By now it’s a universally acknowledged truth that, if downtowns are to be more than office parks, people must live there. With 20-20 hindsight, urban planners have realized that, when people moved to ranchburgers in the far-flung suburbs, retail and commerce followed.
In some instances, bringing residents back to the city has meant restoring timeworn houses in neighborhoods at the edge of downtown or converting venerable commercial architecture into loft living. Nashville doesn’t have the luxuries of restoration and rehab.
Most of the old homes bordering our downtown, with the exception of those in Germantown, have been bulldozed or converted to commercial space. And our city does not have dozens of antique brick warehouses waiting for new life. Nashville must build its urban neighborhoods from scratch.
Metro is about to begin just that sort of effort on Rolling Mill Hill, the area along the Cumberland River that is now home to General Hospital and a collection of Metro car barns. The Metro Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) is currently reviewing two proposals for redevelopment of the 35-acre property, which is scheduled for a makeover as soon as General Hospital’s merger with Meharry Medical College is complete. MDHA expects to select one of the proposals by the end of January.
Rolling Mill Hill was once the site of “roller mills” that processed grain and made Nashville at the turn of the century the “Minneapolis of the South.” Its position on the bluffs of the Cumberland boasts splendid views of downtown and the river. The Hill is within easy walking distance of the central core; yet it is far enough removed to become a live/work neighborhood on a human scale, not overshadowed by skyscrapers.
Because the land is owned by Metro and falls within the Rutledge Hill redevelopment district, the city can dictate the terms of development. MDHA can use tax-increment financing (TIF) to reduce the cost of the land acquisition, or it can pay for improvements such as streets and landscaping, parks, and sidewalks. MDHA can also control the design of the redevelopment, determining details such as the height of buildings and the width of streets. At Rolling Mill Hill, Metro can define the future for all of SoBro, the area south of Broadway stretching from the Cumberland to the railroad gulch.
MDHA requested development plans that mix commercial and living spaces but emphasize residential use. The agency is now considering two proposed plans. Both utilize the basic building blocks of urban design, but they differ starkly in their recommendations for density of development and in terms of the money required to make that density happen.
The two teams are led by firms that are national heavy-hitters in the construction and management of multi-family residences. Each of the national firms has developed successful urban housing projects in other cities. Participants in both teams have substantial experience working with Metro.
One team is headed by Post Properties of Atlanta, which last year merged with Columbus Realty Trust of Dallas. Post is best known locally for two suburban apartment complexes on Hillsboro Road and for the Post Hillsboro development at the edge of Hillsboro Village. Commercial spaces would be developed by the Mathews Company, a local firm that worked for MDHA on the land deal for the South Central Bell building and now heads up the partnership charged with developing the arena campus. The Washington, D.C., office of RTKL, a firm that worked on the original Subarea 9 plan for downtown, would be responsible for planning and urban design. Other Post team members include Gobbell Hays Partners and Gresham, Smith and Partners, two Nashville architecture and engineering firms that routinely do business with Metro.
The other team is headed by the Nashville office of Trammell Crow Residential, an Atlanta-based developer. In the Nashville area, Trammell Crow has built the various Arbors and Wyndchase apartment complexes that dot the suburban Metro landscape. The site plan is the result of a collaboration among Mark Schimmenti, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and two local firms, Tuck Hinton Architects and Hodgson & Douglas, Site Planners. Tuck Hinton designed the Farmers Market and participated in the team that developed the Church Street master plan for Metro. Hodgson & Douglas contributed to the redevelopment plan for Music Row. The Trammell Crow team also includes Littlejohn Engineering and Cole Design, both of Nashville.
Both teams recognize the promise and the problems inherent in the undertaking. “The challenge is to attract an anxiety-ridden suburban population back to an in-town location,” says John Gosling, an urban planner with RTKL and a member of the Post team. “That’s tricky because these are renters by choice, people who have the means to decide where they live and only choose downtown if it offers a more convenient and richer lifestyle. This kind of development only works where a city is investing in downtown entertainment and cultural amenities, such as Nashville.”
“Rolling Mill Hill is just the beginning,” says Joe Hodgson of the Trammell Crow team. “The idea is that in 10 years there won’t be a discernible edge to the site, that new development will extend into the surrounding area.”
Spaced out
Each team has a different vision for Rolling Mill Hill.
The Post plan proposes:
* 1,424 living units (104 for-sale townhomes and 1,320 rental apartments), spread out over the 35 acres at an average density of 40 living units per acre
* 310,000 square feet of commercial space, constructed at an average cost of $138 per square foot.
Post proposes paying Metro $20 million for the 35-acre site, or $13 per square foot. Post also requests $30 million in tax-increment financing from Metro.
Total project cost, according to the Post plan, is $245 million.
The Trammell Crow plan proposes:
* 716 living units (128 for-sale townhomes and 588 rental apartments), distributed at an average density of 21 living units per acre
* 203,000 square feet of commercial space, developed at an average cost of $59 per square foot.
Trammell Crow is offering $10 million for the site ($7 per square foot) and is requesting $10.9 million in tax-increment financing. Total project cost for the Trammell Crow plan: $106 million.
The greater density in the Post plan would result in taller buildings, including three- or four-story apartment complexes. The Mathews Company’s new commercial structures would be five to six stories tall.
Trammell Crow proposes a maximum of three stories for its multi-family residences; commercial buildings would be only one story tall.
More units in bigger buildings cost more money. The Post plan calls for $30 million in tax-increment financing, while the Trammell Crow proposal requests only $10.9 million in TIF. MDHA development director Phil Ryan says only $15 million in TIF is currently available for Rolling Mill Hill. “An increase would have to be approved by the Metro Council,” he explains.
Crowd control
It’s no surprise that each team claims that the density of its plan is best for Nashville. “Our firm has been doing residential infill projects for 10 years,” says the Post team’s John Gosling. “When we started, we thought that 500 residents was enough critical mass for a sense of security in an urban neighborhood. What we found was that 500 worked for security, but was not enough to support anything else, like a corner deli. Over time we’ve concluded that you need 1,500 people to revitalize a neighborhood. What we’re buying with that number is the ability to repeople the streets.”
According to Gosling, “Less density misses the point, because it won’t generate enough warm bodies to do downtown a lot of good. We’re not just providing a living unit, but security, grocery service, health clubs, shuttle buses to downtown. With the number of units we’re proposing, we can make this level of amenities affordable for a wider market range.”
Trammell Crow’s Marty Heflin disagrees. “The density of our plan is in keeping with the existing character of Rutledge Hill,” he says. “Anything greater could suck all of the development potential for SoBro into one place—Rolling Mill Hill. Packing everything into 35 acres may make a development self-sustaining, but if it doesn’t generate growth beyond the site, it’s an enclave.”
Heflin also suggests that a larger proportion of rental units to owner-occupied townhouses could create a churning effect among the neighborhood’s population. “Our experience is that 700 of a 1,400-unit apartment development will roll over every year,” he says. Gosling counters by claiming that, in his firm’s urban infill projects, “the rent rollover has been incredibly little, because we’re offering a unique product with a comprehensive set of services.”
Meanwhile, the two plans offer different solutions to the perennial problem of parking in Nashville. The Post plan, because of its greater density, calls for structured parking decks. Trammell Crow proposes parking below grade, in garages behind the townhouses or in alleys behind the buildings.
Because streets are the outdoor “living rooms” for urban neighborhoods, both proposals are street-sensitive. They call for outward-facing developments with no fences or gates, arranged along a grid of connecting streets. No gaps in a continuous architectural fabric erode the street walls. Buildings are placed near wide, tree-lined sidewalks and house a variety of first-floor retail and community services. Narrow streets with on-street parking slow down the traffic and ensure pedestrian-friendly public spaces.
The Trammell Crow plan begins with two priorities: extending the surrounding street pattern into the site and preserving the exteriors of two historic General Hospital structures. “We wanted to emphasize the east-west streets to open up the site to the river,” says Joe Hodgson. “So we planned Middleton Place [an extension of Middleton Street] as a boulevard with a 40-foot median and a roundabout that serves as a foyer into the site. And the preservation of the 1890s and Art Deco sections of the hospital for condos and loft apartments gives instant architectural character to the neighborhood.”
The Post plan emphasizes extensive streetscaping. “With these densities the public streets take on a special burden,” says John Gosling, “because they are the major public spaces. You can’t just do the standard improvements, but must double or triple the money spent to make the streets become amenities.” He suggests “real trees, wide sidewalks, street furniture, pedestrian level lighting.”
Both plans preserve approximately 25 percent of the site as open space and utilize Metro’s WPA-era brick car barns as artsy spaces for retail and offices. The Trammell Crow plan eliminates one car barn to create a small park.
At this point, the Post and Trammell Crow proposals remain conceptual; they are not fully developed master plans. They are marketing documents designed to win the contract. Urbandesign details such as street widths, building setbacks, and streetscaping will be negotiated with Metro after the winning team has been selected.
The real burden is on MDHA now. The agency must see beyond developer optimism into the hard reality of what has worked in other cities and how those formulas can be applied to Rolling Mill Hill. Once a team has been chosen, MDHA must stay on the case to ensure that good urban design doesn’t get lost in the details. We haven’t done an urban neighborhood in Nashville since the turn of the century. It’s about time we relearned how.
