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The Dave Luna Urban Planet Forum Meet-Up (online, too), Sat. April 6th, 10 AM to noon; Copper Branch patio at Downtown Library at 6th Ave. North and Church St.

smeagolsfree

By smeagolsfree
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dmillsphoto Town

dmillsphoto

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FYI, meeting next Saturday, October 5th, at the DT Library as per usual. 10AM, some of us will be there earlier. I will add Ron to Skype so he can join us remotely, if necessary (ah, technology). Expect the usual suspects.

 

I have been slammed with work, so I will also take this day to do a drive-about. Free to whomever wants to tag along after the meeting. Will probably begin north, then west, then south. I will update the Photo tour thread afterward. It will be about 1.5 hours.

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markhollin
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rookzie Burg

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Posted 07 September 2013 - 02:15 AM by timmay143

Got a friend in town so I won't be able to make it

______________

Mr. Tim, do think that you'll be able to make it to the Nov. Nashv'l Forum meeting?

Been wanting to see just who this timmay143 is, since mid- late Aug.

ricky-roox

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bwithers1 Burg

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I most likely won't be able to make it this time.  I am a board member of Friends of Riverside Drive, which is a group that formed to take care of Riverside Drive, which is a boulevard in East Nashville (South Inglewood/Rosebank area) that was originally dedicated as a memorial to veterans early in the last century. We are planting a couple hundred irises in the median near the Shelby Park entrance tomorrow at 9:30 AM. 

 

Sorry that I've been absent from the board for a bit.  A couple of weeks ago a developer paid $165K for an historic 1913 transitional victorian home and then demolished it to put up a horrible duplex for $390K each side.  This has a lot of neighbors upset and working to expand our conservation overlay.  As the neighborhood president, I'm naturally in the thick of that and don't have a lot of "free" time outside of that effort at the moment.  I'll be back online more when I can and should be at the next forum meeting in December.

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UTgrad09 Town

UTgrad09

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I most likely won't be able to make it this time.  I am a board member of Friends of Riverside Drive, which is a group that formed to take care of Riverside Drive, which is a boulevard in East Nashville (South Inglewood/Rosebank area) that was originally dedicated as a memorial to veterans early in the last century. We are planting a couple hundred irises in the median near the Shelby Park entrance tomorrow at 9:30 AM. 

 

Sorry that I've been absent from the board for a bit.  A couple of weeks ago a developer paid $165K for an historic 1913 transitional victorian home and then demolished it to put up a horrible duplex for $390K each side.  This has a lot of neighbors upset and working to expand our conservation overlay.  As the neighborhood president, I'm naturally in the thick of that and don't have a lot of "free" time outside of that effort at the moment.  I'll be back online more when I can and should be at the next forum meeting in December.

 

Where was the 1913 house? That's disgusting. Also...I understand there are some instances where dividing a lot up can be good...but I hate duplexes. There are a few over in Green Hills that really make you say "WTF??"

 

And I love reading your posts, but your community involvement is more important...there's no need to apologize for your absence! Keep fighting the good fight.

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rookzie Burg

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Where was the 1913 house? That's disgusting. Also...I understand there are some instances where dividing a lot up can be good...but I hate duplexes. There are a few over in Green Hills that really make you say "WTF??"

 

And I love reading your posts, but your community involvement is more important...there's no need to apologize for your absence! Keep fighting the good fight.

 

In 2006 or so, the BZA (Brd of Zoning Appeals) let a developer slap up a shadow house at a site on the street immediately behind me.  We have no alleys around here (alleys seems to stop at the former city limit north of I-440, specifically none south of John Sevier Park).  When that happened, the neighbors on the streets surrounding the eyesore banded, attended the hearings, and successfully smacked rezoning from R to RS.

 

We got lucky that no more "damage" was done than the single instance, but all over the Green Hills it has been cat-and-mouse during the last few years between developers and residents.  Most "casualties" seem to have occurred with modest homes of retirees, or more commonly, elderly widows, who either have lost the will to contest, or whose families and beneficiaries are pandered to and who want to unload the property "post mortem".  If developers have "gained ground" [lol] with 2, 3 or more duplexes or with subdividing to a smaller size rating within a sub-region, then the developers often have gained the support from newbie buyers, indifferent to the cries of the opposers, before the opposition has gained momentum.

 

So, we end up with a lot of in-fill at the expense of perfectly good, often desirable old homes.  I suspect that when I get deep-sixed, they'll very well come along and at least try to raze my own home of 1928 vintage.  This in-fill, along with the fact that the city long ago allowed the cost of business relocation to get out of reach, is much of the reasoning against badly needed street-intersection re-alignment throughout the community.  Oh yes, they have considered the Richard Jones ─ Abbott-Martin Rd, and the Glen Echo ─ Crestmoor Ave. re-alignment proposals along US 431 (Hillsboro Pk.) for over 30 years now, the costs ever so escalating significantly much more per annum.  The "broke-off", fragmented cut-through streets often are in the same plight, as a result of the absence of any planning during the early 20th century, when many of those streets were still privately owned, and were allowed to just happen by will.

 

Now that the south-southwestern sprawl has taken over the region like kudzu on steroids, it would be a stretch of the imagination to even conceive of the addition of any dedicated or (much less likely) separated ROW for any meaningful transit initiative there.

 

Those "1913" casualties are among the biggest manifestation of difference between Nashv'l and other cities (even ones not too distant), where private investment has trumped historic preservation.  While  I don't feel compelled to move back to northeastern Ohio, or especially to Detroit or Memphis, one contrast of note is that many of the larger eyesores of the more "stagnant" cities (of older, and larger commercial infrastructure) are allowed to remain boarded up (Fort Street station in Detroit; Sears building in Memphis), before succumbing to the ball.

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bwithers1 Burg

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Thanks, UT.  This particular house was on Benjamin between Scott Ave and Porter Road.  If you go to the Eastland Ave Portland Brew, go up Scott Ave and you will see quite a few hideous duplexes.  It's the same builder.  For the most part, he was buying up small, non-historic homes on Scott to build those things in between the historic homes, which is one thing.  But in this case he bought a run-down but very fixable historic house on Benjamin and is putting up the same umbilical-cord duplex there.  What's scary is that this time he paid $165K for the historic house only to demolish it.  But the duplexes are being marketed at $390K each, so he will surely pocket about $300-$400K after costs.  But this is upsetting to neighbors because (1) Benjamin is a really nice street and used to be Eastwood's "best kept secret" and now those neighbors are pissed and (2) if people are now willing to pay full market value for these houses (this is a small house that needed a lot of work) only to demolish them, then any number of houses are in danger.  So there is a race-against-the-clock mentality right now.  In the mean time, we have to hope that this particular developer isn't able to buy any more properties.  There are other developers who are taking down non-contributing structures and putting up a lot of nice stuff.  But Scott Ave is plagued by bad examples, and now those bad examples are metastasizing over into the neighboring blocks.

 

Since I can't make tomorrow's meeting, I did post on the East Nashvill thread a run-down of status updates for East Nashville projects that I can think of off the top of my head.

Where was the 1913 house? That's disgusting. Also...I understand there are some instances where dividing a lot up can be good...but I hate duplexes. There are a few over in Green Hills that really make you say "WTF??"

 

And I love reading your posts, but your community involvement is more important...there's no need to apologize for your absence! Keep fighting the good fight.

Edited by bwithers1
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rookzie Burg

rookzie

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It was fulfilling finally to have met you, Tim.  You were that taxonomic missing link from phylum to species in the kingdom of this forum (and the other forums in which you have been cloned).  Now that I know that you actually do exist (and not some cyber-robo or machine with blood-colored oil), I no longer have to toss and turn at night. :yahoo: [lol]

 

And as for the others of you who machéted through Nashv'l's weekly boulevard foolishness, I wish I had met you much longer ago.  At least this gets me outta myself, and outta the house, from that remote-control-and-blueberry-cheesecake-munchin' death sentence, as I grow old.

 

-=ricky-roox=-

Edited by rookzie
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