"one of Nashville’s best business writers"

There's some damning with faint praise somewhere in there, right?

Okay, once I choked down the set-up, the rest of it went down smooth and clean. Yeah, you're right. Let's see the Mays build a light rail line between West Nashville and downtown, tied into the rest of Nashville's 350 mile multi-modal transportation system, before we build offices for 40,000 workers miles from anything else. Should be no problem, with all the smart transit planning over the last two decades.

Oh. I see. They want to develop first, because only with the new tax revenue can Metro afford to pay for all that nice transit stuff. Sounds like a problem.

What DG said, plus they agree to install cutting-edge wind farms and solar collection stations, and Planning commit more than 900 acres (the bulk of which is already floodplain) to conservation. To live in May Town Place with a car ought to be an exception for the sake of the Bend and Nashville's greenways.

This ought to be a quid pro quo: the May Family can make its millions as long as it designates a larger portion of those profits than they have to conservation and sustainability for the sake of the community.

Correction: "May Town Center"

Maybe I'm alone in this but I can't even comprehend why this whole thing is even being discussed. There isn't one aspect of it that sounds like a good idea. I realize there is money to be made so politicians perk up but there are plenty of money making opportunities in our current Downtown (part 1).

Mr. Kotz, you really should read your newspaper's archives. If you had, you'd have read Christine Kryling's piece, May Day (July 24,2008), in which she points out that the Commission has a decade-long record of promoting the central city.

Here's what her first paragraph said (Take a deep breath, it's a looong paragraph):

For Bells Bend, part of Nashville's largest remaining agricultural and forested landscape, the bell may toll this week. In a pivotal meeting that will decide nothing less than the fate of Davidson County's last holdout against the urban bustle of outlying counties, the Planning Commission will vote whether to allow developers to build essentially a second downtown Nashville over an oasis of working farms and rolling fields.
If the commissioners vote yes, they would chart Nashville on the course of devouring farmland to feed the city's tax base. That would be a curious choice after more than a decade of government support for initiatives designed to strengthen the central core of downtown with infill development—arena and stadium, Rolling Mill Hill and the Gulch, to name a few.

Don't feel bad, though. The carpetbagger editors at The Tennessean never read their archives either.

I thought I'd just pop on for a fairly quick note. For starters, "overwhelming opposition" is questionable. Yelling the loudest doesn't mean anything more than having the ability to overwhelm with noise. Secondly, it is presumptive to say the Mays "inevitably" would ask for tax abatement. That shows a lack of knowledge about development. It's the secondary developers with the corporate tenants in tow who may seek tax breaks. But that is true if the tenants went downtown as well or anywhere else in the county. The tenant, however, who have to be a mammoth one for breaks to even be considered. Dell, for example. Based on the above opinion, even that is evil -- corporate welfare. That's a different discussion.

By law, the Mays may be able to seek a development district like the one being created to redevelop Bellevue Center. That wouldn't involve abatement but increment financing like that used downtown. Part of the funds that paid for straightening Church Street came from surplus funds accrued in the district from early pay off on TIF loans. Call it hyper localization of property tax dollars or development paying for the public infrastructure around it. But very few people truly understand how TIF works so they assume it's a break. But property owners still pay full property taxes; it's just how the increment is used once the TIF loan is paid, a loan developers have to obtain and personally guarantee.

It is fascinating how easily "neighborhood" folks have turned on their man Bernhardt. The fickleness is marvelous.

Bells Bend may not be the best place for such a development. But there are many folks around town who were astonished that the commission went well beyond their land-use planning responsibility and more than dabbled in the economic development realm.

What's it going to take for there to be a broad realistic discussion about how Nashville wants to compete for jobs with not only other cities in the Southeast? Corporate America isn't going to have some great epiphany that large corporate campuses aren't the best way to go. That will take time to change, and the Metro Planning Commission isn't going to be the one to change it.

There is an assumption that downtown would just empty if May Town was built. That seems to negate the fact that the region is growing and will continue to grow 15 years from now. Just as I mentioned in the column, if that's the logic, then no other office building should be approved anywhere else in the county for fear that it would lure a tenant from downtown.

And Mike, lest you forget what I wrote in a previous column about commuter rail, here's a link to it if it will show up. If not, do a Google search for the column searching my name, City Paper and commuter rail.

http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/news.php?viewStory=59839

I thought I'd just pop on for a fairly quick note. For starters, "overwhelming opposition" is questionable. Yelling the loudest doesn't mean anything more than having the ability to overwhelm with noise. Secondly, it is presumptive to say the Mays "inevitably" would ask for tax abatement. That shows a lack of knowledge about development. It's the secondary developers with the corporate tenants in tow who may seek tax breaks. But that is true if the tenants went downtown as well or anywhere else in the county. The tenant, however, who have to be a mammoth one for breaks to even be considered. Dell, for example. Based on the above opinion, even that is evil -- corporate welfare. That's a different discussion.

By law, the Mays may be able to seek a development district like the one being created to redevelop Bellevue Center. That wouldn't involve abatement but increment financing like that used downtown. Part of the funds that paid for straightening Church Street came from surplus funds accrued in the district from early pay off on TIF loans. Call it hyper localization of property tax dollars or development paying for the public infrastructure around it. But very few people truly understand how TIF works so they assume it's a break. But property owners still pay full property taxes; it's just how the increment is used once the TIF loan is paid, a loan developers have to obtain and personally guarantee.

It is fascinating how easily "neighborhood" folks have turned on their man Bernhardt. The fickleness is marvelous.

Bells Bend may not be the best place for such a development. But there are many folks around town who were astonished that the commission went well beyond their land-use planning responsibility and more than dabbled in the economic development realm.

What's it going to take for there to be a broad realistic discussion about how Nashville wants to compete for jobs with not only other cities in the Southeast? Corporate America isn't going to have some great epiphany that large corporate campuses aren't the best way to go. That will take time to change, and the Metro Planning Commission isn't going to be the one to change it.

There is an assumption that downtown would just empty if May Town was built. That seems to negate the fact that the region is growing and will continue to grow 15 years from now. Just as I mentioned in the column, if that's the logic, then no other office building should be approved anywhere else in the county for fear that it would lure a tenant from downtown.

And Mike, lest you forget what I wrote in a previous column about commuter rail, here's a link to it if it will show up. If not, do a Google search for the column searching my name, City Paper and commuter rail.

http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/news.php?viewStory=59839

Um, about that picture: I think you mean "gal." Folks down in these parts aren't far enough off the farm not to notice such things.

Good point Tom... Also, is it really taking the gal's playground when there's no dairy operation on the proposed development site?

Richard, that's disingenuous and you know it. Reminds me of the guy at the Planning meeting who argued that fescue farms weren't valid agriculture.

Crop selection is based on what products can make enough money to keep a farm going. The Tennessee cattle industry took a huge hit last year, when the extreme drought prevented pasture from growing and there was, in most places, barely enough for one haying. Moreover, the rise of large dairies have meant that small-scale dairy farming isn't a viable proposition.

People associate cows with agriculture. Agriculture is a viable and, I would say, desirable use of the land at Bells Bend.

That was far from disingenuous. It's a valid question. If the Mays don't have a dairy farm on their property now is it taking the dairy cows playground? Or should it have been worded taking the gal's future or potential playground?

So are you going to tell the May family what they can do with their land? Convince them to get into dairy farming?

Interesting how all the protectors of farming come out of the woodwork. Reminds me of the folks who got upset with Gaylord closing Opryland. Ask the upset folks the last time they actual went to the theme park and it most times they hadn't been in years. But by gosh they were upset it was going away.

Maybe the whole place needs to big wildlife preserve and nothing done, not even agriculture, and level the houses there are on the bend now. Cows are polluters anyway with all the methane gas.

I didn't intend to argue that we should be saving farmland. I simply threw the cow photo up because, in my limited mind, it's synonymous with pastures.

Yes, I am a moron. Thanks for asking.

To me it's more a matter of economics. They're going to build this giant new development. It's going to cost us loads of money in infrastructure, maintenance, etc. And it's merely going to move population we already have, unless we prop it up with welfare to seduce business from elsewhere.

But the essence of my argument is that rising transport costs will not be kind to outlying developments in the very near future. I may be right. I may be wrong. But it seems our tax dollars -- and there will be millions -- are much better spent on a bet that doesn't intend to defy some rather alarming trends.

Richard Lawson said, "What's it going to take for there to be a broad realistic discussion about how Nashville wants to compete for jobs with not only other cities in the Southeast? Corporate America isn't going to have some great epiphany that large corporate campuses aren't the best way to go."

Might I suggest that a truly broad discussion of economic development should break out of this box by which "economic development" means "How can we get some big corporation to move here from somewhere else"? It reminds me all too much of traditional southern economic development strategy, which basically runs to "We don't really know how to create an industry ourselves, but we can locate some industry that's already created and promise them that they can do the same thing at a lower cost here--usually because it's a sufficiently mature industry that it doesn't need a lot of specialized support, which we can't offer them in any case." Usually, lower costs mean "cheap workers that won't cause any trouble because they're grateful for anything they can get," and "cheap government that will starve public services that don't directly benefit the business." I frankly think this sort of economic-development musical chairs [We grab from Memphis, Charlotte grabs from us, etc., etc.] is going to run up against serious limits. How about trying something like Silicon Valley's been doing for years--assemble a terrific human capital pool that'll go out and invent *new* industries? That's the role that cities have historically played in economic growth, and it typically requires, not self-contained corporate campuses that only need a freeway to the burbs and an airport, but a concentration of creative people--like we have in Music Row. Otherwise, Nashville is only a high-class version of Martin or Lawrenceburg--enticing other communities' businesses to move here, only to see them move elsewhere in response to even lower costs or even bigger bribes [How deep is Bud Adams's commitment to us? Yeah, right].

Thank you, Pete. I'd also like to add that if Richard is one of the best business writers in town, I guess Nashville hasn't come as far as we'd like to think.

Richard, as Stewart Clifton so eloquently pointed out in his initial response to your uber-editorialized story last Thursday, if a project is going to be touted before the MPC as the silver bullet for economic development and tax revenue, then how is it inappropriate for planning commissioners to bring up the economic foundations of this project?

Furthermore, the commissioners themselves weren't the first ones to tiptoe into this territory. If you'd read the subarea plan, then you'd see that it's actually Bernhardt and the planning staff who set the precedent for being armchair economists. How city planners get to make suppositions about economic development -- that's the real question.

The sign of a small mind is someone who only sees the world in black and white (cue GW Bush). Like most issues, there's a world of gray in between the two sides on this one. Not all developers are evil; not all neighborhood types are NIMBY commies. If you did a little investigating, you'd see that many of the people who are concerned about this development -- from Dave Cooley to Mark Deutschmann -- have worked for (or are) developers themselves.

Isn't it possible that people are concerned with this because, well, it's just a sucky idea?

Kotz... you still assume that the city and region will stagnate. And you fall into the assumption still that such a development would just simply move population from one part of town to the other. And again with the logic, nothing should ever be built anywhere else in Nashville for fear of moving population, whether office tenants or residents, from one part of town to another. Additionally, over the years much of the cost of development has been put on the developer. But guess what? We all still pay for it in the long run, not through taxes but through the trickle of higher costs to the end consumer.

Carlton: That is a good question. The healthcare industry was a creation here for one. Otherwise, you're correct about the musical chairs. It's always fun to hear the sales pitch of hey come here we're cheaper.

I'm not trying to argue that Nashville won't grow. I am trying to argue (perhaps unsuccessfully) that given a host of pretty significant trends, Nashville will begin to see the same thing European and larger American cities are seeing: that the central city is becoming far more desirable.

This week's cover story on condos by Tracy Moore (The Seduction) suggests a large shift in the way younger people look at housing. Before the mortgage collapse, even mid-sized cities like Minneapolis couldn't build downtown housing fast enough to meet demand.

But the bigger shift, in my mind, will be fuel prices. Long commutes will no longer be affordable, especially when you consider double-digit hikes in food, heat, health care, etc. For most families, income isn't rising anywhere fast enough to compensate. But while you can't do much about the cost of food, heat and health, you can cut your fuel consumption. Which will make centrally located property far more valuable.

Hence, if I were the mayor, and I knew I would have to spend millions in support of new development, I would put that money on a project that speaks to these trends, in an area where new infrastructure isn't required.

If you look at the future of Nashville, you already know you're going to have huge bills for education, and even larger bills for mass transit. When I look at May Town, all I can think of is the cost of putting in a light rail line there 20 years from now.

Maybe I'm cheap, but my own belief is that money is about to get very tight, and gas prices are going to radically change the way we live. (Just look at the SUV industry, which went from best-selling to bleeding collapse in just a decade.) If I were a betting man -- which I would be if I had any money -- I'd bet that projects like May Town may well be obsolete in just 10 years.

Richard's obviously far more of an expert on the matter. I'm just saying that we've been blowing off warnings on energy for 35 years now, and we're about to get a serious ass-kicking if we don't take heed.

Last I checked, Nashville's town center was pretty small, and Bell's Bend, were it not for a lack of bridges, is fairly close to downtown. I'm not advocating for the May plan, but the quirk here is that we have a huge tract of farmland just 20 minutes from downtown. It's a remarkable opportunity for our city. I hardly think that something within a 30-minute radius will ever fall into ghetto status, despite European history.

Richard: "And you fall into the assumption still that such a development would just simply move population from one part of town to the other."

I think the idea that the pie will grow is a reasonable assumption. But I don't buy the idea that the number of jobs created in a decade's span would be sufficient to maintain downtown's office occupancy (never mind any new downtown office space created). With a glut of space, cost per square foot will drop, and the new offices will drain downtown. I grew up here. I remember downtown's dereliction from the seventies to the early nineties. Why should be assume that 40,000 new cubicles in Bells Bend won't mean, say, 20,000 empty cubicles downtown?

In a big country:"Last I checked, Nashville's town center was pretty small, and Bell's Bend, were it not for a lack of bridges, is fairly close to downtown. I'm not advocating for the May plan, but the quirk here is that we have a huge tract of farmland just 20 minutes from downtown."

How many helicopter landing pads will we need to build for your "fairly close" to mean something? Here's the route for tens of thousands of vehicles at rush hour: I-40 to Centennial Boulevard to a single bridge-- three lanes in/three out?-- to the surface streets and parking in MTC. One breakdown, one fender bender, and your "twenty minutes" (which from downtown would be right only on a Sunday evening) becomes an hour or longer, with zero alternate routes.

Without building the infrastructure for this suburban office park on steroids, and I don't mean one bridge and some surface streets, but the kind of mass transit infrastructure that Kotz rightly recognizes as the kind of thing that cities will have to provide in the future, getting in and out of MTC is going to be a daily clusterfuck. Inevitably, there will be a demand to build more bridges (on the taxpayers' dime), more multi-lane roads. In their heart of hearts, the pro-MTC crowd is fully aware that their transportation solution won't work, but to admit it would be to give up on their profit scheme.

If the developers want this to happen, they need to spend real money to build 21st century infrastructure to avoid the escalation of more roads, more bridges, for more expensive gasoline-powered private cars.

Kotz, where I think you miss the boat is the idea that higher transportation costs could only mean more office space concentrated downtown. In fact, office space is moving into the suburbs where people have chosen to live, cutting down commutes significantly. A century ago industry was moving out of the center of town. In our lifetime retail went to the 'burbs. It's only natural that work opportunities go as well. Downtown boosters' insistence that office space stay downtown in order to make an impressive skyline is so very 20th century.

Downtown Nashville has government buildings, cultural venues, universities, parks, tourists and office buildings. What it lacks for that 24-7 city is enough residents to have stores and theaters and schools for folks living downtown. A May Town is not competing against downtown for urban residents.

Perhaps downtown, with 47,000 daily commuters, could use a rest on the commercial side to let residential development catch up. Flight of Class A office space to the suburbs keeps office rent down in the CDB and helps tip some downtown property towards residential use. Meanwhile, suburban nodes that have been around for generations need office space to complement their retail and restaurant offerings. Note the developments in Belle Meade and Green Hills.

Eventually, downtown office space with its cheaper lease rates may come to house business incubators and corporate start-ups among a population of creative and eager urbanites who've moved downtown looking to make it big in the world. As these businesses mature, they then move out of the CDB to pay twice the rent in a May Town as the bulk of their employees retreat to the suburbs to raise families.

Finally, putting another 40,000 workers downtown will not happen without a significant investment in infrastructure, and I guarantee Mr. May won't be paying for it. Whether widening roads for increased traffic or for adding mass transit options, property will need to be condemned up and down existing arteries as well as for transit stations and whatever else will be needed. As long as we're questioning the construction of another downtown in the Bend, we should also be questioning how to double the size of downtown's commercial district without knocking half of it down and without out-competing residential for available space.

DG, I do support MTC, and I have always known that more than one bridge will be necessary. If 30,000 people clog up the first bridge, then a second will be in order. But with 30,000 going in and out of MTC, the state should and would pay for it because the folks using the bridge pay taxes, and because at that size the sucess of MTC would no longer be questioned. Anyway, the MTC's own traffic analysis factors in the long-proposed Old Hickory Boulevard bridge, which would be paid for by the state even without MTC being built.

However, I do NOT stand to make any profit of the construction of MTC. I can see the Bend from my home. I do care what goes there. I used to take the old ferry on my bike rides through the bend. But, this area of town needs improvements. It has needed Charlotte Pike widened for decades. The first I-40-to-Briley ramps turn eastward, not westward as they should to facilitate the bypass function that Briley is supposed to provide for downtown. That work has yet to be started (who, upon leaving downtown, needs to turn north onto Briley Parkway anyway?). The Harding Pike/Woodmont/White Bridge Road intersection is hopeless. The Hillwood railroad bridge, built by the Union army I figure, is a tragedy waiting to happen. None of that infrastructure work, long overdue as it is, will happen until A) a school bus and a dump truck collide and video of burning children gets on YouTube or B) major development forces the government to get moving.

Most of the infrastructure improvements outside of the Centennial/Briley interchange that an MTC will require, including the OHB bridge over the Cumberland, should have been done already. This city is behind the 8-ball on growth. Folks should not be demonizing the Mays or Giantarra for restating the case for accommodating growth.

Re Aardvark's mention of the Hillwood Ave. bridge over the tracks -- as I recall, council approved a replacement a year or more ago. Not sure why it hasn't happened yet.

I read the news with a shudder: As a middle-income resident of Green Hills near the Belle Meade line (am I the last one?), I use the Abbott Martin-Lynnwood-Hillwood corridor to get to Big Lots, Costco and the 50-cent car wash out in less-gentrified 37209. Never fails to amuse me that I have to drive by the homes of Al Gore, Ted Welch and Jane Eskind to get affordable groceries and services.

I'm highly ambivalent about MTC. But if it existed, across a bridge running roughly where the Judge Hickman used to ply in that 37209 area, I suspect I would be a frequent visitor. One more reason to avoid the Potemkin village of Green Hills and leave it to those who deserve it.

Good point, Aardvark, about people's ability to live and work in the burbs. But they still have to get in the car to go anywhere, and most of the social amenities remain in the city. The suburban life as we know it is predicated on cheap gas.

As those prices keep rising -- and nobody's arguing they won't -- this life is no longer sustainable to middle and low-income people. I think even companies will soon find they need central locations, because the cost of commutes or the lack of mass transit will begin to eat too much from wages, making them no longer competitive.

Damn... I have some catching up to do... Not sure I can completely go through it all.

As to Stewart's comments, just because there's an economic development pitch as part of the plan doesn't mean that gives the commissioners the entry. But having said that, it could be argued the council gave the commission a bit of that responsibility 16 years ago with Concept 2010.

"Growth should be fostered by developing land use plans which provide adequate sites and infrastructure for the support of existing enterprise expansion and for the attraction of new or relocating businesses."

"Successful pro-growth strategies must be accompanied by the adequate provision of infrastructure and services, or quality growth will not be assured. To minimize the need for continued tax rate increases to pay for necessary infrastructure, services, and maintenance, the commission should create land use plans which encourage orderly, efficient patterns of growth and facilitate expansion of the tax base to funded needed services."

Now for balance: "Efficient growth makes the best possible use of existing services and infrastructure."

You read through the General Plan there's supposed to be a balanced approach to it all.

Concern from Cooley and Mark D. is arguably less altruistic than presented. Mark D. in particular has made a good deal of money off of urban redevelopment. Nothing wrong with that obviously. But opposition may be more about self preservation .

Andree Lequire's opposition could be called into question as well since she and her business partner made a good bit off of redeveloping Germantown and no doubt they have plans to do more. She's also very good friends with one of the lobbyists working with the Bells Bend side.

As far as I can tell, there aren't very many in the debate that would qualify for sainthood. That applies to both sides. Several who stood in support of MTC a few weeks ago, either they had financial ties to the development going forward or they had financial ties to the Mays. And Ray Bell, well, you could argue that he just wants to build a bridge or two.

For the folks who think I'm obsessed with the car culture, I've lived in DC and Chicago and in both I rarely drove a car. Living here, only last year did I actually hit 12k miles on my car. Usually I 'm in the 9-10k range because I've tried to live within a certain distance of where I work because I hate to commute.