Greetings from Nashville, TN. It’s been a long time since the L&C Tower was the only skyscraper on the horizon. We’ve since acquired a respectable skyline, an arena, a stadiumcoliseum, a healthy identity crisis, and a homeless population. So where do we go from here? The Nashville Civic Design Center has an answer — they’re the people that brought us the hipper-than-thou “Gulch” revamp, among other innovations. You’ve probably seen their book at bookstores around town. They’ve got a fancy 10-point plan for Nashville — outlines, task forces and maps, oh my! I honestly had no idea the center even existed until a few months ago, and I’ve lived and worked in walking distance of their office for over 4 years. Go figure.

“The Gulch” itself so far seems to have met with moderate success. The first establishment there, a restaurant named Six Degrees, opened and closed quicker than you can say ‘in the red’, but the restaurants that have taken its place seem to be doing a little better. I am not impressed with the engineering behind the intersection/merging of 11th and 12th, however. It seems to me like they took a bad situation and made it worse. The intersection is quickly turning into a glorified valet/parking lot for Sambuca and Ru-San’s — good luck trying to actually drive through there on a Friday night. In fact, good luck trying to get downtown from south Nashville in general (when are they going to finish the bridge and re-open Demonbreun?!) But enough complaining.

I will be interested to see what they have to say about the sudden clamor for a fancy new Convention Center in “SoBro” (as opposed to “LoBro”, pictured above. This is the last time you will ever hear me use those words.). John Spragens covered this in last week’s Scene, and Bruce Barry offered his take at the PitW. There’s a lot of pro-business cheerleading about the prospect of a new convention center. Hopefully the folks at the Civic center will be able to offer a more pragmatic analysis of the feasibility of the ginormous center being proposed. Personally I think it sounds like an abomination — as if the current Convention center wasn’t enough of an eyesore.

These are exciting times for Nashville — a good opportunity to get educated and get involved.