more than they're used to?  Needless to say, I disagree, but I guess I just don't understand where the disconnect is here.  

 

I never implied that. The disconnect is that you are talking about One issue -walking.or say large parcels.  There are many large amounts of land and parcels available for large scale projects currently zoned also remember some of the large scale projects being considered- Old convention center, Old Babtist Sunday School site, Markets street apartment site and more.

Good city planning has many more issues to consider and try to solve for  a better overall quality of life issue for nashville.  Making decisions is  complicated than just walking issue or telling a developer no because he is putting his good building concept at the wrong site at the wrong time.  good city growth planning is about solving more than one problem at a time.  Building the proper density in the right location can build for solutions of Mass transit routes in downtown and to downtown, access to parking, protecting Hisitorical areas,  planning Openspace and green walkways,  Qualitiy of life, establishing  View corridors, accessing the river,  grade changes, social interaction, residential communities, tourism......

Great cities and great city planning do not happen randomly.  Nashville has a great opportunity now.  And with what is going on in nashville now, where we are building and going to build say 30 new high rises in the core in such 10 year period of time takes even more planning.  You are suggesting and I am agreeing that the core of nashville will be say be 10 times the area of the core was just 10 years ago.  I am not in favor of banning all large scale projects -just locate them with some consideration and  understanding that each building contributes to a better whole.

Edited June 4, 2016 by Nashvilletitans

[nashwatcher]

NashvilleTitans. You do realize we're talking about parcels within the inner loop here. We're not talking about allowing random huge towers all over the city?

These parcels are 5 blocks from the convention center within the loop

Limiting development to only a couple of streets, and the few parcels that are left for development on those streets, for the long term growth of our urban city center is frankly just dumb. Nashville has many years/decades of growth on the horizon. Allow a dense fabric to emerge.

[markhollin]

There still hasn't been a rendering released of the Embassy Suites Hotel that is planned for the NE corner of 8th Ave. South and Demonbreun (catty-corner from the JW Marriott). I did some research on line  to see about other recent Embassy Suites that have been constructed in peer cities by the same White/Peterman team that will be involved with the new Nashville property.  I came across their hotel built 4 years ago in Denver that is the same 400-room capacity and 16-17 story height that the original NBJ article mentioned might be the massing for the project.  This also seems to be about the same footprint size.  This is just surmising on my part, but I think with the amount that has been invested in this land means that our Embassy Suites will be a bit higher-end on the scale than some of their other versions, and has a reasonably good chance of looking similar to this:
 

 

One of the neat features of the structure is this 14-story "Sky Curtain" that fronts the lobby.  Could be a nice addition for this Nashville tower as well. 

On a side note: the purchase of this lot at Demonbreun and 8th also called for an additional 200-room as-yet-unnamed boutique hotel that will most likely be part of the Hilton stable of brands.  It is unclear if it would be a separate structure that might end up sharing parking and hospitality maintenance, or if it might be similar to the Marriott Tri-Brand on KVB in that it the two entities could be encased inside the same 4 walls. If it is separate, I think we would be looking at a footprint that might be as much as 50% smaller than the Embassy Suites, and thus being around the same 16-17 stories for 200 rooms.  How the parking will be constituted will have a lot to say in the height of one/both of the buildings as well.