What ballpark? In a few short weeks, city chatter will shift to talk of a much more ambitious project than the $43 million sports stadium plan unveiled by the Nashville Sounds two weeks ago. In the next 30 to 45 days, a big-shot study committee led by restaurateur Randy Rayburn and BellSouth executive Marty Dickens is expected to recommend a massive new convention center facility for Nashville, to be located in the SoBro neighborhood behind the arena. Although no final decision has been made, several people involved with the process tell the Scene that the recommendation will not be to expand the existing facility in accordance with an outside study released last year. Instead, if the group can get its proposed funding streams in order, their plan will be huge: a 1.2 million-square-foot facility, including up to 400,000 square feet of contiguous exhibition hall space, occupying at least a four-city-block footprint of nearly 15 acres—not counting the attached anchor hotel and parking accommodations. The cost? Over $400 million, paid for by a host of user fees that would involve changes in state and local law. It would be a humongous undertaking—potentially the single largest locally funded public project in Tennessee history—but proponents say the new “Music City Center,” as it has been dubbed, is worth the long-term cost. “We have a choice to make,” says one participant, appraising the city’s situation. “We have to decide whether or not we’re going to be in the hospitality, tourism and convention business or whether we’re going to fall out, because many experts would say we’ve fallen out.” Indeed, last year’s KPMG study confirmed what many had suspected: the Nashville Convention Center’s 118,000-square-foot exhibit space was puny and outdated compared to the many hundreds of thousands of square feet offered by other cities. As a result, 80 percent of meeting planners who had held events in Nashville said they wouldn’t return—and many folks weren’t interested in the Opryland Hotel’s suburban biodome convention space. The study essentially said that for between $180 and $200 million, the current convention center could be expanded north or south, providing a total of 250,000 to 300,000 square feet of exhibit space. Mayor Bill Purcell dutifully accepted the report and tapped Rayburn and Dickens “to test all the assumptions” about cost and financing, the feasibility of land acquisition and construction. “And if they decide that the study is right, then I’ve requested they make a recommendation on which scenario works best,” Purcell told the Scene a year ago, noting that he leaned toward the northward expansion himself. But both options were fraught with a uniquely Nashville peril: churches. Purcell made it clear that he wasn’t in the business of using eminent domain powers to seize church buildings from God-fearing downtown worshipers. It doesn’t take an Old Testament prophet to foresee political apocalypse. So the committee of 50 or so business and civic leaders divided themselves into four groups—site, size, funding and spin, albeit with fancier names—and got to work scrutinizing the recommendation to expand the existing facility. Ultimately, they will answer some key questions. What size convention center does Nashville need to compete with cities of a similar size? What attributes must such a facility have? Where should it be located—either an expansion of the current convention center or a brand new one? How much will all these options cost, and can tax revenues collected from tourists bankroll them? And finally, how do you convince the city of Nashville that it would be wise to issue more than $400 million in public bonds to support such a project? Is this worth doing, how should it be done—and at what cost? On Oct. 18, in the mayor’s conference room, Rayburn, Dickens and Ralph Schulz, CEO of Adventure Science Center and vice chair of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, met with Purcell and Deputy Mayor Bill Phillips to give them an update on the convention center committee’s progress. “We wanted to explain why we didn’t have a final recommendation in,” says Dickens, noting that the committee took more time than it had hoped because it wanted to do a thorough job. During the mostly paperless meeting, the trio described their expected recommendation: a brand new, 15-acre convention center and hotel complex that would sit between Demonbreun and Franklin streets, and between Fifth and Eighth avenues, behind the arena and next to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The behemoth structure would displace the Greyhound bus station, a power substation, some parking and an MTA landport, among other things. It would be financed by passing a state law to create a tourism development zone downtown and by increasing restaurant, hotel and rental car taxes, along with other fees paid primarily by visitors. That, they said, could be expected to generate funds to issue the upwards of $400 million in bonds that would be necessary. The new “Music City Center” would be architecturally appealing, proponents say, and integrated into the New Urbanist aesthetic that’s supposed to define the Franklin Street Corridor (if, that is, the Franklin Street project is ever completed). It won’t just be another big glass or concrete box, they say. But critics point out that SoBro is becoming something of a valley of the giants: the arena, the Hilton, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the new symphony hall and potentially the ballpark would all be located in that area. It’s an intimidating landscape of mega-buildings that dwarf the urban passerby; the humongous convention center could amplify that ugly sensation, or, alternatively, it could be constructed in a way that preserves some idea of an urban walking neighborhood. Perhaps a mixed-use convention center is in order? The Plan of Nashville, released this year, suggests that if a new convention center is to be built, it should be sited in the north end of the Gulch, with multilevel access to Church Street above and Eleventh Avenue below. There it could anchor a transitioning neighborhood without disrupting the urban street grid. But the convention center committee has apparently rejected that idea, deeming the available space too small. Kate Monaghan, executive director of the Nashville Civic Design Center, the nonprofit that wrote The Plan of Nashville, says her organization hasn’t yet been consulted by the committee but expects to be. “We have asked for the folks connected with developing this project to let us know what their thinking is, and what the plan might be,” she says. “So far, we have not seen anything.” Then there’s the option to expand the current facility, which advocates of building a new one insist is foolish. The scenarios presented in the KPMG report were rather rosy, they say, and by now the cost of acquiring valuable land north of the existing convention center would be too expensive. Furthermore, convention guests say that the columns in the current building don’t match up with “column-free” industry standards and the hotel doesn’t meet all their needs. And then there’s a future problem: the crowded area north of Broadway will limit further expansion in, say, 25 years, when the expanded facility again starts feeling cramped. Finally, the inconvenience of a multiyear expansion project might drive away business from the current center; build a new one, and you’d never have to scale back your convention business. That said, building a half-billion-dollar convention facility is a huge undertaking, financially, logistically and—perhaps most importantly—politically. The city would need to begin acquiring property in SoBro as soon as possible, which could result in time-consuming court challenges by landowners who feel cheated by the government’s purchase offer. Then there’s demolition, grading and literally tons of construction; insiders say three years would be an ambitious pace. Designing it thoughtfully and meticulously—with all of the city’s needs in mind—might take even longer. Of course, nothing can happen without the political will to make it happen. And it’ll take a lot of politicking to get Nashville to drop a cool half-billion into a building most locals will never use. That’s why the big-shot business and civic leaders who are driving this project are going to such great lengths to make their pitch irresistible: when the professionally drafted report is released next month, hundreds of pages of supporting documents will be attached. The group’s aim is to convince Nashville that without investing in tourism, the city’s second-largest industry (behind health care), the local economy will suffer. Really, though, the bizpigs are pitching to an audience of one: Bill Purcell. The mayor isn’t a man known to invest huge chunks of public money in capital projects like stadiums and convention centers, and with 21 months left on the job, he’s pretty free to do whatever he wants. Right now, the Scene is told, he’s not planning to champion the convention center project because it’s huge and he doesn’t have time to see it through to completion. (He wants to avoid leaving too many obligations for his successor, apparently remembering that Bredesen left him holding a bag or two.) Instead, he’s likely to receive the group’s report and put it in the next chief’s inbox. Might he appoint an “implementation task force” to run out the clock? Sure he might. But if the Metro Council and the public become convinced that it’s in the city’s best interest to build a new convention center ASAP, Hizzoner could get behind it. He’s been trying to burnish his business credentials lately and probably would be loathe to get on the wrong side of a popular economic agenda. Never underestimate the power of a well-financed public relations campaign: the 21st century incarnation of “NFL Yes!” could be “Invest in Music City!” If Nashville’s business community has anything to say about it—and they do—by this time next year, Purcell will have turned over a shovelful of dirt somewhere south of Broadway. Dickens, the BellSouth executive who’s heading up the convention center task force, is quick to recount all the convention business Nashville no longer gets: the International Music Products Association (NAMM), John Deere, the Association of Percussive Arts and many more. Despite wanting to be in Nashville, they’ve all gone to cities with more and better convention space. “We’re at a point, I know the data will show, if we sit still and don’t do anything…we have no chance of growing this business from a $3 billion to a $5 billion industry for this community,” says Dickens, citing the mayor’s target tourism number. “We will indeed fall back—because of limited space, not because of lack of desire to come here. But we won’t have the facilities to serve them.” The convention center committee will lay out scenarios that forecast what would happen if the city does nothing, if it chooses to expand the current facility or if it accepts their recommendation to build a new one. “What I can assure you is that when this report is issued, it will graphically point it out,” says Dickens, declining to confirm his committee’s expected recommendation. “We will have the statistics to show the cost of not doing anything, where it’s going to take us and what it’s already done to us.” He says the report will address the city’s immediate needs as well as 20 or 30 years down the road. Once the report is released, the ball will be in Purcell’s court. Which means it will be up to Nashville’s business leaders to make their case to the city and, indirectly, to him. They say they’re ready. “Our hope would be that we would have this going, that the mayor and the business community and everybody in the city would get behind this and that we would have this moving at a full boil before Mayor Purcell ends his term,” Dickens says. “There’s going to be a lot to do. It’s going to take all of us to make it happen. It’s going to take moving now.” Can the bizpigs make a convincing case that it’s riskier for Nashville to do nothing than it is to pony up the cash for a convention center? The conventional wisdom says yes—but only time will tell.