Neighbors of the governor’s mansion are outraged because first lady Andrea Conte is getting ready to chop down stately oak trees and dig a gigantic hole in her front yard to build an underground entertainment center for state government parties and receptions. They’re mocking it as “Bredesen’s Bunker” and plotting ways to stop the project, but the first lady so far is refusing to back down.
“It will have a terrible impact on our community,” says Lorelee Gawaluck, a former Vanderbilt professor who lives across from the Executive Residence on Curtiswood Lane.
“I don’t know of anybody who likes it,” says Bob McDill, a famous songwriter who lives next door to the governor’s house, which has been in the renovation process since Gov. Phil Bredesen took office in 2002. “It’s going to create a lot of noise and a lot of mess and a lot of traffic. It’s a pretty wild idea.”
The possible construction of what Conte is calling “Conservation Hall” has caused quite a stir in the exclusive neighborhood. The wealthy residents, unaccustomed to disturbance, are writing pointed letters and circulating emails. One neighbor was so concerned that he went outside with a telescope to peer at the red flags staked out around the building site on the governor’s lawn.
“He’s angry now about it,” McDill says of his inquisitive neighbor. “He’s realized how big the site is and how close it is to his property.”
In a letter to residents, Conte says the $4 million project—part of a $12 million, mostly privately financed renovation of the governor’s mansion—is needed to correct a “glaring deficiency,” which is “the lack of indoor, conditioned space to host large gatherings.”
To host events, such as the governor’s series of Christmas parties, big tents traditionally have been erected at the mansion with “the accompanying visual impact and noise,” Conte points out in her letter.
“The proposal to address this deficiency will not only maintain the residential character of the neighborhood, but also incorporate ‘green building’ techniques,” she says, inviting residents to attend a Nov. 1 meeting at the home of Shoney’s founder Ray Danner “to hear first-hand” about the proposed construction.
But residents say they don’t expect she’ll manage to allay any of their concerns, namely: (a) the sheer massive size of the project: Conservation Hall is to be an estimated 13,000 square feet, nearly twice the footprint of the mansion itself, and would accommodate 300 guests; (b) dust and noise during construction, which could include dynamiting; (c) the loss of old oak trees on the governor’s lawn; and (d) added traffic on the narrow, picturesque Curtiswood Lane as people come and go to underground events.
It doesn’t help neighborhood relations that Gov. Phil Bredesen and the first lady have never lived in the residence. They have remained at their own, much nicer Belle Meade mansion during the renovation of the governor’s residence and so wouldn’t have to endure all the potential unpleasantness of the underground construction.
“It’s not very neighborly at all,” Gawaluck says. “Trying to live through the construction could be a pretty horrendous experience. We are living closer to it than the governor. We’re right across the street. That dynamite will be heard pretty far away, but he’s not going to hear it in Belle Meade.”
Also complicating matters are hard feelings over a meeting between the first lady and officials of Oak Hill, the small satellite city that includes Curtiswood Lane. At that meeting, a source tells the Scene, an Oak Hill official suggested that opposition to Conservation Hall might disappear if the state would agree to extend sound walls along Interstate 65 to protect more residents from freeway noise.
Oak Hill city manager Bill Kraus says it was all a misunderstanding. “I said, ‘Hey, as long as we’re talking, whisper in the governor’s ear that we’d like to see those sound walls built.’ There was never a discussion that sound walls would be traded for our opposition to Conservation Hall.”
But Conte wrote Oak Hill Mayor Thomas Alsup to object. In her letter, which she also sent to Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner Gerald Nicely, the first lady said the I-65 sound walls had been “inappropriately and unprofessionally interjected” into discussions about the mansion’s renovations. “I am not and do not plan to become involved in Oak Hill’s deliberations with the Tennessee Department of Transportation,” she added.
Assistant state architect Alan Robertson insists Conservation Hall won’t detract from the neighborhood’s peace and quiet. He says no parking spaces will be added to state property, so any additional people coming to the mansion would have to use shuttle buses. He says “not a whole lot” of trees will be removed.
Residents aren’t reassured. Even if Bredesen doesn’t host any extra events at the mansion after Conservation Hall is built, how can they know what future governors will do?
“We’re going to basically have a commercial facility right here in our Oak Hill residential neighborhood,” Gawaluck says. “It really could become a hotel type of facility. I just can’t imagine the impact of having an institutional facility right across the street.”
It’s not the first controversy involving a first lady’s handling of the mansion, which was built in 1929 and bought by the state in 1949. Martha Sundquist, the shy and demure wife of Bredesen’s predecessor, turned into a hard-boiled politico when her decoration choices were questioned.
She redid a small study on the mansion’s main floor, painting the walls red, yanked up an Oriental rug and sold it for $7,500, and relegated a lovely little corner cupboard to an upstairs closet. Members of the Tennessee Executive Residence Preservation Foundation were aghast. How did Mrs. Sundquist respond? She ignored their calls and letters. The governor, meanwhile, rammed a law through the General Assembly disbanding the foundation and giving himself the authority to appoint a new organization packed with Martha-friendly members.
The Curtiswood Lane neighbors probably don’t stand a much better chance against this first lady. “I think public outrage would be fabulous,” Gawaluck says. But the residents are all overprivileged and unlikely to inspire much public sympathy. Gawaluck, for one, is fatalistic about it all: “I’m probably just an ant and they’ll probably squash me, but at least I can voice my opinion.”
