Metropolitik is a recurring column featuring the Scene’s analysis of Metro dealings.
Metro owes bondholders a cool $31 million this summer, its first payment on $760 million borrowed to build a new Tennessee Titans stadium. Initial development for a chunk of prime city land will command another $227 million related to roads, bridges and demolition, according to the latest from the mayor’s office. Mayor Freddie O’Connell budgeted $25 million for the East Bank in his recently released capital spending plan, a modest bite at a big apple that will likely take multiple mayors a few decades to polish off.
Anti-stadium sentiment animated O’Connell’s successful campaign for mayor. For opponents, a new $2.1 billion domed arena for a flagging football team symbolized backward city priorities and ill-guided decision-making from O’Connell’s predecessor, real estate developer John Cooper. Previously an at-large councilmember, Cooper rode similar populist waves from Fort Negley and felled cherry trees to his own 2019 election over incumbent David Briley.
Last year’s blessing has become this year’s burden. O’Connell put friend, ally, attorney and former At-Large Councilmember Bob Mendes in the East Bank driver’s seat as his office’s chief development officer. The bespoke role pays $250,000 (Metro’s seventh-highest salary) and puts Mendes in the crossfire between rival governments, billion-dollar corporations, lucrative contracts, opinionated neighbors, and the shifting concerns of past, present and future.
“The prior administration made a lot of comments about how the East Bank would pay for itself, or would be ‘free’ to the general taxpayer,” Mendes told the Ad Hoc East Bank Committee on Jan. 24. “This stuff may pay for itself over an extended period of time. But somebody has to front a lot of money to pay for a lot of infrastructure.”
Included in the likely agreement are more than 1,500 residential units, a new space for the arts and millions in infrastructure costs
Few people, from the mayor to state legislators to the residents of East Nashville, seem excited about it. If anyone clearly benefits from the push, it’s the Titans and their lobbying team. Mendes is left “banging his head against the wall,” in the words of one former mayor’s office employee, while electeds like O’Connell have to sell a bill of goods they didn’t ask for. On Monday, Axios reported that state and local lawmakers are preparing to create a dedicated East Bank Development Authority to oversee the area.
On Jan. 31, East Nashville Councilmembers Sean Parker and Clay Capp tag-teamed a town hall for their districts, which abut the East Bank to the north and east. They encouraged disgruntled residents to work within the confines of a stadium deal that had already been inked.
“That deal is pretty much signed, sealed, delivered,” Parker told the full room. “The important parts of it are all baked in and locked in. The bonds have gone to market and sold. There’s not really anything we can do about the stadium piece. A lot of important decisions remain for the Metro-owned portion — about 130 acres around the present stadium.”
In more than an hour of crowd questions, attendees reliably came back to two topics: transportation and housing, routine worries for Nashville residents and two of O’Connell’s top campaign fixes. Both districts regularly contend with parking spillover from East Nashville destinations like Five Points. Parker has been looking into residential parking permits, he says, a “trade-off” solution with its own set of headaches.
Mendes reported that 1,550 residential units were part of the city’s plan with The Fallon Company, the Boston-based developer hired in the waning days of the Cooper administration that will build out a chunk of Metro land. Of those, 855 would be market-rate, and 695 would be affordable in some manner.
Beginning in December, O’Connell’s administration will begin sending pieces of the project to the Metro Council
Construction has yet to begin. Mendes met with Indigenous leaders, including local writer and activist Albert Bender, on Jan. 12 about recognition and preservation of ancient Indigenous history on the East Bank. Attendees brought up Metro’s pattern of disregard for discoveries that are historically significant to Indigenous peoples, like when construction at First Horizon Park unearthed 800-year-old artifacts. Bender maintains that Nashville is the modern site of a sprawling ancient city. In that meeting, Mendes shared that the mayor had ordered a phase I archaeological survey within the East Bank. The study will commence pending a final contract with Fallon. Any findings, particularly evidence of a burial site, could significantly alter the track of development.
In the short term, the city is choosing an engineer for East Bank Boulevard, the area’s north-south artery. Mendes has set a precedent for regular updates, even amid ongoing negotiations. The O’Connell administration has no way to directly contact billionaire landowner Carl Icahn, who owns a key East Bank tract, and has no plans to talk to him, according to a source familiar with the situation.
“We know we are obligated to make certain capital investments on infrastructure, but we also know we have a development partner who will share some of those costs,” O’Connell told reporters in January. “The Titans as a team are sharing some of those costs. Major stakeholders like TPAC are likely to share some of those costs. Bob [Mendes] has been pretty transparent that we do expect to see capital needs emerge from the East Bank. But our commitment is going to be to make sure that we are investing in the entire city.”
