Road Kill

“God made the country,” writes the poet William Cowper, “and man made the town.” One can only guess who made the suburb, but the devil is in the details. A classic, perhaps even defining feud is brewing among townspeople, preservationists and developers in one of the most picturesque underdeveloped areas in outlying Nashville, in the community of Scottsboro. At stake in this battle is whether the county’s future is indisputably and irrevocably urban, and if its remaining rural residents have any choice but to accept that.

The Metro Planning Department is trying to strike a balance. In their plan for the Scottsboro-Bells Bend community in northwest Davidson County, the staff has laid out a blueprint for the preservation of the natural and rural character of much of the area. Yet their plan also supports a proposal to insert a massive development called the May Town Center onto 500 rolling acres in Bells Bend. And that has residents crying betrayal.

The proposed town center is essentially a second downtown built from scratch—a very seductive concept for planners and developers. The financial stakes are equally enormous. Hundreds of millions stand to be made by the developers and Metro’s tax collectors. The town center would require expenditures almost as vast as its potential revenues—a whole new infrastructure—with who pays for what still to be determined.

The plan for May Town is urban rather than suburban design, and is more environmentally sensitive than the big box developments of Middle Tennessee’s past. But it’s still a lot of big boxes that have generated furious resistance from Scottsboro-Bells Bend community members, historically leery of development.

Both proponents and opponents have enlisted all-star teams of high-profile lobbyists, who leverage close relationships with governors, mayors and Metro Council members. When the options are laid before the Metro Planning Commission on July 24, the final vote could set Nashville on a highly experimental course that the region has never attempted to explore: whether urban and rural can coexist. Scottsboro residents don’t trust that Metro can reinvent the wheel, or in this case, the country.

“We’ve got enough messes in town that they’re trying to clean up,” says longtime resident Jimmy Lewis. “Look at Dickerson Road and all the money put into reviving downtown. They should clean them up and not mess up more out here. This is just a get-rich-quick scheme.”

God’s countryThe Scottsboro community, of which Bells Bend is a part, is tiny—350 households. But it features the largest remaining agricultural and forested landscape in the Davidson County—13,000 acres. What some residents call “NoSco” lies north of Ashland City Highway and climbs to the West Highland Rim. “SoSco” is Bells Bend, a peninsula south of the highway inscribed by the Cumberland River and bisected by Old Hickory Boulevard. The site for the proposed Town Center sits in the Bend’s southern end east of Old Hickory, near the road’s terminus at the river and across the road from the 800-acre Bells Bend Park.

Despite its proximity to Nashville’s suburban and urban areas—you can see the downtown skyline five miles away from the higher ridges—Scottsboro has stayed rural in part because of its topography: floodway and floodplain along the river rimming the Bend, with much of the inland portion steep slopes sliced by narrow hollows. Metro codes forbid building in floodways and there are restrictions—and expenses—to developing floodplains and hillsides. The lack of sewer lines and good vehicular access has also limited development. The Bend in particular is infrastructure-challenged, a sort of gated-community without the gates because there’s only one way in and out. And that way—Old Hickory—is two curvy, narrow lanes with minimal shoulders.

As a result, Scottsboro is even today a place where homesteads can go back for generations, where gunshots ring out during deer season. The Lewis Country Store & More, which sits at the intersection of Old Hickory and Ashland City Highway, is the commercial “hub” of Scottsboro. There people pump gas, buy convenience and deli food—the milk shakes are first-rate—admire the Lewis collection of guns, taxidermied animals and funky signs and, on warm summer evenings, strum fiddles and guitars on the broad front porch.

But Ashland City Highway is now four lanes with urban lighting, lanes that are delivering subdivisions to points north (along Eatons Creek Road), east and west. Development is coming as Metro Nashville’s greenfields are vanishing, and what was once considered topographically and socially rugged territory—the area has always lacked the gentility of southwest Davidson and Williamson counties—is now looming in the crosshairs of those who turn land into real estate.

May TownThe latest to draw a bead are Jack May and Tony Giarratana. The local May family, which holds a lot of downtown real estate and also counts the Belle Meade office park and shopping center in its portfolio, owns 1,400 acres in Bells Bend and wants to put May Town Center (MTC) on 500 of them. Giarratana, known for delivering high-rise residential to downtown, is serving as master developer.