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For Nashville’s preservationists, the new year came in, not with a bang, but a whimper. Last Tuesday, the Metro Council approved on second reading the zoning change for the Westin Hotel and condo complex proposed for the south side of Broadway between Second and Third avenues. During the public hearing, Westin proponents praised the economic impact of the 375-room hotel and 48 condos while opponents expressed fear that the 19-story, 201-foot-tall structure would overwhelm Lower Broad and fracture the area’s historic, low-rise character.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
What’s most discouraging to opponents of the development is that, with all the assaults and depredations Nashville’s historic architecture endured in the 20th century, so many of our citizens still don’t appreciate the sobering consequences in the 21st. In the last decade of the last century, there was a resurgence most apparent in downtown’s most historic areas. We collectively agreed that Opryland’s plan to demolish the Ryman Auditorium was a classic case of boneheaded venality, and that we’re lucky the preservationists took on the big guys to save it. We listened with pride to Prairie Home Companion on New Year’s Eve, as Garrison Keillor and Vince Gill toured the honky tonks. But many of us don’t seem to understand, as Keillor and Gill obviously do, that the more modest structures of Broadway are the platform on which the Ryman stands. And without that platform, in solid and complete condition, the Ryman would tell us as much about our history as an antebellum plantation home that’s now the clubhouse for a gated community cum golf course.
Nashville rolled over on its back and spread its legs for Planet Hollywood and NASCAR Cafe to bring economic development to Broadway. What these tourist traps left behind were two buildings whose upper levels no longer work because the internal relationship between floors and windows was destroyed—along with their listing on the National Register. Many Nashvillians are apparently still willing to roll over on their backs for any well-heeled developer with a franchise product he wants to plant in downtown.
And so, dealmaker and Metro Council member Mike Jameson has become persona non grata to the purists during this debate.
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Jameson, in whose district the Westin would sit, urged passage of the bill, pointing out that the site’s current zoning would allow “a fairly massive building already,” albeit with a wedding cake profile because of setback requirements for the tower. The zoning change would eliminate the profile regulation. Jameson lauded the developers—the Arkansas-based Barber Group and Denver’s Sage Hospitality—for their willingness to build to achieve basic certification by the U.S. Green Building Council, including some portions of green roof.
Part of the new building would infill what’s now surface parking on the corner of Broadway and Second Avenue. The current Broadway homes of Kelly’s Western Wear & Leather, Broadway Gifts and Decades would be demolished, while the three 19th century buildings housing Trail West would be rehabbed. The Richards & Richards records storage warehouse on Third Avenue—which represents one of the few historic building types remaining in SoBro—along with the law office building next door would also disappear.
To preserve what would be left of Broadway post-Westin, Jameson is preparing a bill to place a historic zoning overlay on the street from Fifth to First avenues, which the council member says he hopes to file Jan. 20. Such an overlay would prevent demolition of historic buildings and give Metro’s Historic Zoning Commission design review over new development.
“Because I knew that several council members still had major reservations about the project,” Jameson says he deferred the final vote on the project from Jan. 16 to Feb. 6 to allow for further discussion. That discussion will include a meeting Jameson has convened for next week. In addition to interested council members, he’s invited James Weaver, the attorney for the development team, as well as representatives of Metro’s Planning Department and Historical Commission, the Metro Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) and the Nashville Civic Design Center to try to reach what he calls a “genuine consensus.” Planning and historic commission staff members have objected strenuously to the Westin because of the scale and massing impacts, while MDHA has supported the project.
Topics Jameson wants the group to hash out include the developer’s claim that the condo portion, which adds six stories to the building’s height, is necessary to make the numbers work for the project. He’s asked staff from MDHA and the council to analyze the development team’s financial pro forma to evaluate the accuracy of this claim.
Jameson also says he “hasn’t given up” on reducing Westin’s height and wants to explore two strategies that might be used to bring it down. The first is a subsidy from MDHA called tax increment financing (TIF), which the agency employs to ease the financial way for desirable projects in its redevelopment districts. The Westin site lies within two redevelopment districts, but in recent years MDHA has used TIF to encourage only residential development, not hotels.
The second strategy is something called “transfer of development rights.” In this scenario, the owner of a property whose zoning permits the square footage for, say, a 19-story building sells the right to build some of that square footage to the owner of another property. The seller thus gets return for his investment in land without building to the maximum permitted envelope. The buyer gets to build bigger than his property’s zoning would allow.
Where land values are high, developers usually want to go high and wide with what they build, to max out their return. As Barber’s Brandon Rains explained at a public meeting last summer, “The land values, the economic factors dictate the number of rooms and that dictates the height.” But high and wide is usually a bad fit in historic districts, where the traditional scale is neither.
Thus the Planning Department has proposed this tool in its revision of the community plan for downtown, which is still working its way through the Metro pipeline. In the community plan, according to Planning spokeswoman Jennifer Carlat, the owner of any property within a historic zoning overlay would be eligible to sell some of his development rights to a buyer whose property lies within an area where big isn’t necessarily bad, such as the central core and parts of SoBro. The point, Carlat says, “is solely to reduce development pressures on historic areas.”
While Jameson is grappling with these gnarly issues, attorney James Weaver is working to shore up his votes in the Metro Council. He’s invited members to tour the Westin site, complete with running commentary by—you guessed it—James Weaver.