A Metro Public Works study envisions the Franklin Street Corridor as a seven-lane road connecting a new bridge across the Cumberland and a new viaduct across the Gulch. In that scenario the Demonbreun viaduct would be demolished, and the new corridor would swoop south of Cummins Station before hooking up with Demonbreun.

The study is controversial. Critics claim it would fragment SoBro and that it would be hostile to pedestrians. During the SoBro Charrette Metro Council member Leo Waters expressed his concern that the corridor will have a “Berlin Wall effect.”

The design team’s solution does away with the concept of the corridor as a bypass. Instead, the team suggests a tree-lined Franklin “boulevard” that is a major public space, a “great street” like Monument Avenue in Richmond or Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. The boulevard would carry traffic into SoBro from the east, but it would not continue over the Gulch. Access from the west would be provided by a rehabbed Demonbreun viaduct, which would remain an important link to Music Row. The primary traffic arteries from the south—Lafayette Street and Eighth Avenue—would come together with Franklin at a major intersection—either a circle or a square featuring public art. Mixed-use development along the boulevard would be restricted to a maximum of seven stories. There would be first-floor retail to generate street-level interest.

The Franklin Boulevard plan is the design team’s central achievement. The boulevard would be a border, but not a barrier, between the taller, mostly commercial development to the north and the hoped-for three-to-five-story residential development that might happen to the south.

“The treatment of Franklin is the keystone of the whole plan,” says Steve Tocknell, a local transportation planner. “Using Franklin and Demonbreun as two-way pairs disperses rather than concentrates traffic. It makes Franklin a way into the city rather than a bypass around it.”

Growing Low

The team recommends development that is dense rather than high. “The height of buildings is crucial to creating a space out of the street,” said team member Erin Miller. “Too low and the street lacks definition, too high and it’s inhumane. The opportunity is to make a room.”

Structures built right on the sidewalk become the walls for the “room.” First-floor retail creates visual interest at street level. The walls of the room would not be broken up because parking lots would be located behind buildings, with access through alleys. The plan calls for buildings of a gradually decreasing height as SoBro steps away from the central core. North of Franklin, buildings would be no more than seven or eight stories high; south of Franklin three to five stories would be the limit.

A North-South Spine

Taking a cue from the park that appears in the Gateway Plan on Fifth Avenue opposite the arena, the Design Team links Fourth and Fifth Avenues with a series of small parks. The result is a north-south lifeline for SoBro’s live-work district; it also connects SoBro into the central core. The spine stretches all the way from Bicentennial Mall to the north into the Cameron neighborhood south of I-40.

Rolling Mill Hill and The Rutledge Neighborhood

SoBro could become a haven for small, creative businesses that utilize computer technology. Design Team member Marleen Davis suggested that such businesses could “complement the commercial development of downtown rather than siphon energy away.”

The team suggested that downtown housing would be especially appealing if it were designed in live-work units—typically with a downstairs office and an upstairs living space. “These units would appeal to a clear ‘niche’ housing market, and, because of the compactness of the downtown, high-speed wiring services would cost much less than in the suburbs,” Davis said.

In the charrette plan this new housing would surround the Howard

School complex and the new public spaces of Rutledge Square

and Ryman Park.

Disperse, don’t concentrate

Whether the issue is traffic, the homeless, low-income housing, or prostitution, the Design Team recommends dispersal. A heavy concentration of cars leads to traffic jams and shell-shocked pedestrians. On the other hand, a network of busy sidewalks, filled with workers, neighbors, shoppers, and tourists is truly lively. A few homeless vagrants can blend into a crowd; dozens lead to an avoidance strategy.

The Cameron Neighborhood

This area, the housing projects south of I-40 in the historic black neighborhood known as Cameron-Trimble, is actually outside the boundaries of SoBro. Still, the Design Team stressed its importance to downtown. ”Segregating poverty into housing blocks cut off from downtown by an interstate creates situations of social pathology,” said one Design Team member. The charrette team suggested integrating scattered-site public housing into SoBro, with additional housing and recreation on the site of the present “project.” “If a neighborhood school is ever developed for SoBro,” said team member Stroud Watson, “it will require playing fields. In the suburbs these fields can eat up acres and acres. In an urban area the space is not there and alternative strategies are required. All the recreational areas we are proposing—not just in the Cameron neighborhood, but in the Gulch and along the river—can make an urban school possible.”

Gulch Fields

Several members of the Design Team noted that there is still plenty of undeveloped land in the gulch. They saw in this open space an opportunity for recreational development that would be accessible, after hours, to downtown workers, residents of SoBro’s new housing, and the neighborhoods to the west across the interstate.

The team’s solution is an urban park that acknowledges the site’s past and its present uses—both for railroad tracks and for parking. The memory of the old railroad roundhouse is evoked by a circular, tree-lined space for recreation, maybe a skating rink.

“This linear park would not try to be what it so obviously is not: a wild, romantic urban forest,” said team member Warren Byrd. “Rather the park would function as a connected series of recreational fields. The fields would not hide or screen out their industrial situation—they would openly acknowledge it.”

The Design Team’s ideas fit right in with the Rolling Mill Hill Plan developed by the Nashville Downtown Partnership. Like the Partnership, the Design Team liked the idea of artists’ studios in the Metro motor vehicle service sheds. They also called for residential development on the site of General Hospital and for Hermitage Avenue’s transformation into a pleasant commercial street.

The urban designers focused on the potential for greenspace along the Cumberland, suggesting that the river bluffs could be reserved for a public promenade. Because it is not suitable for other development, the floodplain below the bluffs could provide space for active recreation, such as a ball field. The promenade might ultimately extend to Riverfront Park, preserving public access to the river.