Street View is a monthly column in which we’ll take a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
Steadfast and True Yoga in Germantown strives to be an escape from the stress of the outside world. But lately, Germantown’s construction boom has made getting there anything but peaceful.
“We’ve definitely had more issues getting to the studio in the last year than we’ve had in the last five years — not from events, just from construction,” says Mary Beth Harding, an instructor and manager at the yoga studio. Closures on Third Avenue North have made both students and teachers late, says Harding, and often “students can’t find a way to the studio because everything except the alley will be closed.”
Over the past few years, Steadfast and True has been pretty much surrounded by construction, including development at nearby Peyton Stakes apartments, Taylor Germantown apartments, The Flats at Taylor Place, and a property at 1414 Third Ave. N. In early August, a three-building complex on nearby Sixth Avenue sold for $7.1 million. And east of the studio, there’s the Neuhoff District, a 14-acre mixed-use project including hundreds of new rental units, retail space and more.
For some Germantown businesses, road closures and delays are an inconvenience. For others, they’re also a financial liability. Harding says Steadfast and True has lost students because of street closures, and she’s canceled workshops because clients say getting to Germantown is too complicated. Lately, students have shown up to classes with traffic on their minds. “By the time they get here, they’re really stressed, or they’re worried about leaving the studio,” Harding says. “And especially for a yoga studio, we would like everyone to be limited in their stress.”
While road closures affect drivers in Germantown, they can also be dangerous for pedestrians, cyclists and people who use wheelchairs and other mobility devices. In August 2022, Nashville’s Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure introduced a multimodal access closure policy to help make construction safer for these groups. NDOT’s new rules limit sidewalk closures to seven days unless the contractor provides a safe alternative walkway.
To implement the multimodal access policy, NDOT increased staff and created a working group called the Multimodal Access Committee. NDOT spokesperson Cortnye Stone says the committee “convenes regularly to oversee and evaluate the impact of long-term closures exceeding six days,” making sure construction can accommodate pedestrians, cyclists and mobility-device users. Enforcing the policy was initially challenging, but Stone says NDOT has created additional reference materials to help contractors better understand how much detail they should provide to the city about their closure plans.
Germantown is an interesting case study for NDOT’s policy, because some areas lacked multimodal access to begin with.
“The area of Germantown with the most ongoing construction was previously industrial-based,” says Stone. “There were few sidewalks, if any, and even fewer pedestrians.” She says in this way construction can bring about positive change, by making more areas of Germantown walkable. “Multimodal connectivity is the heart of that ‘feel’ that has made Germantown so unique over the years,” Stone says.
In quieter parts of Germantown, things are a little calmer. Bruce Baker is the general manager of Plaza Artist Materials and Picture Framing on Second Avenue North. The store moved from a previous location in downtown Nashville, which Baker describes as an “absolute nightmare.”
“For me this is an improvement,” he says — though he notes that he’s punctured tires by driving over three nails this month in their new neighborhood.
Baker says Second Avenue’s walkable structure helps with pedestrian access. “In most cases, if one side of the sidewalk is closed, the other side’s open,” he says. The only issue he’s noticed is when pedestrians ignore the safe options developers build, choosing to simply walk along construction instead of crossing the street.
But a few blocks away from Plaza Arts, significant development is underway at the Neuhoff District, a project built around the former Neuhoff meatpacking plant on the Cumberland River.
Construction and road closures in Germantown
Matt Vineyard is vice president at JE Dunn Construction, the general contractors for the Neuhoff District. Vineyard says JE Dunn has taken steps to minimize community disruption throughout the project, including guiding traffic, providing site security guards and limiting concrete trucks on busy roads by pouring concrete at night. Since New City Properties bought the parcel in 2019, the project’s construction has periodically closed private alleyways and main city roads. Local taproom Monday Night Preservation Co. sits directly across from Neuhoff’s construction and shares an entryway with Neuhoff — walkways to the brew house currently lack sidewalk access. Representatives from Monday Night declined to comment for this story.
The Neuhoff project began before NDOT’s sidewalk permit policy, so developers haven’t had to plan alternative walkways when they close sidewalks. But Vineyard says they’re trying to keep the area walkable by maintaining access to the nearby Cumberland River Greenway, which connects pedestrians to their site as well as to Monday Night Preservation Co. “We were very cognizant about keeping the greenway open and safe, but also keeping it neat and clean so it feels welcoming and safe for the public to be there,” says Vineyard. Walkability is “a major focus of the developer,” he says.
While construction continues in Germantown, developers can take steps to make it easier on their neighbors. Elsewhere in Nashville, BrandSafway and Urban Umbrella recently collaborated on pedestrian-friendly scaffolding at Paseo South Gulch apartments. Good communication helps too. Harding praises Steadfast and True’s neighbors, Peyton Stakes apartments, for their “proactive” communication about construction in shared areas.
And of course, better public transit access would decrease closure-related disruptions. Harding, for instance, lives in East Nashville; her commute to Steadfast and True typically takes 15 minutes by car, though that can vary based on road closures. She wants to ride a bus, she says, but the bus route currently takes an hour.
As parts of Germantown transition from their industrial roots, they will hopefully become more accessible for pedestrians, cyclists and mobility device users. But in the meantime, Germantown will be full of scaffolding and barriers — construction isn’t going away anytime soon.
