I was delighted to read that a bunch of Bordeaux community leaders came together to get rid of that fallen light pole behind the Pizza Hut. Tony Gonzalez at Nashville Public Radio called it a “publicity stunt,” and I agree, but it was a publicity stunt in the best way. The property owner got a public shaming. The light pole got cleaned up. Everyone got a chance to come out and point out that it is fucked up that Bordeaux isn’t seeing the same kind of development as the rest of the city.
If you look at Bordeaux with no sense of history, it makes no sense that this isn’t one of the up-and-coming neighborhoods. Or that, like Green Hills, it didn’t up and come a long time ago. It’s super close and convenient to downtown. It’s got a main thoroughfare zoned for business. It’s beautiful, and the housing stock in some areas of Bordeaux is the kind of mid-century modern that young urbanites foam at the mouth over. And while there are some pockets of small houses very close together, a lot of folks have a lot of land. Again, not something other neighborhoods that close to downtown can claim.
Historically, there are reasons Bordeaux hasn’t seen the same kinds of growth as other areas. It has long, long, long been a dumping ground for things and people Davidson County didn’t know what else to do with — everything from the pest hospital back in the day to the landfill to places for fire and police training to Frank James and illicit gambling dens. It’s like the garage of Nashville. We keep useful stuff there, because it’s super convenient, but we lack the vision to see how it might be transformed.
The other thing that has hampered development — and hampered gentrification — is that a lot of the best housing stock in the neighborhood is owned by elderly black people who don’t want to leave the homes they’ve been in for decades.
It’s not that hard to convince a landlord who paid $25,000 for a house in North Nashville back in the day to sell it to you for a tear-down, and the renters are just out of luck. But that does seem to be a question on the minds of Bordeaux homeowners: If they sell, where are they supposed to go? I know one developer was suggesting people could just move to Dickson, which, judging by the laughter at the Bordeaux Kroger, does not seem to be a place elderly black women who’ve lived in Nashville their whole lives are eager to move.
Which is another weird thing about Bordeaux’s urban blight. Again, if you don’t look at history, it’s strange. How can a part of town with so many middle class people in it have so few businesses catering to them?
But once you see it as a legacy of racism, it makes sense. The market pressures in Bordeaux have always worked screwy because the people with money, historically, haven’t had the option to shop in nice places. You can leave a downed street light in your parking lot for years, because people have become habituated to tolerating that nonsense, because for so long they didn’t have any choice but to tolerate it.
But change is coming. It’s not just the new $500,000 homes on Trinity Lane. It’s the new Waffle House and the new Checkers — places that are already doing booming business, thus proving that Bordeaux doesn’t need a bunch of new people to support better businesses. People are there and ready already.
What Bordeaux needs are developers who see the promise in the neighborhood and good leadership from Metro to make it happen.
