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Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:56:15 -0500 From: "Rick Bradley" To: (All members of the Metro Nashville Planning Commission) Subject: Bell's Bend (May Town) Development -- opposition and a new civic art project To whom it may concern: I am writing to express my opposition to the impending Plan for the Bell's Bend Area, as recommended by the May Town developers. However, given this project's inevitability, I am also writing to announce the commencement of a civic art project to commemorate this historic achievement. I am a homeowner in the Robertson/Urbandale/Nations neighborhood, a constant voter, and will be at the July 24th 4pm Planning Commission meeting at 1417 Murfreesboro Pike to observe who is responsible for selling out both the irreplaceable undeveloped Bell's Bend sanctuary and my neighborhood, which will be the causeway through which massive traffic will pour, over a taxpayer-funded new bridge and necessarily upgraded roadways. Rather than forking over one of our greatest civic assets in a rush to cash in with developer "Tony G" in another of his fiscally reckless gaping urban holes, we need to give strong consideration to returning to the path the Planning Commission was pursuing just a few months ago. We need to consider how valuable a rural buffer, a farming community, a recreational area, and a green zone is to a growing metropolis of Nashville. Our Mayor suggests we become the greenest city in the Southeast. When questioned on Friday as to why we are setting our sights so low, Mayor Dean cautioned slow and steady progress. To be frank, Mayor Dean is certainly aware that a city which recently gave a scant $50,000 of its budget to promoting (token) environmental efforts ("lets put city employees on the bus!") while handing over its last intact green space to developers with a track record of failed and failing urban development will never compete with cities such as Portland, OR; Ann Arbor, MI; and Boulder, CO. All of these cities had the foresight and the power of will to capture huge swaths of green space, preserving them against development, and concentrating growth into the urban core. Property values in those cities are high, the brightest minds in business are attracted there, and the cities have committed to real and successful environmental policies. Instead, we are now -- after the Planning Commission so recently gave public lip service to reasoned planning of a slow-growth Bell's Bend policy -- committed to sapping the resources of the urban core and promoting rapid Atlanta-style, Houston-style, and, dare we say, Antioch-style suburban growth. Let's replace a place that nearly everyone (who doesn't place his multi-million dollar pocketbook foremost in mind) wants to preserve, and a downtown which could in 10-15 years join the shortlist with Portland, Boulder, and Ann Arbor, with another Southeast smear of suburban chain franchise around a dying downtown, neither of which anyone will care about in that same 15 years time. Given that it's obvious to everyone willing to call a spade by its rightful name that someone(s) on the Planning Commission has almost certainly been meeting with developers, lobbyists, and campaign contributors outside the provisions of the Tennessee "Sunshine Law"; that the sudden waving of potential cash by developers and the well-connected May family has quickly turned the heads of the friends of Buddy Baker, et al; and that the interests, both short- and long-term, of Nashvillians here and future have been sold down the river by so-called "Planners" "compromising" merely to be associated with the "next Cool Springs" (yea, verily this such a rare opportunity that may never arise again...), let me here announce a new civic venture being inaugurated in your honor: Citizens of Nashville, please lend your support and donations in commemorating our civic visionaries, foresighted developers, planners who toiled in heretofore unheralded misery, hammering out the divine compromise that would lead us, finally, to this plateau -- this figurehead on the prow, the crowning point on our civic cathedral -- launching the great city of Nashville, a thoroughbred among metropolises, into the lead in the race among enlightened cities everywhere. The May Town Development stands now with Opry Mills mall -- unique among malls everywhere, presumably by having Opry in its name -- slayer of the horrendous Opryland, which never brought a dollar to our fair city, nor a tourist, nor a job, and has never been missed being so much like any other park in America, so banal. May Town stands like the perpetually unfinished Signature Tower, as a reminder of potential, what could be, and for that we are grateful. Who could have predicted that when so many development projects were halted, when so many lofts and condominiums sat empty, when so many boondoggles, small and large, dotted the metro Nashville landscape, that anyone would be so adventurous as to sweep them all away with a simple Plan and create that which surpassed them all -- the Bell's Bend Boondoggle? That is why we are committed to commemorating this same forward thinking and selfless service to our community with a statue to rival the stunning likeness of General Nathan Bedford Forrest still gracing Interstate 65. Phase I will encompass design submissions and site selection. Our current guidelines for the draft Request for Proposals (RFP) note that the sculpture must include a larger-than-life developer Tony Giarratana, meeting pointer stick aloft in his right hand, fistful of cash held out in his left hand. We hope to see him astride such Nashville features as the Wabash Cannonball, the new Sounds stadium and riverfront dreamplex arisen from the ashes of the Omohundro power facility, the necessarily demolished 328 Performance Hall, and such other boondoggles, civic planning snafus, and developer follies as might appeal to the civic art connoisseur. Submissions should include proposals for materials in use in Phase III (site construction). Bonus points will be given during the selection ranking for use of lost Nashville artifacts. Examples include portions of the original Loveless Cafe sign, structural elements from the Jacksonian, a bottled sample of the escaped soul of Melrose Lanes. Perhaps we will truly luck out: maybe the new Plan will require demolishing the Belcourt Theatre for flex-space offices where City Planners can waive a decade of taxation for May Town corporate residents -- then the go-getter artist will have fresh Nashvilliana to incorporate. RFPs will then be ranked according to published criteria, with rankings discarded and final selection made according to whim, with some positive consideration given to whether site selection inconviences and relocates lower- or middle-class Nashvillians. Phase II will include elaboration of detailed designs and models. Of course, Phase II would normally include project funding, but we have chosen to adopt the same strategy in use by the Planning Commission and May Town developers: we will simply fabricate upward trending graphs in a powerpoint slideshow, thereby demonstrating the return to the community in hard cash on a pro forma basis (so pro forma to guarantee all involved with the proposal are safely returned to an island manse), and then later force the city to levy a tax to recoup our costs when those numbers turn out to be obvious fiction and to include none of the real costs of the project. The statue will be accompanied with a commemorative plaque, naming those who gave so much to leave us with so little: Tony Giarratana, Jack May, Rick Bernhardt, James McLean, Phil Ponder, Hunter Gee, Stewart Clifton, Judy Cummings, Tonya Jones, Victor Tyler, Derrick Dalton, Andree LeQuire, Jim Gotto, dear old Buddy Baker ... and countless unmarked non-sequential bills. We hope you and other Nashvillians will contribute your support to this important highlighting of our civic heritage. Best, Rick Bradley <My Address>, Nashville, TN

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