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Ovation Cool Springs


NashRugger

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It suddenly strikes me as ironic that Cool Springs, the capital of suburban sprawl, is putting in so many of these little "town center" developments. It's like they want the benefits of a "big city" urban environment, but can only make tiny, scattered, half-assed strides toward such a thing.

 

The real kicker is that, if all of these developers decided to work together and build something unified instead of creating their own little utopias, then we could actually see something really impressive come together.

 

 

 

EDIT: This is probably a bit off-topic. Feel free to move me to the main Cool Springs thread.

 

 

there yall go, knocking where I live again.   But, actually I do agree I wish they had worked together to create an actual unified area.

 

It's the same way where some of us others live, as well, here in Davidson Co., just not the poster-child with the acute disease of sprawl, as Vrtigo has brought to the forefront.  Cool Springs didn't have to happen, but it did, and it often does, when patriarchs of large tracts of family-owned once agrarian property die off, and the successors decide to release it, rather than to keep squabbling over split ownership.  While you can "smell" it in places like Station Camp and Indian Lakes in Sumner, and Providence in Wilson, I think that anyone who has lived in middle Tenn. for even a short period probably can associate what appears to be an inordinately high degree of sprawl with Cool Springs, and given its set of demographics, these sub-developments seem to form no systematic approach to a meaningful scheme or arrangement.

 

Cool Springs basically shot up like mushrooms in an organic-rich flood plain, and it's shown no signs of slowing down, since development began to take root in the vast area south of Concord Road during the mid-1970s.  The Galleria Mall at Cool Springs, a retail sensation debut around 1991, has become almost overshadowed with development around it, such that the mall itself is barely noticeable anymore.  Areas like Clovercroft, which at some 40 years ago barely boasted more than a mobile-home park and a stray bull on the roadway, just don't seem to be constrained with defined boundaries any longer.  With the one of the highest rates of corporate appeal in the greater geographic region, developers seem to have no limit on how much sprawl they can transform from empty space.  It's like turning loose a bunch of fat billy goats, to see how much vegetation they can mooch up.

 

As Vrtigo points out, no one seems to be working in concert, not even in a co-operative, consolidated manner of urban-planning ─ instead a proliferation of disparate mini-enclaves of monuments to egos.  The way it's going, next they're going to want to build their own commercial airport.

-==-

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well, I will say, the city of Franklin did do some planning, when I was in high school cool springs blvd, Mallory ln, and N Caruthers were all 4 lane divided roads that basically were in the middle of open fields. 

N and S Caruthers were not connected until I was away in Knoxville. Cool Springs blvd was mostly developed on the West side of the interstate while I was in high school but mostly the last 2 years (99 and 2000).

when I graduated N Caruthers had a couple office buildings on it but not many. 

I say this because yes more roads have been added, McEwen, but many of the smaller side streets and even just entrances to developments were already in place when the roads were paved.

so, yes they did plan it, not well, but planning was done no less. 

 

as far as cool springs continuing to grow, it cant.

the 4 corners of the mcewen and carothers intersection are basically all the open land that is left, other than a few smaller parcels spread through out the area. that is untill they start building on hills. but the cool springs "valley" is full.

 

Ive been slowly putting this together for a few weeks, 

open and underdeveloped williamson county land. only for the purpose of this i define open and underdeveloped as farm land, or areas without subdivisions.  so yes there are houses but not close together.  also, flat land, I avoided steep hills, I also left out the fairview area and the extreem southeast.  

basically what this shows is, though cool springs is almost finished, the county has plenty of sprawl left.

Rutherford, wilson, and sumner also have plenty of sprawl within the bowl.

 

16951644515_ec88aa6f5f_o.jpgwilco by willfry, on Flickr

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well, I will say, the city of Franklin did do some planning, when I was in high school cool springs blvd, Mallory ln, and N Caruthers were all 4 lane divided roads that basically were in the middle of open fields.

N and S Caruthers were not connected until I was away in Knoxville. Cool Springs blvd was mostly developed on the West side of the interstate while I was in high school but mostly the last 2 years (99 and 2000).

when I graduated N Caruthers had a couple office buildings on it but not many.

I say this because yes more roads have been added, McEwen, but many of the smaller side streets and even just entrances to developments were already in place when the roads were paved.

so, yes they did plan it, not well, but planning was done no less.

as far as cool springs continuing to grow, it cant.

the 4 corners of the mcewen and carothers intersection are basically all the open land that is left, other than a few smaller parcels spread through out the area. that is untill they start building on hills. but the cool springs "valley" is full.

Ive been slowly putting this together for a few weeks,

open and underdeveloped williamson county land. only for the purpose of this i define open and underdeveloped as farm land, or areas without subdivisions. so yes there are houses but not close together. also, flat land, I avoided steep hills, I also left out the fairview area and the extreem southeast.

basically what this shows is, though cool springs is almost finished, the county has plenty of sprawl left.

Rutherford, wilson, and sumner also have plenty of sprawl within the bowl.

16951644515_ec88aa6f5f_o.jpgwilco by willfry, on Flickr

Gasp... Infill development may have to occur!!!

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well, I will say, the city of Franklin did do some planning, when I was in high school cool springs blvd, Mallory ln, and N Caruthers were all 4 lane divided roads that basically were in the middle of open fields. 

N and S Caruthers were not connected until I was away in Knoxville. Cool Springs blvd was mostly developed on the West side of the interstate while I was in high school but mostly the last 2 years (99 and 2000).

when I graduated N Caruthers had a couple office buildings on it but not many. 

I say this because yes more roads have been added, McEwen, but many of the smaller side streets and even just entrances to developments were already in place when the roads were paved.

so, yes they did plan it, not well, but planning was done no less. 

 

as far as cool springs continuing to grow, it cant.

the 4 corners of the mcewen and carothers intersection are basically all the open land that is left, other than a few smaller parcels spread through out the area. that is untill they start building on hills. but the cool springs "valley" is full.

 

Ive been slowly putting this together for a few weeks, 

open and underdeveloped williamson county land. only for the purpose of this i define open and underdeveloped as farm land, or areas without subdivisions.  so yes there are houses but not close together.  also, flat land, I avoided steep hills, I also left out the fairview area and the extreem southeast.  

basically what this shows is, though cool springs is almost finished, the county has plenty of sprawl left.

Rutherford, wilson, and sumner also have plenty of sprawl within the bowl.

 

wilco by willfry, on Flickr

 

Yes, you got my back; my bad, on saying that they had done absolutely no planning; Franklin had to have done some planning, to get where it is today.  I guess all the different developments and landing of top employers are accolades in their own rights and compounded testimonials to Williamson Co's "magnetization" for commerce.  The greater Cool Springs district had been spawned during my long gap of absence from Tennessee, and until the last 17 or so years, I rarely even touched the area, much less roamed it, as I would have when I had been young .  That is, except to hit the still newish mall once in a while, on my cusp of becoming weaned from the mall scene.  I would go there so infrequently, maybe every 3 or 4 years, that each time I would go, it seemed to have exploded and magnified to 2 or 3 times as much as it had appeared to me before.  The only occasion I have to go there now is to drop my car off for service at the dealer on Baker's Bridge Rd. (unless instead I take it to North Madison).  It must just be me, and every time I have had to go to Cool Springs to find a place (except for Home Depot, Lowes, Kohls, or WallyWorld), I always have ended up having to go around or double back, sometimes 2 or 3 times, to find my target, since I find it to be a formidable challenge to drive and seek at the same time in unfamiliar territory (but then I can have that same problem in my own back yard, as far as multitasking is concerned).

 

Sprawl issues are due to the major funding drivers:  the huge amounts of money to highway construction and development communities in a state that has no commitment to real "planning" per se, in spite of enactment of growth mgmt. policies (at least compared to two of our neighboring states directly to the east, which have at least "begun" to shift focus).  Many local governments across the U.S. did not have the tools to channel growth in a sustainable manner until the mid-'90s, and even now with modest achievements in “smart growth” and "progressive" land-use policy in the U.S., much of the development pattern mid-state which occurred in the '70s and '80s has remained, if not escalated, today.  The greater sprawl of Cool Springs (and to many Sun Belt regions in general) can be much ascribed to cultural values that are less focused on “ecologically" friendly development and geographical barriers to growth, even with the "kettle" already filled up in Cool Springs, land-wise.  More densely compact and growth-contained cities have tended to have high house price medians and high cyclical price volatility, while new developments on fractions of the land parcel size in space-constrained urban districts can go for double (just as an "uneducated" reckoning) the price of a much larger home on an entire acre in a sprawled out area.  Needless to be said, availability of low-cost land at increasing distances, as long as there are no regulatory constraints, has come with unintended and increasingly burdensome consequences.

 

To have expected or even have planned for Cool Springs to be anything except suburban in layout would have been very unrealistic during the chronology of events on which much of its development has been based.  It likely would have made no difference with the level of sprawl and corporate presence early or late.   Rather than be critical of Cool Springs and the well being of Franklin as a whole, I actually somewhat embrace its success and state of stability, even if I choose not to have any part of it at present.  I never know when I might lose my current job with the State, especially since come October my job will be on the block, so I have to keep open to the possibility that, given the employment base in that part of Williamson Co., I just might end up having to swallow what I dish out.  With all that said, I truly hope that the regional commissioners can arrange to support reverse commuting.  That's my number one matter of concern.  But actually transportation to and from the Franklin area is a regional issue, as it has attracted a diverse workforce from the entire region.  Just ask evansnathan; although his situation is tailored by circumstances, it typifies a global and contentious scrape on the quality of lives, as related to percentage of one's workday spent commuting to and from Franklin, and among all the regional employment centers, w/r/t that subject.  And then it's a matter of getting around Cool Springs and the rest of Franklin, once there, but that's a shared curse with all mid-state sprawl.

-==-

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  • 1 month later...

With all of that land, they could have built a much more "urban" business area with buildings and sidewalks up against the roads with parking garages instead of these huge parking lots...and then would have had way more area to add more buildings...thus more revenue for the city.  Plus...it would have been more walkable.  

 

Seems like a lot of wasted land, to me.

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With all of that land, they could have built a much more "urban" business area with buildings and sidewalks up against the roads with parking garages instead of these huge parking lots...and then would have had way more area to add more buildings...thus more revenue for the city.  Plus...it would have been more walkable.  

 

Seems like a lot of wasted land, to me.

 

Agreed 100%. Huge amounts of land waste.

 

But then again, look at where it is. Land waste is what the whole area was built around, I think.

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  • 1 year later...

Looks like Mars/Petco will make their new corporate HQ as one of the primary office tenants in the Ovation development. Will need at least one building (200,000 sq. ft.) to house their 1,000 employees.

http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2016/10/26/exclusive-mars-petcare-pursues-massive-cool.html

Here is a video of Ovation's rendering:
 


 

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I would rather see them in a new skyscraper downtown too, but I actually appreciate Cool Springs and am really glad to see it continue to be built out.  Obviously a lot of corporations are looking for more of a suburban 'edge city' to be located in and I'm happy we have a great one to offer.  I'm actually quite excited to see Ovation get going.  Middle TN's only $1 billion development project currently.

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15 hours ago, BnaBreaker said:

Glad Mars decided to move it's HQ to the Nashville area.  Pissed it's not in an office building DOWNTOWN where it should be.  A commitment from them would probably be enough to get one of our big skyscraper projects off the ground.

It's already in the Nashville area. It's currently located off of Cool Springs Blvd.  They just need a bigger facility, so they're STAYING in the area. :) 

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1 hour ago, kc8501 said:

It's already in the Nashville area. It's currently located off of Cool Springs Blvd.  They just need a bigger facility, so they're STAYING in the area. :) 

Thanks for the education!  Guess I should do a little research before putting my foot in my mouth, eh? :)  I didn't realize they were already in the Cool Springs area...so this move makes sense, I suppose.  I still wish they were in a highrise downtown though.  haha

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For someone that has to drive from the 840 area to downtown every day I would say that until a real mass transit solution is found, I can see why the out lying areas are more attractive.  I WISH my company's offices were in Cool Springs.  Do I want a beautiful skyline in Nashville?  Heck yeah.  Do I like working down here?  Absolutely.  But the drive sucks.  

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27 minutes ago, TheRaglander said:

For someone that has to drive from the 840 area to downtown every day I would say that until a real mass transit solution is found, I can see why the out lying areas are more attractive.  I WISH my company's offices were in Cool Springs.  Do I want a beautiful skyline in Nashville?  Heck yeah.  Do I like working down here?  Absolutely.  But the drive sucks.  

There is an RTA bus option, one leaves from Spring Hill, one leaves from the lot behind the Kia dealer on 96.  They're coach buses, so comfortable and so on.  It helps with the drive a LOT, even if you can't take it every day. Otherwise, I totally agree with you, I love to see Nashville grow and evolve but I LOATHE the hour-ish ride up and back.  

Link for schedules etc.: http://www.musiccitystar.org/Middle-TN-RTA-bus-maps-and-schedules.asp

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