Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:56:15 -0500
From: "Rick Bradley"
To: (All members of the Metro Nashville Planning Commission)

Subject: Bell's Bend (May Town) Development -- opposition and a new civic art project

To whom it may concern:

  I am writing to express my opposition to the impending Plan for the Bell's
Bend Area, as recommended by the May Town developers.  However, given this
project's inevitability, I am also writing to announce the commencement of a
civic art project to commemorate this historic achievement.

  I am a homeowner in the Robertson/Urbandale/Nations neighborhood, a
constant voter, and will be at the July 24th 4pm Planning Commission meeting
at 1417 Murfreesboro Pike to observe who is responsible for selling out both
the irreplaceable undeveloped Bell's Bend sanctuary and my neighborhood,
which will be the causeway through which massive traffic will pour, over a
taxpayer-funded new bridge and necessarily upgraded roadways.

  Rather than forking over one of our greatest civic assets in a rush to
cash in with developer "Tony G" in another of his fiscally reckless gaping
urban holes, we need to give strong consideration to returning to the path
the Planning Commission was pursuing just a few months ago.  We need to
consider how valuable a rural buffer, a farming community, a recreational
area, and a green zone is to a growing metropolis of Nashville.

  Our Mayor suggests we become the greenest city in the Southeast.  When
questioned on Friday as to why we are setting our sights so low, Mayor Dean
cautioned slow and steady progress.  To be frank, Mayor Dean is certainly
aware that a city which recently gave a scant $50,000 of its budget to
promoting (token) environmental efforts ("lets put city employees on the
bus!") while handing over its last intact green space to developers with a
track record of failed and failing urban development will never compete with
cities such as Portland, OR; Ann Arbor, MI; and Boulder, CO.  All of these
cities had the foresight and the power of will to capture huge swaths of
green space, preserving them against development, and concentrating growth
into the urban core.  Property values in those cities are high, the
brightest minds in business are attracted there, and the cities have
committed to real and successful environmental policies.

  Instead, we are now -- after the Planning Commission so recently gave
public lip service to reasoned planning of a slow-growth Bell's Bend policy
-- committed to sapping the resources of the urban core and promoting rapid
Atlanta-style, Houston-style, and, dare we say, Antioch-style suburban
growth.

  Let's replace a place that nearly everyone (who doesn't place his
multi-million dollar pocketbook foremost in mind) wants to preserve, and a
downtown which could in 10-15 years join the shortlist with Portland,
Boulder, and Ann Arbor, with another Southeast smear of suburban chain
franchise around a dying downtown, neither of which anyone will care about
in that same 15 years time.

  Given that it's obvious to everyone willing to call a spade by its
rightful name that someone(s) on the Planning Commission has almost
certainly been meeting with developers, lobbyists, and campaign contributors
outside the provisions of the Tennessee "Sunshine Law"; that the sudden
waving of potential cash by developers and the well-connected May family has
quickly turned the heads of the friends of Buddy Baker, et al; and that the
interests, both short- and long-term, of Nashvillians here and future have
been sold down the river by so-called "Planners" "compromising" merely to be
associated with the "next Cool Springs" (yea, verily this such a rare
opportunity that may never arise again...), let me here announce a new civic
venture being inaugurated in your honor:


   Citizens of Nashville, please lend your support and donations in
commemorating our civic visionaries, foresighted developers, planners who
toiled in heretofore unheralded misery, hammering out the divine compromise
that would lead us, finally, to this plateau -- this figurehead on the prow,
the crowning point on our civic cathedral -- launching the great city of
Nashville, a thoroughbred among metropolises, into the lead in the race
among enlightened cities everywhere.

    The May Town Development stands now with Opry Mills mall -- unique among
malls everywhere, presumably by having Opry in its name -- slayer of the
horrendous Opryland, which never brought a dollar to our fair city, nor a
tourist, nor a job, and has never been missed being so much like any other
park in America, so banal.  May Town stands like the perpetually unfinished
Signature Tower, as a reminder of potential, what could be, and for that we
are grateful.  Who could have predicted that when so many development
projects were halted, when so many lofts and condominiums sat empty, when so
many boondoggles, small and large, dotted the metro Nashville landscape,
that anyone would be so adventurous as to sweep them all away with a simple
Plan and create that which surpassed them all -- the Bell's Bend Boondoggle?

   That is why we are committed to commemorating this same forward thinking
and selfless service to our community with a statue to rival the stunning
likeness of General Nathan Bedford Forrest still gracing Interstate 65.

   Phase I will encompass design submissions and site selection.  Our
current guidelines for the draft Request for Proposals (RFP) note that the
sculpture must include a larger-than-life developer Tony Giarratana, meeting
pointer stick aloft in his right hand, fistful of cash held out in his left
hand.  We hope to see him astride such Nashville features as the Wabash
Cannonball, the new Sounds stadium and riverfront dreamplex arisen from the
ashes of the Omohundro power facility, the necessarily demolished 328
Performance Hall, and such other boondoggles, civic planning snafus, and
developer follies as might appeal to the civic art connoisseur.

   Submissions should include proposals for materials in use in Phase III
(site construction).  Bonus points will be given during the selection
ranking for use of lost Nashville artifacts.  Examples include portions of
the original Loveless Cafe sign, structural elements from the Jacksonian, a
bottled sample of the escaped soul of Melrose Lanes.  Perhaps we will truly
luck out:  maybe the new Plan will require demolishing the Belcourt Theatre
for flex-space offices where City Planners can waive a decade of taxation
for May Town corporate residents -- then the go-getter artist will have
fresh Nashvilliana to incorporate.

   RFPs will then be ranked according to published criteria, with rankings
discarded and final selection made according to whim, with some positive
consideration given to whether site selection inconviences and relocates
lower- or middle-class Nashvillians.

   Phase II will include elaboration of detailed designs and models.  Of
course, Phase II would normally include project funding, but we have chosen
to adopt the same strategy in use by the Planning Commission and May Town
developers:  we will simply fabricate upward trending graphs in a powerpoint
slideshow, thereby demonstrating the return to the community in hard cash on
a pro forma basis (so pro forma to guarantee all involved with the proposal
are safely returned to an island manse), and then later force the city to
levy a tax to recoup our costs when those numbers turn out to be obvious
fiction and to include none of the real costs of the project.

   The statue will be accompanied with a commemorative plaque, naming those
who gave so much to leave us with so little:

     Tony Giarratana, Jack May, Rick Bernhardt, James McLean, Phil Ponder,
Hunter Gee, Stewart Clifton, Judy Cummings, Tonya Jones, Victor Tyler,
Derrick Dalton, Andree LeQuire, Jim Gotto, dear old Buddy Baker ... and
countless unmarked non-sequential bills.

  We hope you and other Nashvillians will contribute your support to this
important highlighting of our civic heritage.

Best,
Rick Bradley
, Nashville, TN