East Bank Becomes a Top Focus for Cooper

Mayor John Cooper's office re-upped its commitment to developing the East Bank into a commercial and residential hub on Monday. The multiyear, billion-dollar project represents a renewed commitment from the city to developing downtown real estate and will be a central focus of Mayor Cooper’s remaining time in office.

According to this year’s capital improvements budget, the city plans to spend about $750 million improving the largely desolate industrial area. The site — a few hundred acres between I-24 and the Cumberland River — is the current home of Nissan Stadium and the future home of Oracle’s River North corporate campus.

Negotiations for a new Titans stadium have largely faded from the public view, though Titans representatives including general counsel Adolpho Birch III attended the mayor’s press conference on Monday afternoon. The mayor’s office and the Titans have indicated that East Bank development would provide a key source of funding for a new stadium, which was budgeted at $2.2 billion in May. Multiple tax carve-outs would redirect taxes to service debt for a new stadium, promising city and state revenue before it reaches public coffers.

From February to June, the mayor’s office rolled out almost weekly updates about the East Bank. Monday, members of the media received press kits with the city’s extensive vision plan for the East Bank, titled “Imagine East Bank,” that summarizes and repackages much of the administration’s ongoing project planning. The comprehensive update includes new maps and renderings that feature multimodal streets, riverside promenades, park-side retail and restaurants patronized by racially diverse crowds of hypothetical Nashvillians. The city hired design firm Perkins Eastman to help plan the site and produce public-facing materials. Planning staffer Anna Grider is officially the project lead for the East Bank, and planning director Lucy Kempf routinely presents East Bank plans to the Metro Council and the public. 

Right now, city money, combined with state grants, would enable planners to rearrange transportation infrastructure and assemble the foundation for mixed-use development similar to the Gulch, Capitol View and Hill Center in Green Hills. The project aims to create a boating scene on the Cumberland, an objective corroborated by images released to the media today. The whole project represents a renewed focus on the core. It's an about-face from Cooper the candidate, who pledged to spread city resources around the county. From his 2019 policy book: “The last chapter of Nashville’s economic development story was focused on downtown development and tourism. It is time to turn the page to a new chapter of economic and community development, where we emphasize growing human capital and focusing on the neglected neighborhoods of Davidson County.”

When asked about how the massive investment would benefit the rest of the city, Cooper and Kempf on Monday explained the citywide benefits of transportation connectivity. A better-planned East Bank would allow the rest of Nashville to more easily drive to, through or past Nashville’s “Next Great Neighborhood,” as it’s referred to in Metro literature. Cooper gave media the same example he gave the Metro Council a few months ago: A better East Bank transportation grid would give a Donelson resident a better commute to Oracle. 

Three weeks of open houses and virtual events will follow Monday's announcement. The mayor frequently casts the East Bank as an ideal site for affordable housing and a future “cultural hub,” but did not offer details about how the city might implement development controls. Kempf vowed to let resident feedback drive the vision.