Thursday, June 25, 2009
40 Jealous Whores / Hannan / Politics May Town: Why is the Planning Commission Voting Now?
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 11:07 AM
INCONVENIENT TIMING: Schedule Legislation so that the Public Hearing falls near a Holiday When dealing with a proposed development that you anticipate would face significant community opposition, it is important you get the timing right. Bring your proposals to the Council Member at a time that will allow you to ensure that the Public Hearing takes place at a time that it is inopportune. One of the most popular Council Meeting dates for such an activity is the first one of the year that often falls one or two days after the new year holiday. Other good dates to avoid public scrutiny include those near the 4th of July (emphasis ours), Thanksgiving and Christmas. If possible, create a sense of urgency that would make it seem that this timing is entirely accidental. A contract set to expire shortly after that date is one option.Really, the entirety of McCullough's playbook applies to May Town. But this section deserves special mention. So we've got Matthews creating this urgency, despite the fact that no reasonable person could suggest all the facts are laid out on the table. We've got a deadline date that offers proponents of the bill the best chance to stack the deck in their favor. And we've got Councilmembers like Jason Holleman and Emily Evans asking to defer, to give more time, not because they want to stall, but because there's still more planning to be done (a deferral which was refused by Matthews, btw). If you're one of those lucky (insane?) few who'll be packing the Planning Commission's meeting today at 4 PM, consider this just one more reason to question: Why are we doing all this now? (H/T to S-Town Mike at Enclave for tracking down the Developer's Playbook)
Comments (16)
Showing 1-16 of 16
I just got an email from my councilman, Jason Holleman, outlining some details I hadn't heard before. The traffic plan to accommodate MTC would likely mean a widening of White Bridge Road and Charlotte Ave. as well as smaller thoroughfares 46th and 51st Avenue. The developer's own suggesting involves ripping out the sidewalks on 46th and 51st.
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Doesn't ripping out the sidewalks violate the Mayor's push for a more walkable city?
Annonymous,
If Holleman said what you attribute to him, then he is conning his constituents. Are you sure you've quoted him correctly? Surely he knows that a 2005 TDOT long-range plan identified the need to widen I-40, Charlotte, Briley and White Bridge Road. Or, he should know. The I-40 widening alone would be terribly disruptive given the number of homes backing up to the ROW.
Nashville will grow and traffic will increase with or without May Town. The TODT plan was drafted three years before MTC was proposed! May Town represents a name and a place for a portion of that growth, not an addition to it.
People opine on this development as if there would be no additional traffic over the next 25 years driving through west Nashville without it. That's because it's what they've been led to believe.
Yet, the staff report to the planning commission, which continues to be ignored, shows census estimates of 100,000 more people living in Nashville by 2035, the year May Town is projected to be built out.
Worse, 800,000 more folks are projected to be in surrounding counties. There's lots of available land out 70/I-40 and not much traffic for the commute compared to ther spokes; seems a good place for future growth. Do the math.
If all 35,000 jobs promised by Giantarra went downtown instead, with 800,000 more people living outside Nashville, how many thousand more folks will be driving through your neighborhood getting from point A to point B? Where's THAT traffic study?????See, whoever is trying to influence you isn't telling you that. They'll just hide the projections in order to use you, even as they point to Gianntara's team for unfair marketing practices.
Unsaid in all that flack is that if those 35,000 jobs went to May Town instead of downtown, commuters would get off I-40 at Exit 199 in Bellevue to get across that 3rd bridge that TDOT has also been planning since before May Town was proposed. That ought to be considered as well when determining what's best for the area.
David, you've still not addressed how anyone is supposed to believe a word that comes out of y'all's mouth now after you've been caught lying on your zoning application.
How can anyone in the city have any kind of real discussion with you guys in the face of that? We can't talk about real costs, because no one knows how much money it will take to dig up the archaeological sites that might be present under the MTC footprint, because y'all don't know what archaeological sites are there, no matter how much you misrepresent Ms. Law's work.
This also means that your estimates of when MTC would be done are also just numbers you're pulling out of your butt. You haven't even begun to estimate how many bodies might be under the MTC site and what it's going to cost you in terms of time or money to go to court and get permission to move them and then the costs associated with moving them or how long those kinds of projects might take.
At this point, I don't even see how people who support development in the Bend aren't nervous about working with y'all.
We can't have a thoughtful consideration of if and how to develop the Bend if y'all will not be square with the people of Nashville.
That's just the bottom line.
CM Holleman's e-mail to Richland West End can be read here:
http://enclave-nashville.blogspot.com/2009/06/cm-holleman-warns-richland-west-end.html
I'll also note that David has refused to deal with Caleb's primary point about the rather sinister timing of Matthews' bill, which effectively discourages not just an informed public response, but a limited public response with the distraction of the mid-summer holiday.
They cannot market this thing effectively when most would be off vacations and paying full attention in September. So, they're trying to sneak it past the goalie in July.
Charlie Tygard is doing exactly the same thing with his LED bill. This is the way developers and their campaign finance beneficiaries on Metro Council typically deal with hearing from the public.
Here is the language from the email I received:
Hello everyone,
By now most, if not all, of you have read and heard much about the proposed May Town project, and many of you have contacted me with your opinions. While I know that a lot of information -- both for and against -- has been widely distributed throughout the city, I feel an obligation as your District Councilman to make you aware of concerns that I have about the the specific impact that this project would have on our district.
Although it would currently take about 30 minutes to drive from District 24 to the proposed development site, the construction of the two bridges recommended in the Metro Planning Department's staff report will place our neighborhoods within less that 1 mile from May Town Center.
According to the traffic study performed by RPM (an independant study performed at Metro's request), this development will generate a total of 61,000+ new daily trips during the initial phase of the project.
Obviously, much of this traffic will utilize already heavily-burdened throughfares in our area such as Charlotte Avenue, White Bridge Road, and West End/Harding.
In fact, MPD anticipates that the project will raise traffic levels such that both I-40 and White Bridge Road will have to be significantly widened.
Even our smaller, neighborhood streets will be impacted. Both the developer's and Metro's traffic study indicate that turn lanes will have to be added to 46th Avenue and 51st Avenue to accomodate the additional traffic (the developer's traffic study actually offers the removal of existing sidewalks as a possible solution to add capacity to these streets).
For more information on these issues, you may access numerous documents about this proposal at the Metro Planning Department's website: http://www.nashville.gov/mpc/bellsbend_maytown_info.htm. You may also read the very detailed analysis posted by CM Emily Evans on her blog: http://metrocouncildistrict23.blogspot.com/.
Finally, please be aware that the Metro Planning Commission is holding its final public hearing on the matter today at 4:00 p.m. at the Metro Southeast building on Murfreesboro Road. I strongly encourage you to attend and speak if you have concerns about the impact of this project on our neighborhoods and commercial corridors. Your testimony does have an impact. Although not as effective as attending the meeting, you may also e-mail or call the Metro Planning Commissioners prior to today's meeting.
THen the memo goes on to list the planning commissioners.
Now, David, if there are 35,000 more jobs in downtown Nashville, I imagine one thing will happen and another will not. What won't happen is any particular impact on 46th or 51st Avenues or White Bridge Road. What I suspect WILL happen is that there will be a lot more demand for the half-empty condos that have been springing up in the downtown corridor, because people who are filling all those downtown jobs will want to work there.
In any case, you're not answering the extremely relevant question posed at the beginning of this thread: What is the big damn rush? You people don't realize how much you're creating the impression that you're simply buying off the commissioners instead of selling MTC on its merits.
From the BPM report:
The May Town center (MTC) Traffic Impact Study (TIS) lists the following projects as planned transportation improvements from the Nashville Area Metropolitan Organization (MPO) 2030 Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP):
Charlotte Pike (SR-24) - The widening of Charlotte Pike from Old Hickory Blvd to west of Briley Parkway...
I-40W - the widening of Interstate $0 from US 70S to I-440...
White Bridge Road (SR-155) - The widening of White Bridge Road from Charlotte Pike (SR-24) to Harding Pike (US70S)...
Old Hickory Boulevard - the widening, realignment, and construction of a new river and railroad bridge for Old Hickory Blvd from Ashland City Hwy (SR-12) to Charlotte Pike (US-70)...
http://nashville.gov/mpc/pdfs/main/MTCTrafficImpactStudy.pdf
The problem RPM had with this list is that they are not currently funded projects. In fact, RPM goes on to point out these are only part of "400 planned transportation projects" to the year 2030.
Further, on page 2 of their Tech Memo #9, RPM does not call for ANY of the above planned projects to have to be any bigger than currently proposed. Added ramps and signals, yes.
So, someone please square for me the statements from Holleman scaring the crap out of people over May Town-induced road projects with the facts clearly presented by RPM in the very report he's citing that these projects came from a long-range tranportation plan that existed before May Town?
Mike - I don't want to comment on the "sinister timing" of Matthews bill because I just don't care. Nor did I comment on the coordination of11th hour issue of archaeological sites with local media, TV and print. Nor do I want to comment on the timing of the study on agri-tourism that deals with land the study's backers will ever acquire nor is even needed for the agri-tourism to succeed... also deftly coordinated with local media "echo chambers," as you call them when you disagree. It's all two sides of the same coin, and Holleman is taking one side. It's fun to see people believe theirs is the high road as they strive to match their opponent's moves punch for punch.
So, let me get this straight. My stumbling on y'all's inability to be truthful about the archaeological study you claim to have done but didn't is now a "coordination"?!
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Did I hack into your zoning application and use my mad computer skills to make it look like you told the city you'd done a survey you hadn't? Did I go back in time to put those dead bodies in the ground right where you wanted to build your suburb?
Just how far does this one-woman conspiracy against you stretch?
"Nor did I comment on the coordination of11th hour issue of archaeological sites with local media, TV and print."
Please don't believe this, David. We're not smart enough to coordinate within our own paper, much less with everyone else in town.
For the interested Driver49 is tweeting the meeting.
https://twitter.com/driver49
Ha, yes, "tweeting the meeting" is now a phrase that has meaning. What strange times we live in.
"So, let me get this straight. My stumbling on y'all's inability to be truthful about the archaeological study you claim to have done but didn't is now a 'coordination'?!"
1. So sorry to disappoint ya'll, Aunt B., but I have nothing whatever to do with the Bells Bend partners or May Town. I was born here and do find this project, and others like it that may come afterward, vital to the future of Nashville outside of the CDB, where most people in the city live. I hate the fact that the surrounding counties are prospering while many of our neighborhoods are in decline.
2. I truly believe that it's stupid to scream "preserve Bells Bend," which has 800 preserved acres for just that purpose, when census projections have 800,000 more people added to surrounding counties by 2030, probably eating up a million acres of greenspace, mostly agricultural area.
3. I already addressed your distrust issue. The truth is you don't trust the city to carry out its duty to make the developers stick with the conditions of their zoning application. Why else would you make such an issue of the developer's trustworthiness unless you felt the various city officials involved in planning and permitting are corrupt?
Not to get all Planning Nerd-y on y'all (but I'm a planner, so what the hell): under TN state law (even for Metros, which are the odd ducks of political units in this state) a Planning Commission is *only* a recommending body to the legislative body on matters of rezonings and PUDs. The legislative body (in this case Metro Council) has almost complete discretion on any matter that requires legislative authority. Metro Council will be the final decision-maker on this matter, whatever the timeline is for the Planning Commission.
So I laughed out loud reading this comment thread. This led to me reading the highlights to my husband. His response: "Aunt B is not to be trifled with." Word.
For a bit of perspective, during the West Nashville sub-area plan meetings over the past 2 years (which have been railroaded now thanks to this MTC nonsense), planning staff:
(a) made it clear that various parts of the LRTP -- those same parts that RPM said would have to be accelerated to make MTC feasible on a traffic basis -- were basically "on the shelf", unfunded, un-"planned" (in a "would this really work", "how much would it cost", "what would be the real impacts and/or triggers" sense), and un-budgeted
(b) recommended that various of these items be *removed* from the LRTP as inconsistent with the West Nashville subarea plan
It's seemingly all well and good to say "this stuff is coming anyway so shut your pie-hole", but the fact of the matter is that such a statement is disingenuous at best.
Planning staff, working outside the considerations of May Town concerns were pushing to *reduce* traffic in West Nashville, improve corridors (such as Charlotte Pike), make the area more walkable, improve the Richland greenway, etc. Once May Town forced it's swollen money cock into the process, planning staff had to say "we have to postpone consideration of the West Nashville subarea plan, and for MTC to be remotely possible all those LRTP projects not only have to stay on the LRTP, they have to happen ASAP".
Good times.
