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Paramount Tower, 65-68 stories, approx. 750', 200 units, $240 million, Church Street Park


markhollin

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5 minutes ago, fishsticks176 said:

I think, too, that there's a belief that if they can halt as much development as possible, Nashville will go back to the way it was ten years ago and that their rents will go down. Someone said in earnest that "now that we've voted down transit, transplants will get fed up and leave and we can finally get back to the old Nashville".

 

WOW. This came from someone under 40?

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4 hours ago, fishsticks176 said:

An ever-growing number of my peers (25-35 crowd) have been framing it as a corporate giveaway and decrying Metro for donating assets to wealthy developers while schools are underfunded and homeless is a growing problem. Metro is giving away more land to some rich private developer! They're taking our park! That 25 million is being pocketed by some multimillionaire developer who's only going to build 100 units! 

This is their rhetoric, not mine.

They seem to (willfully) misunderstand this project, the transit proposal, the MLS stadium, and many many other developments. Honestly, I think most of it isn't really about the details of the developments/deals themselves, but just stems from their frustration of being on the short end of the growing economic divide in Nashville. It's become an "us vs them" mentality for a lot of people. And they don't understand that they're shooting themselves in the foot when they oppose public transit or transitional housing or more residential construction.  

 

EDIT: This is in response to TNinVB's comment a few posts up, asking why there seems to be such opposition to Tony's homeless shelter being built. 

I cant agree more than this, I have heard people even younger than me (and I'm not even 20 yet) be opposed to these plans for Nashville's growth and development because they think if they do that, the growth will just stop, which it wont at all.  Younger does not equal less ignorant at all, it varies from person to person

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23 hours ago, fishsticks176 said:

I think, too, that there's a belief that if they can halt as much development as possible, Nashville will go back to the way it was ten years ago and that their rents will go down. Someone said in earnest that "now that we've voted down transit, transplants will get fed up and leave and we can finally get back to the old Nashville".

This makes me absolutely nauseous. I have no understanding of why people would have this mentality. This is so incredibly backwards. The "OLD NASHVILLE" ????? Give it up people! We are heading in a direction that is good for Nashville and for some reason people can't stand it?!

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Yeah I guess aversion to change is natural and everyone decides that the conditions in their childhood were the ideal ones (just like everyone thinks music was in a golden era during their teens and twenties). To me it's particularly hilarious as applied to Nashville. 30 years ago downtown was a hollowed out mess of parking lots and fortress-like office buildings that were only occupied during the day and were built to protect themselves from the surrounding sidewalks. Broadway was a skeezy adult entertainment district. Most of the neighborhoods that are now being gentrified were riddles with crime, drugs, and prostitution. I mean, we had a giant trash-burning facility on the river instead of Ascend. The transformation in one generation is incredible. But somehow people's capacity to gin up gloomy nostalgia is undeterred.

Last night I was listening to a neighbor rant about pedal taverns and how the bachelorette parties have ruined downtown and I just had to shake my head. We have our problems (schools, housing affordability, car-dependence/traffic) but relative to where we were at 30 years ago, random groups of shrieking white girls is our big problem? 

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I think it's possible to exaggerate in either direction.  30 years ago I was a 19-year-old Vandy undergrad with a fake ID and I thought downtown was amazing.  Dancing several nights  a week at The Urban Lounge on Second Avenue, eating lunch at Windows on the Cumberland watching barge launches, shopping for great rugs at the salvage stores south of Broadway.  Yes we've come a long way, but nostalgia for the Nashville of 30 years ago, even downtown, is not all misplaced in my opinion.  I'd gladly trade the pedal taverns for the adult bookstores and honky tonks of the '80's.  

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11 minutes ago, troyboytn said:

Off topic, but You might be glad to hear that much like Nashville, downtown Knoxville has experienced a great turn around in recent years. Almost the entirety of downtown Knoxville is now safe. Once boarded up building have been revived with restaurants, boutique hotels, bars, and shops and the area is thriving and hundreds of apartments /condos are coming online and are planned including a new 20 story apartment tower. Also hearing some rumors of a new mixed use tower across the street from Plaza Tower on Gay Street. We have indeed made a complete 360 from the downtown of just a few years ago. The transformation has been truly amazing.

Glad to hear that! Knoxville was lagging behind Nashville and Chattanooga for years (and still is, honestly), but it’s good to see them start to improve. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
14 minutes ago, Hey_Hey said:

There's no question that density and height lead to a more efficient funding mechanism for infrastructure maintenance.  As an example, consider 505 Church St vs my subdivision a mile south of Old Hickory Blvd in Williamson County.  505 has 543 residences in it and has ~900 feet of streets/sidewalks on its sides meaning each residence "pays for"  20 inches of roadway and sidewalks.  Meanwhile, my subdivision has ~8500 feet of roadways and sidewalks (including the main frontage road), but it only has 68 houses. Each house must "pay for" 125 feet of roads and sidewalks, or 75x the amount of roads to maintain around 505.  Of course, the same thing can be applied to electrical lines, sewer lines, water mains, police coverage,  mosquito spraying, EMS/Fire coverage, street sweeping, and many other. Long term the costs to maintain low density housing is significantly higher than high density housing. 

True, but initially time to build and cost is lower for a neighborhood.  It's significantly higher initially for high rises, long term wise it's cheaper.

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Hopefully it's something more along the lines of the bottom tower.  Maybe it's just me, but a residential tower just looks so out of place as a tallest building, unless it looks nothing like a residential tower.  It's the reason something feels off to me about Austin's skyline.

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On 5/18/2018 at 2:19 PM, MagicPotato said:

True, but initially time to build and cost is lower for a neighborhood.  It's significantly higher initially for high rises, long term wise it's cheaper.

As we have learned over the past couple generations, we should not be looking at initial cost as a measure for building efficiency. If we did, sustainable design and construction would never be a thing.

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