Despite recent concessions, residents are pledging to play hardball with Houston-based real estate developers Cypressbrook in an attempt to stop a controversial Bellevue housing development.
The Ariza will spread 417 residential units across seven buildings on one half of a small peninsula formed by a bend in the Harpeth River. A mile from where Highway 70 meets I-40, the site is tucked behind the Harpeth Youth Soccer Complex and hemmed in by the river on three sides. To the south, it’s cut off from the surrounding street grid by Harpeth Crest, a neighborhood where staunch opposition is aiming to stymie builders and deny the city’s greenway expansion.
Since Cypressbrook’s proposal surfaced, residents have voiced opposition to what they characterize as reckless and short-sighted development. First, Bellevue residents focused on the burden 417 new units would bring to Coley Davis Road, the single point of access back to Highway 70 for many neighborhoods isolated between I-40 and the Harpeth River. They have shared pictures of flooding from 2010 and warned that traffic could jeopardize emergency vehicle access for residents of a nearby nursing home.
Cypressbrook has responded with concessions, including a plan to raise Coley Davis above 2010 flood levels and add a turning lane. They still need two things from the Harpeth Crest Homeowners’ Association: safe passage for construction and cooperation on the city’s proposed greenway expansion, which it advertises as the development’s primary community benefit. An unrestricted easement already allows construction access to the site via Morton Mill Road, the association’s primary residential street. Developers say the road will see six trips a day for 15 months while they construct abutments for a bridge to Coley Davis. That new bridge would become Ariza’s primary access point, and Morton Mills would be restricted to emergency use.
Harpeth Crest holds a wedge of property necessary to connect new greenway paths planned by Cypressbrook with Bellevue’s existing riverwalk, which traces the Harpeth all the way to Edwin Warner Park. While some of the existing greenway was built on a Metro easement on Harpeth Crest’s property, Devin Schultz, an attorney who lives off Morton Mill, maintains that the city’s greenway rights stop there.
“The grant of the public access/conservation easement such as this for the greenway in no way permits the City of Nashville and/or the Houston, Texas, developer to run roughshod over our HOA property rights and ‘force’ the connection of the greenway to an adjacent parcel,” wrote Schultz in an email to Metro Legal, Metro Planning, District 35 Councilmember Dave Rosenberg and District 22 Councilmember Gloria Hausser in late January. Schultz tells Metro — and confirms to the Scene — that he does not formally represent his HOA but that the organization shares his opposition. He goes on to say, “I intend on protecting these rights to the fullest extent that the law will allow.”
The site is in Rosenberg’s district, though Hausser represents the district just across the Harpeth, including the neighbors down Coley Davis Road. Both have held meetings with residents, which have been defined by vocal and overwhelming disdain for the proposal and opposition to the site’s development. The Metro Planning Commission will consider Cypressbrook’s proposal at its Feb. 23 meeting.
"Early on, a couple folks started making outlandish claims about what this was or what this would do — there was lot of misinformation and disinformation put in people’s mailboxes," Rosenberg tells the Scene. "As soon as one thing gets debunked, opponents move on to something new." He hails the project's potential for connecting Bellevue's greenway system and sees 417 new units as critical headway against the city's housing shortage. "That greenway is going to be a condition of building this. They’re not allowed to get a building permit until this greenway is built. They’re going to build a greenway or there aren’t going to be any apartments."
