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I should have framed my question better.  Any downtown highrise is required to have structured parking, correct?  Hotels, office buildings, etc.  I can't think of any case where a highrise downtown was permitted that only had surface parking for residents/employees/visitors.  Why were those two large buildings not required to have structured parking?  Just because the state built them?  I realize things change over time, but it seems like the state skipped some rules that otherwise would have applied to construction of such large buildings.

 

 

At the time those buildings were built, parking wasn't a concern.  The land north of the railroad was vacant or otherwise cheap.  Then, with the development of the Bicentennial Park and Farmer's Market the current parking scheme was devised to accommodate those facilities.  So, until the stadium deal, there was no need to do anything further for state employee parking.

 

That being said, the state has provided free transit of the MTA and RTA - a much better solution to building either a garage or surface lots.

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I should have framed my question better.  Any downtown highrise is required to have structured parking, correct?  Hotels, office buildings, etc.  I can't think of any case where a highrise downtown was permitted that only had surface parking for residents/employees/visitors.  Why were those two large buildings not required to have structured parking?  Just because the state built them?  I realize things change over time, but it seems like the state skipped some rules that otherwise would have applied to construction of such large buildings.

 

At the time those buildings were built, parking wasn't a concern.  The land north of the railroad was vacant or otherwise cheap.  Then, with the development of the Bicentennial Park and Farmer's Market the current parking scheme was devised to accommodate those facilities.  So, until the stadium deal, there was no need to do anything further for state employee parking.

 

That being said, the state has provided free transit of the MTA and RTA - a much better solution to building either a garage or surface lots.

 

[there's bound to be a bunch of syntax and other composition errors in this, so this is an advanced apology]

 

I really cannot speak much different from what captainwjm has said on this, and in the end it safely can be considered yet another case of lack of foresight and thinking out of the box, even for the '90s, for such a major undertaking as the State Bicentennial Mall (which required relocation of the Farmers' Market).  As he said, the state has attempted to offset the parking issue with transit privileges.  This parking issue is not unique to Nashv'l as a large state capital city, even if others may have proportionally more ample parking.  I cannot speak for relatively modern large state buildings as Crockett and Johnson, and again there may not be rules as a practice to build such tiered structure parking to accommodate just any or every state office building, whether it be in Raleigh, Sacramento, or Providence.

 

This is not to provide you some kind of answer recursively.  PHofKS might be more apt to answer than I, although this is not directly related to TDOT transportation planning (that I am aware), but transportation is his prowess.  On the surface, the state's perennial practice of maintaining flat parking lots appears to have been one primarily of rationale, rather than budgetary, and I believe that it has incurred some of the same political prioritization that has been perverse with municipal governments, when it relates to parking infrastructure, particularly in regard to its personnel.  Over the years much of the state's decision to maintain expansive flat state parking has been historical for DT Nashville along the NW sector of Capitol Hill.  Over the decades, the state has acquired land around and to the north and northeast of the Hill, mostly from condemned property, not so much during the early '50s and ‘60s “urban-renewal” trends, which had been primarily municipal.  After the 1979 changeover of former UTN (Univ. of Tenn. – Nashville) new expansion building for faculty and classrooms at Charlotte and McLemore (now YMCA Way), which soon thereafter became TSU – Downtown (Avon Williams Campus), UTN parking had included some of that space on 10th Circle.  Although parking had been permitted on some of those lots between Charlotte and Cedar St. (now Merry Nelson), you have to be mindful that most of that particular plot of land had been owned by National Life and Accident Insurance Co. (later American General), and so it served as private parking for the business, although I only can assume that UTN (TSU), having been a state school, had some arrangement to utilize that parking.  That entire plot became all “state” once American General sold out to become the Wm. T. Snodgrass Tower, as part of the package deal.  Additional lots now owned by the state along 10th Cr. to 8th/Rosa Parks were acquired from the site of the old Travel Lodge and Ramada Inns built in the ‘60s, and the current site of FBC-Capital Hill at Jas.Rob and Gay St. was an arrangement made when the State acquired the FBC-CH former site during the ‘70s at 319-8th Ave N, so the state was not about to arrange for a seconding “condemning” of that church, much less for additional parking.

As far as the Andrew Johnson and Davy Crockett State Buildings are concerned, I do not believe that any Tenn. State-owned office building in the DT area ever had been constructed with parking for its workers within its structure, as built originally as a state office building.  The AJ (Andrew Jackson Bldg.) does have a limited ground-level integral parking area and loading dock accessible from 5th Avenue at Charlotte, and the acquired Tennessee Tower (Snodgrass) has restricted and limited parking underneath facing Charlotte.  The only exception to this is the Art-Deco State Supreme Court building, which does have parking built into its massive granite foundation.  And the 1990s eminent domain acquisition of the swath of land comprising most of North Capitol for the state mall and parking, involved actually moving the CSX railroad AND four of its underpasses (5th through 8th Avenues) by shifting it northward behind Crockett and Johnson, and removal of a former produce rail yard, which once passed through the current site of the mall amphitheater.

With the Legislature consisting of members representing the state as a whole, it should not be difficult to conclude that the state seemingly has categorically nudged the manageability of its own workforce mobility further and further toward becoming a tabled agenda.   But sometimes being less than readily evident, some positive measures have been taken to address an eternal concrete and asphalt parking issue.  Working in concert with the MTA and following the transfer of MCS operations and mgmt. from control of the RTA to the MTA (for augmented oversight and accountability in compliance with federal funding), the State Legislature has in recent years passed laws enabling regional transportation authorities (such as the RTA) to establish dedicated funding sources for public transportation.  And despite the fact that the MCS appears to have been “hemorrhaging” funds from the start (although this reportedly has improved since the MCS management takeover by MTA), the state has attempted to entice its workforce with subsidized alternatives to driving by offering each employee fare tap/swipe cards for commuting to work on public transit.  At the start, the MTA had been the sole agent for watchful care of user fare privileges, but in time this overly restrictive and often penalizing “policing” proved discouraging for the generally conforming fare-card holders.  Since the state Dept. General Services has taken on the role of shepherding this amenity, each worker can be nearly assured of a fully waived single round-trip fare on all MTA/RTA buses and trains between home and the workplace, on each employee’s standard workday.  This includes any “reasonable” bus-to-bus and bus-to-train transfer as needed, even alternate routes.  To a significant degree, the transit privileges program has yielded some positive results.  Dialogs which I have heard with many of those car-bound DT state workers are that, as yet, no RTA service accommodates their needs, whether in scheduling or in route coverage.  Accordingly, in the case of local service provided by the MTA, we all know the rest of that story, when it comes to reliability, scheduling, and coverage. (at least the RTA has had a high rate of reliability in consideration that the type of service offered is commuter)

Back to your question, I believe that the state likely will be watching the results from the joint use of the Sulphur Dell (ball park area) garage (for which Metro is paying, according to the article mentioned above), and it may actually consider a proposal for structured parking to replace some of its surface lots.  The stage may very be about to be set for that within a couple of years, but I believe that the state most likely will anticipate dramatically enhanced mobility with prospective local and regional comprehensive transit improvements over the next 10 years, even if it entails initially spoon-feeding the MCS and additional RTA contractual arrangements for reverse commuting and more coverage.  But of course, even with buses and buses only, it’s going to take a huge and sustained infusion of resources just to make any appreciable improvement in the short run, without trains (that could perform some of that more efficiently).

 

Another issue not discussed with tiered structures for parking is that inherently they do not offer users the degree of security as do flat lots which, in the case of Capitol Hill and No. Capitol, offer a high degree of security visibility against most surreptitious activity hedged from view in a garage (unless it is clustered with cameras and DVRs every which way).  There's also the element of maneuverability of motor vehicles around tight spaces in garages (columns and usually smaller parking spaces, especially for full-sized an extended cab pickups).  And then there frequently is a loss of some entrance/egress points to and from a structure, as compared to the existing flat state lots.  So it can create more issues than it can resolve, unless generous design features (at a cost) would be incorporated to allow for better facility in parking otherwise lost.

-==-

Edited by rookzie
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A few comments on the State of Tennessee's approach to parking downtown.

 

The main reason they had so many flat parking lots is because the land was available to the north of the State Capitol. They had originally proposed a multi-story parking garage to wrap around the hill the state capitol sits on. Thank goodness that never happened. But when Governor Ned McWherter proposed the building of the Capitol Mall in the 90's to preserve the view of the Capitol, I believe that is when the State acquired (we never say condemned or took) much of the fallow, under developed property in that area which was to be used for State employee parking.

 

As Rookzie indicated, it was a long walk, if like me, you often had to leave at mid-day for a business trip. The cars were either blazing hot or bitterly cold when you returned to them. Yet it was still appreciated. State employees are very underpaid, so it takes a few low-profile perks to attract competent, professional people to work there. Free parking is one of them.

 

The State has been very progressive in promoting other forms of commuting to its workers by funding van-pool options and discounts for MTA riders. These are taken advantage of at a high rate.

 

And the State was among the first to introduce staggered work hours to ease the impact of its workforce on rush hour traffic.

 

So, in spite of pre-conceived notions about the bureaucratic inertia of 'big' government, at least in this area, the State has been forward thinking.

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Any scoop on where Ward and the ownership group are with their mixed use project?    Embrey's rocking along and should be open in 2016, along with the state garage.     It would be nice if the Sounds project got underway relatively soon so that the ball park area wasn't a multi-year construction zone.   

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Any scoop on where Ward and the ownership group are with their mixed use project?    Embrey's rocking along and should be open in 2016, along with the state garage.     It would be nice if the Sounds project got underway relatively soon so that the ball park area wasn't a multi-year construction zone.

I think they really are wanting to get the ballpark open, and then I think thee will be movement on that front.

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I thought they were going to seed in the field back in the fall?  From Raglander's aerial that's either dirt or dormant grass, and fescue doesn't go dormant.  Smeagolsfree did they decide to go with sod instead? 

Not sure, but they can still overseed and keep water on it and it should do ok. The problem with sod is it has to be put down with care on a ball field, but it can be done.

 

Key is water and getting the grass trained. I think the training is the easiest, with just a couple of mows, and the problem with water is you can have too much and cause fungus isuues, but I would bet ever who they have working on it knows what to do a lot more than I would. Ball park grass is a specialty item and there are groups of people out there, thats all they do.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Cool pic... I have seen a few of the new minor league (and even a couple of major league ones) with all the faux urbanity surrounding it... and they cannot hold a candle to the real thing.  Nice job on the setting.  Trying to gauge how tall the parking garage and apartments will be in the outfields... and if the sight lines toward downtown will be only mildly affected.  I think the skyline will still be quite visible.  

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Great pic!    You obviously got to go inside.   How does it look on the inside?   

 

Based on the infield progress in the photo, I'd say that was from just before the ice storm last week.    This week the green decking is up on the "batter's eye" in center field and the steel support structure for the guitar scoreboard is going up.    Moving right along.  

 

 

Trying to gauge how tall the parking garage and apartments will be in the outfields... and if the sight lines toward downtown will be only mildly affected.  I think the skyline will still be quite visible.  

 

Gauge it off of the apartment building just beyond left field, roughly.    I think the sight lines will be intact from most seats.    

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