Bos2Nash

I agree, I would love to see the celebrity aspect to contribute to a different brand of entertainment. That being said, Chiefs will be a unique venue for Lower Broadway. The first floor will be a honky tonk, then two floors will be dedicated to a ticketed venue (shows, but not true theater shows), a dueling piano bar and then a BBQ joint. Everything I have heard about the space, it will truly be a great spot with a little bit of everything.

I really wish LC Germantown was getting hit with a much steeper fine and for each item blocking the sidewalk. I was at Monday Night Brewing for trivia last night and had to get off the sidewalk for three different dumpsters that the building had left out completely blocking the sidewalk. Shame on me as I did not report it to HubNashville though lol.

I believe the windows that were bricked in are being opened back up and restored. Wouldn't be shocked if the building was shortened, but can't be certain. The building is situated in the 2nd Ave/Lower Broadway Historic Overlay, which is primarily concerned with the exterior façade of the of the building. The original intent was to maintain the existing superstructure inside, but the years of neglect had taken its toll so it all needed to come out. New construction is possible (Bottled Blonde, Bon Jovi, Kid Rock, etc.) but there are still historical standards that need to be met. Getting the detail that this older masonry has is very hard to get nowadays, so the choice was made to preserve and repair the current masonry. I for one am very thankful that the endeavor is making use of the old brick. The cost may be slightly higher, but old masonry work has a different aesthetic, granular detail that you just cannot find in the new masonry work.

FYI, this project goes before the planning commission this week. As mentioned at the meet-up this weekend, I attended the public meeting held by CM Withers and Parker and there were definitely voices against this proposal. If you wish to have a voice on this (support or non-support, I am personally in strong support) project, be sure to reach out to the planning commission at [email protected] As a precaution I tend to always copy my council member and the council member that represents the development district. In this case the CM is Brett Withers, [email protected]

And that's why I held their hands almost everyday haha. Gotta watch these crews like a hawk nowadays.

This project has been making continued progress. Right now it is just alot of things that one cannot see. They had to excavate the entire basement while taking precautions not to undermine the building to the north. The basement of this building will be fully utilized by the establishment. Because there is a whole new superstructure that the remaining walls will tie back to, that means all new foundations within a tight footprint that need to be excavated and executed.

I don't disagree Ron. Metro needs to get their stuff together when it comes to recycling as a whole. I think construction companies should absolutely be held accountable for their debris and waste though. So much waste in the industry, especially in smaller residential projects. A perfect example is my recent home renovation project. Our GC bought lumber for the project (even though I carefully demo'd my basement to reuse lumber) and did not use it all. When it came time to clean up the driveway, they sent a worker to cut up the perfectly new, unused lumber to just throw it in the dumpster!! I told them to stop and I have now stacked it and added it to my wood collection for a future project (little libraries is the goal). This is a perfect example of construction companies needing to be more accountable. This lumber was getting thrown in a dumpster with every possible amount of debris. There is a component to this that where the dumpster gets emptied needs to have more specific equipment and sorting capabilities, but this is a frame of mind that needs to go through the whole city and not just the end-of-the-line segment.

I hope they are able to get the capital. It seems like on the Ritz property, they are struggling and this is not an "easy" property. Wait and see.

What is this staging area for? It is this area of the highway.

I have heard this a couple times. Can someone point out where this is actually stated? With recent renovations of tracks looking for revitalization, none of them have gone this far and knowing that the track surface has been used continuiously it shouldn't be in that bad of shape. So in what logical world does tearing the whole thing down make any form of sense. It is pretty clear that CM Sledge does not give a crap about the racetrack no matter the deal. If he did, he would be more vocal about getting the deal right rather then just willowing away and hoping the deal falls apart. It doesn't matter if the deal is laughably bad, slightly bad, or mediocre. Every deal this city has made can be improved. Mayor Cooper improved the soccer deal, so not quite sure why he is not striving for a similar deal here. I have always been vocal that the deal should be representative of the soccer stadium deal with the caveat of understanding that the city would have to shoulder more costs because we don't have a sweetheart land deal to give away 10 more acres. IMO, Mayor Berry/Briley screwed this up by not incorporating the racetrack into the improvements deal when soccer wanted to be here. The Master Plan process should've worked harder to find a BMS promoter/leasee to bring the racetrack up to par along with the stadium. Short sightedness is causing alot more heart burn now.

I'm not 100% certain, but I believe these rods are drilled into the sidewalls of the hole to reinforce them. Many times they extend into the public ROW and allows excavation teams to no have to over excavate - ie dig up the road - for these underground projects.

Well at least we now have clarity that while Colby supported the soccer stadium within his district, he does not support the existing racetrack within his district.

I believe the self-financed tower is 901 MLK. IIRC it was originally going to be all low-income utilizing Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), but now it is mostly market rate. I presume 1010 is more traditionally financed.

This thing continues to fluctuate. It changed from the preliminary SP documents (dated 10/10/2019), to the Final SP documents (dated 06/24/2022 with a different engineer) to this iteration. Sooooo, I'll believe the documents that are associated with a building permit lol Dog Park and Event Lawn. Maybe having the open space in front was part of the SP, not really sure. I think this is also a low point on the site, so I am wondering if it is playing a role in the stormwater scheme, again not really sure.

I heard recently at an industry event, we can expect to see a slow down of some developments, but not a halting. High-rise was specifically singled out in terms of a slow down, but nothing will truly "stop". There is a ton of money still looking at Nashville. While over the last several year we have seen 20% rent increase/returns year over year, this has not been sustainable. Those gains will come back down to earth, but growth will continue and developers who hold on to their properties will definitely weather this slight downturn well.

This is the parking garage. The building utilizes the whole footprint of the site for the garage and then stepback above it.

I believe those panels are only over the parking garage, so it is okay if a little weather and/or bugs get in there.

Boy oh boy. Can't wait to hear the complaints about their install teams just cutting up their streets and blocking driveways like they did in Nashville.

Sign looks good, but yea.... the parking side of those buildings leaves alot to be desired.

They currently are amending an old SP to work with the Greenway entrance. Popped the Dev. Tracker a week or two ago. I wouldn't expect anything here, other than what GreenHillsBoy mentions in terms of hospital expansion.

This scenario is a kinda sorta. If that is a true parking podium with no liner (and just cladding), then the DTC states that the above ground, non-lined parking cannot exceed the number of below grade parking. So in reality if we were looking at a 30 story tower, that would be 4 levels of below grade parking, 4 levels of above grade parking (3 levels if you were to keep the 7 floors only), 1 floor of amenity and 25 (26) floors of residents. If it was an habitable liner, you could do completely above grade parking though so you would do 7 stories of above grade with 7 stories of residential liner + 1 story of amenity + 22 full floors of residential. This is an image direct from the DTC with regards to structured parking: Honestly, the stepback at level 7 is truly a big driver of the above grade parking. It has been mentioned by others, but eliminating the stepback requirement and the above grade, liner unit discussion loses alot of steam. Completely understand that because the ones holding the purse strings still do control everything. I remember one developer coming out of NY in which they wanted to avoid underground parking at all costs. They were wanting to build BIG, but also didn't want to build below grade parking. Nashville is currently a "Tier 2" city in the mind of money people because they can still get away with building above grade parking under the current codes. You certainly know better than me on who is looking to invest in Nashville, but I would think there are alot of folks that would still invest even if parking was lessened. I am certainly not wanting developer's lives to get harder (if only because selfishly, many times that means the design team's lives get harder ), but I think our city needs to make some harder choices if we want to take the next step. We have a bus system that has some ridership, but has a PR problem because everyone thinks the bus is dirty. Some routes are efficient, but the system as a whole is not. I believe overall we are actually at 107% of pre-pandemic ridership, but this ridership is more concentrated. We also don't have a great diversity of uses in the Downtown Core which makes having a car still pretty necessary. Things like diverse grocery stores, not everyone can afford Whole Foods, Turnip Truck or even Publix for that matter. The new Bonus Height brings in incentives to get more diverse uses in the city. Another item that was discussed at the open house was a tiered incentive for bringing in better uses. For example, planning for a grocery store can be difficult and space consuming, so by having that in your project it would be alot higher than say a doctor's office or an urgent care. Not that those two aren't important, but space planning for them is just different and much simpler. This may be a bold statement (or not depending on you approach) but I think it is me being honest from my personal life. I would actually take a decent slow down in the development of our downtown core, if it meant the urban life/environment took a step forwards. If we were able to create a better Live/Work/Play city for the folks living here, I think we could attract some really great things. It is certainly a short term hurt, but I think it could pay great dividends in the long run for the city.

I've asked other parties with city government about MDHA, specifically putting them under the purview of Planning and I have been told it is not possible. Parties weren't sure, but they believed MDHA is chartered by either the State or Feds. I haven't looked into it beyond that. That being said, the redevelopment districts are starting to come up on expiration. The East Bank one expires in 2025 for example. I believe there used to be a Five Points one that was not renewed (could be mistaken though).

Had a very good conversation with Planning during their open house for the this change. We discussed a lot about the parking, brought up activated liners (Planning does NOT want to continue allowing just screened parking, that is a non-starter and I personally agree with it) and they seemed amenable to it with exceptions. One of the big items with the above/below grade parking combo (which is already required by the DTC) is the need for an up ramp and a down ramp. Something we talked about was the idea that similar to how a developer would shoulder the burden of the inefficiencies of liner units, then they could also shoulder the inefficiencies of ramps that go both up and down. Instead of having curb cuts for both of those ramps, internalize them to the site and only have one curb cut allowed for parking. I think there could be ways around this - like have one curb cut be for parking and you have one for loading that also serves as a parking access point - but creating less street facing car space is the intent. Again, the intent isn't to eliminate parking, but rather to build less and to detach parking as being a NEED or rather an AMENITY within each building in the downtown core. There is a surplus of parking all over the downtown core. A downtown core that is quite honestly small and very easy to walk from one end to the other in a reasonable amount of time. I have been saying this for awhile now, but I think Planning - and many urbanist focused folks - are seeing the two most recent transit plans failing as an indicator that a different path needs to be taken in order to get folks to support other modes to/from and around downtown. We shouldn't go full nuclear, but we clearly need to find a different tact. Providing less parking will require folks to find parking that is already provided (and ultimately pay for it), it will require businesses to either provide parking off site (like the current Nissan shuttle) or provide a "Commuter Benefit" that allows for pre-tax dollars to pay for parking and it will ultimately drive up the price of parking because there will ultimately be folks who just flat out refuse to even entertain other modes. Another item we chatted about was the building stepbacks. Specifically, we chatted about eliminating them, at least in some of the districts. We currently have 10 subdistricts that require a stepback anywhere from 4 to 7 stories above grade. We have 5 that do not have stepbacks, two of which are Hope Gardens and Sulpher Dell, neither of which have a tall enough height to really worry about a stepback. I suggested moving at least 5 subdistricts - James Robertson, SoBro, LaFayette, Rutledge Hill and Gulch South - into the no stepback group. This could achieve two things, 1) elimination of the "chunky" building feeling because the base magically is getting bigger and 2) could make structures more efficient that a lined parking garage makes less sense to do. To take the stepback conversation further, I brought up the notion of extending the overall Bonus Height Cap much higher along major corridors. LaFayette, Demonbruen, Broadway (Upper), Church, Charlotte, 8th/Rosa Parks specifically. I think that is a future revisions, but at least planted that seed. We did discuss the actual bonuses too. Even though they were not included in the draft we chatted about how the bonuses could be used to incentivize developers to use them. For instance, the residential unit type bonus could (and should IMO) carry a very lucrative bonus for a willing developer. Additionally I even asked them to include a bonus for going above the required bike parking. They are clearly trying to incentivize multi-modal type transportation, but I suggested to them we should give bonuses for providing additional space for bike rooms that are easily accessible to the ground floor (heard some horror stories of the odd locations bike rooms get located). Currently our zoning requires a certain amount of bike space, but if a developer goes above that figure, they could receive additional density (think of it as the current parking bonuses, but for bikes instead of cars). Lastly, I was told that NES specifically requested language in the Overhead Power Line pre-requisite that would allow them to veto relocating the utility lines if they deem it too much of a burden. Planning was extremely open to ideas and welcome all conversation/thoughts during the open house. There will be another draft released prior to going to planning/council for changes so I will be interested to see what thoughts get integrated and what remains the same. In the next draft we should expect to see what the actual bonuses are too.

And then spelling that name blatantly wrong to be more "unique"

Transformational! Now if only we could get an improved intersection at Harding/White Bridge Pike, specifically getting rid of the slip lanes.