Bonfire of the Vanities: The May Town Center Proposal is Sheer Lunacy
Not since a Metro Council member wanted the city to build an alien landing pad has Nashville confronted an idea as utterly bizarre and surreal as the proposal to build a second downtown on over 500 acres of the most beautiful land in the county.
This is lunacy.
The planned May Town Center, which would feature 18-story buildings in the middle of rolling fields and working farms, isn’t just an environmental headache and an archaic planning decision. It's something out of a Tom Wolfe novel. How could anyone have first introduced it without the audience doubling over in hysterics?
Planning Commissioners should have all sorts of legitimate concerns when they vote Thursday on whether to allow developers Jack May and Tony Giarantana to proceed. Here are just a few:
1)It will obliterate the rural Scottsboro Community, and quite possibly the Nations neighborhood on the other side of the Cumberland. Certainly parts of West Meade. Those 40,000 office workers won’t be taking Wonder Woman’s invisible jet to the May Town Center (unless I missed that part of Giarantana’s proposal). They’ll be driving across narrow rural roads through peaceful, sleepy neighborhoods over a towering bridge (that we’ll be paying for in all likelihood) to a massive development that could end up looking as if Cool Springs hopped over to Northwest Davidson County.
Let’s eat at Genghis Grill for lunch!
2)It will undo years of smart planning decisions to grow downtown, SoBro and the Gulch. Unlike a lot of southern cities, Nashville can actually boast of a vibrant downtown. And with a recent trend toward urban living — given a healthy push by skyrocketing gas prices — our collection of stylish new buildings, tasty restaurants and fun bars and honky tonks can only grow.
But building a competing downtown will only draw away downtown tenants, throwing a thick blanket on our recent hot streak.
In any case, don’t tell me the May Town Center will dramatically boast the tax rolls when we have no idea how much taxpayers will be asked to spend on roads, bridges, sewers, police, firefighters, and schools. And it's foolish to think all of these new businesses will suddenly materialize from outside the Metro area. The vast majority will simply be sucked away from nearby communities.
4) The proposed May Town Center will also increase run-off into the Cumberland, polluting our prized watershed. You can’t build a second downtown a couple hundred yards from a newly cleansed river without all sorts of nasty things flowing into it. Sorry about that.
5) Nobody can begin to predict the impact of the May Town Center. As mentioned in Christine Kreyling’s story this week, we don’t know how much it will cost to provide police protection and schools to a new community. Or the price tag of expanding sewer capacity. We don’t even know how much traffic the development will create.
These are pretty fundamental questions, and the city needs to have rock-solid answers before the commission votes to proceed.
So tomorrow the Planning Commission will vote on the proposal. Surely the future of our city doesn’t depend on devouring our farmland. Besides, if developing every parcel in your city is the key to a healthy local economy, then how come none of us are moving to Miami, which has no almost no green space until you hit the Everglades?
I spent nearly three years in Dallas, where developers have built office towers and McMansions on just about every swath of land that’s not in a flood plain. Nobody in city government ever turns off a bulldozer. Yet the roads there have potholes the size of small lakes and the school system is in a perpetual state of crisis, while the murder rate is among the highest in the country.
There are ways to grow a city through smart, sustainable development. But plopping a second downtown in an outlying field is neither smart nor sustainable.
It’s silly and stupid — a bad idea out of the 1980s. The Planning Commission needs to soundly reject the proposal tomorrow.
Comments
how come none of us are moving to Miami
Cost of living and Matt Pulle doesn't write there.
Posted 07/23/2008 at 06:39:13 PMToo much money, too many big egos, and fear of scarcity for the average rich guy. It's really the disparity of wealth for future "supposedly wealthy generations" playing out on the local scene.
Posted 07/23/2008 at 07:02:05 PMNashville has an important choice ahead. A small group of wealthy individuals are proposing to destroy the rural character of one the last “wild” places left in Davidson County. And the replacement for this area is something Nashville already has plenty of – office parks. The Pro-Development side will provide the usual dog and pony show, and cite important sounding statistics and mention huge tax dollar implications.
Posted 07/24/2008 at 10:03:32 AMBut when the time comes to vote, I hope you will ask few questions. If you do, I guarantee the May’s family hired guns will not be able to give you a strait answer.
1. Who will pay for the 250 million dollars that will be required to construct vehicle access to the site? Will the public funds of a county that is already financially struggling be used to build roadways so that the Mays family can profit?
2. When the money is found, how many homes will be demolished to construct a road way so that one wealthy family can turn a buck. Will the hundreds of homeowners impacted from two new four-lane highways be compensated for their loss? How many lawsuits will result from this unjust taking? What damage will be done to the reputation of the City of Nashville by this action.
3. What damage will be done to the economy of downtown Nashville? What effect will 6500 condominiums have on an already problematic Downtown real estate market?
4. Who will build the schools for 6500 new housing units? Will all children of Davidson County benefit from these new schools?
5. What corporations, specifically, have agreed to move their headquarters’ to the proposed site. How many indicated their written intent to make the move. What evidence do the developers have of this intent.
With empty commercial real estate space growing daily, I think that it is prudent that we examine these questions thoroughly before we begin down the destructive and irreversible track that the Mays family seems intent to travel.
Excellent points. I think this whole deal is a way to create some utopian urban space devoid of such annoyances as people of color, tourists, and the homeless. A sterilized, white, conservative bastion of wealth. Think a vertical Maryland Farms. Even more so, Las Colinas outside Dallas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Colinas
Chance?
Posted 07/24/2008 at 10:41:08 AMI don't plan on defending this development-- but it must be acknowledged that this is a highly dense, mixed-use development which preserves a fair amount of open space.
There is no doubt that this "edge city" will be a drain on downtown, but the question is: should Metro cash-in with it's own "edge city"? The suburban ring counties already are. Mt. Juliet, anyone?
All new development has trade-offs. The land can be by-right developed as a 2-unit/acre residential subdivision now. This **might** be a better use of the land and actually be a force to reduce sprawl.
I'm just saying...
Posted 07/24/2008 at 09:09:07 PM