Political Notes
It’s not like business leaders expected the mayor to embrace their $455 million convention center proposal with open arms. From day one, they’ve known that massive public investments require massive public support. They even structured a sizable propaganda arm into their committee—a phalanx of flacks and communications types—with the explicit goal of getting skeptical taxpayers on board. After all, Bill Purcell didn’t envision his mayoral legacy having a six-block footprint and a host of user fees. It’s just not his style.
So they took a page from the Nashville Sounds’ playbook: design a proposal with minimum risk to Davidson County taxpayers, and pitch it simultaneously to a risk-averse mayor and the populace at large. If you can convince voters that it’s a worthwhile project and virtually cost-free to locals, then building a brand-new convention center will seem like a no-brainer. And voilà—you’ve got a cautious mayor’s support.
But there was a problem with the boosters’ plan: a half-billion-dollar tourism generator is about an order of magnitude larger than a minor-league ballpark, and infinitely less sexy. Approximately six Nashville residents imagine themselves hanging out at a new convention center, and they all work for the Convention and Visitors Bureau; the rest of us regard tourists as a necessary inconvenience at best. But beer, peanuts and baseball on a hot summer day, on the other hand, is an image that practically sold itself. Meanwhile, designing a $500 million funding package you can claim is cost-free to locals while keeping a straight face—that’s a tall order, even for bullshitting business types.
So it should have come as no surprise to anyone that Purcell quickly regarded a restaurant tax as D.O.A. and is equally underwhelmed by the idea of a downtown sales tax increase. (Those sentiments are even shared by some members of the convention center committee.) It also wasn’t too shocking when Hizzoner sent the convention center report to be double-checked by folks at the University of Tennessee and the Nashville Civic Design Center. After all, they have degrees in that sort of thing. But when he began stating publicly that the proposal might cost an extra 100 or 200 million bucks, that was the last straw. The debate hit the front page of the newspaper.
Purcell accuses the convention center supporters of downplaying the cost of an accompanying hotel and parking facility, for which the city would foot some of the bill in the form of deferred taxes and perhaps direct investment. “They acted as if there was no hotel in the report,” one source close to Purcell says. That’s not entirely true, but even some members of the convention center committee acknowledge that the hotel and parking costs were downplayed. In any event, they wish the mayor would shut up about the whole project while they make their case to the city.
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Unfortunately for the booster side, they returned a heftier recommendation than Hizzoner was expecting, which has prompted a skeptical, if not cold, response from his corner. According to the mayor’s office source, if the committee had recommended expanding the old facility, the project would likely already be under way. “Now that you’ve made this leap, we have to look at all the numbers,” this person says. “It doesn’t make sense for the mayor just to accept a report from a bunch of boosters.”
To his infinite credit, Purcell told the business leaders that they won’t automatically get their way. The ugly subtext, however, is that he will get his. “Purcell’s going to be Purcell, even in private. Why try and change Purcell?” one convention center booster says, noting that you’ve got to pitch things to him in just the right way: his way. “This isn’t the mayor’s type of project…but it’s on his agenda and he can’t ignore it.”
True enough. But when $500 million is on the line, you can’t blame him for taking things slowly.
“Blame Metro”
On Tuesday, interim Safety Dept. Commissioner Gerald Nicely sent an email to a bunch of state employees regarding the protest that brought traffic to a standstill late Monday. “The traffic tie-ups you experienced this evening were a Metro issue,” he wrote in a message that both directed blame elsewhere and praised Gov. Phil Bredesen for being “always open to meeting with constituents.” (See, this is why we recommended Nicely for the deputy governor post.)
Cue Deputy Mayor Bill Phillips for a response. “I think that Chief [Ronal] Serpas probably has more experience with crowd control and traffic control at one or two Mardi Gras than most of us get in a lifetime in Nashville,” Phillips tells the Scene. “I feel confident that his approach yesterday was the best one. Like football, there are a few Monday-morning quarterbacks—some of them in Metro government—but no one was injured, and media coverage was fair, balanced coverage. It was a well planned and executed strategy.”
Chamber CEO to go?
Chatty business tongues have been wagging for weeks now about the supposedly imminent, involuntary departure of Nashville Chamber of Commerce president Mike Neal. Speaking by phone from Captiva Island, Fla., Neal says don’t believe the hype: he’s got job security. “I think I have two-and-a-half years left in my contract,” he tells the Scene. We replied, chuckling, that it would be pretty expensive to get rid of him. He didn’t laugh.
That’s because, sources say, there’s a move afoot to buy him out of his contract, and a couple of local names are eyeing the job. (Call me back, guys.) Neal eventually lightened up and good-naturedly mentioned the sun and 88-degree temperatures he was enjoying in Florida. After all, you never know when there might be a vacancy at the Sanibel & Captiva Islands Chamber of Commerce.