Discussions about Vanderbilt University’s proposed 40-acre “Innovation District” between Natchez Trace and West End have suffered from a lack of details. Councilmember Tom Cash wants more answers, as do the residents around the Hillsboro-West End neighborhood — a cozy, historic enclave full of tenured homeowners and tenured professors who have so far delayed the project from advancing to the Metro Planning Commission. The university’s sought-after Specific Plan (SP) rezoning lacks specifics, though an emergent vision for what is today an expanse of parking lots has slowly come into focus via community meetings and glossy renderings.
Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier’s real estate ambition has so far led to splashy campus footprints in Manhattan, San Francisco and West Palm Beach, Fla. Exempt from property taxes, the university also has a voracious local land appetite. Custom rules that come with the university’s pending Specific Plan rezoning would give the school more flexibility to build higher — particularly along West End — and loosen regulation on buildings’ size and layout. The spectre of 30-story office buildings from 31st Avenue to West End bringing unknown traffic and construction to the area has neighbors wanting to hit pause. After delays and a two-meeting deferral, the plan was scheduled for Metro Planning Commission’s April 9 meeting. As of press time, according to a Metro source, it will again be deferred, to April 23.
“ There’s a sense of wanting to get more than we have right now,” Cash tells the Scene. “To get pen to paper, so we have somewhat of a better understanding of what it looks like more than it does right now.”
Now in his second term representing District 18 on the council, Cash may well be remembered for this term-defining project. Nashville’s large council roster dilutes political power across all 40 members, but endows the body’s 35 district representatives with strong influence over what gets built in their districts. Cash prefers to see more height and density on West End rather than 31st Avenue and Blakemore. Bus, bike and pedestrian accommodations also make the project more attractive, Cash says — particularly a greenway-like path connecting his district to Centennial Park. All of that fits with urban planners’ longtime vision, laid out in Metro’s 2014 Midtown Study, which recommends buildings higher than 20 stories along the West End corridor and calls for bikeways, pedestrian paths, parks, green space and public transportation hubs. In a March 11 email, Cash told concerned residents that he too feels the project’s “anxiety and uncertainty.”
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“I will do my best to ensure we take this opportunity to mitigate the impact of development to our neighborhood and enhance infrastructure so it’s an asset to our community,” Cash assured constituents in his email. “That requires digging into the details, both of the physical built changes to the area as well as continuing to build an authentic, good faith relationship with Vanderbilt as a community partner for the long term.”
Vanderbilt will need Cash’s sign-on for a smooth approval process in the council chamber, where the project will go through three readings — or they could risk finding an outsider to sponsor the SP, an unorthodox and uncouth option that would disparage Cash’s sovereignty over his district.
Cash answers to a highly educated, highly engaged neighborhood organized under the Hillsboro-West End Neighborhood Association (or HWEN, pronounced phonetically). The group helped punt Vanderbilt’s proposal off the Metro Planning Commission’s March 12 agenda with a strongly worded letter supporting a deferral; neighbors wanted more input from the Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure, more public engagement and a more responsive Vanderbilt, particularly with respect to building height and where the development will go.
Individual neighbors have also added their critical comments to the record. Many bring up the land’s history — a controversial eminent domain case pursued by Vanderbilt in the 1960s and 1970s that razed residential homes. Those homes’ lasting legacy as a surface parking desert continues to grate on neighbors who remember the university’s dogged expansion over local opposition. An 800-word letter from Jim DeLanis, an attorney versed in Metro politics who served more than 10 years on the Davidson County Election Commission, casts the project in existential terms.
“Blakemore-31st is the physical and psychological barrier between Vanderbilt and the neighborhood,” DeLanis wrote to planning commissioners on March 13, soon after one of the project’s deferrals. “Instead of looking out over athletic fields, my Blakemore neighbors will be looking up at huge lighted towers that draw traffic at all hours. That will degrade the forward edge of our neighborhood and accelerate the commercialization/urbanization of our neighborhood. It will make our neighborhood the next target of Vanderbilt expansion. Truly, the Barbarians will be at the Gate.”
Vanderbilt has its own version of hyperbole. Its barbarians will look more like billion-dollar corporations — Anthropic, Eli Lilly, Anduril — who will engage in “future-facing” research partnerships with the university’s quest to anchor Nashville’s “innovation ecosystem.” Current language describing the project gives Vanderbilt maximum room to maneuver.
“For almost two years now we have held a series of community meetings with our surrounding neighbors to outline our vision for the Innovation Neighborhood, hear concerns and elicit feedback,” a Vanderbilt spokesperson tells the Scene, going on to highlight the plan’s building setbacks, walkability and restrictions on “noxious uses” like vape and liquor stores. “Many of our design plans reflect what we heard in these meetings, including our focus on things like open green space, better walkability, a bigger tree canopy, more pedestrian- and bike-friendly streets and increased pedestrian safety and more.”
