Link to last night’s news story
The 2023 plan preserved the mural by requiring the existing building to be reused with a written commitment in the rezoning staff notes.
The 2026 re-zoning removes the reuse or mural maintenance requirement. The building comes down. The mural loses its protection and status when the public hearing period ends.
The councilmember who moved and carried the rezoning from the Planning Commission, the rezoning that authorizes the demolition and erases the mixed-use commitment, is now on Channel 5’s camera as the mural’s rescuer. He overrode a 66 percent no vote from the neighborhood association and moved the bill to third reading.
He obtained the second-reading vote by pulling a rabbit from his hat: a verbal promise that the developer will keep the mural.
The 2023 approved plan capped the height at 45 feet. The 2026 re-zoning raises it to 60 feet. Horton told Channel 5 the new plan is smaller. It is 33 percent taller.
The one sentence he held up for Channel 5 reads "preserved and reused or repurposed." The disjunctive "or" hands the choice to the developer. The community was written out of the script when the second reading was not deferred.
The mixed-use is stripped away by definition. An accessory building is not mixed-use, and the commercial uses are further limited. What remains is a residential project with a nod to commercial, capped at 6,000 square feet. That is not an anchor destination, a true gathering community hub, the mix of substantial commercial and residential the combination that creates “livability” the goal the neighborhood asked for.
The third Council reading is July 21 at Metro Council.
Who is representing the community?
Lost in the Shuffle: Are We Building a Place, or Just Warehousing Bedrooms?
·
Jun 5
It is incredibly easy for massive zoning fights to get lost in the shuffle of daily life, mainly because the bureaucratic timeline is built to help you forget or lose interest. You might have assumed the battle over the 8-acre Altera development (the massive 296-unit apartment fortress proposed at the triangular center site with the art wall on Californ…
Christopher Remke [AIA ret.] brings an unusual combination to real estate analysis: the quantitative rigor of a veteran Design-Build-Development Advisory Professional merged with the cultural awareness of a Context-Sensitive Urbanist. As Principal of Linked, L. L. C., he’s the rare voice who can deconstruct a pro forma, read municipal debt structures, and simultaneously ask whether the project destroys or enhances the neighborhood’s social fabric.
This dual perspective - analytics meets urbanism - allows Chris to expose what architects, planners, builders, and conventional real estate experts miss: how financialization, zoning manipulation, and tax policy don’t just change property values, they fundamentally alter how cities function as communities.
As President of Save Our Nashville Neighborhoods (SONNinc.org), Chris fights extraction-urbanism’s standardized templates and champions genuine neighborhood diversity. Through his writing, he operates in “Decoder Mode,” making complex policy accessible while revealing the truth behind political narratives.
His mission is simple:
Neighborhoods need a voice, Working People need a voice, and the City needs a Council that connects with constituents.
Because transparency builds trust. Manipulation destroys it.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.