Metro Council to Vote on Gulch Improvement District

Nashville’s Gulch area hopes to replicate the success of the downtown Nashville business improvement district, with a bill before Metro Council tonight that will allow the businesses and landowners in the Gulch to tax themselves.

Located to the south of downtown, the area will levy a 15-cent tax per 100-dollars of assessed property value, and use that money for landscaping, street cleaning and even public safety.

Joe Barker is one of the directors of Marketstreet Management, a major land owner in the Gulch. Barker says they’d like to imitate the Nashville Downtown Partnership’s model, or even contract with them for services.

“They’ve already got people who’ve already got the ability to clean streets, they’ve already got some equipment that could be used or leased on a per-hour basis or something like that, so it’s not just security people but really it’s the guys in the yellow shirts that are all over downtown Nashville already with the Central Business District, we’d have something similar to that in our area, starting out small in the beginning and gradually building up.”

Barker estimates the tax will generate 30-thousand dollars in the first year and could be as much as 200-thousand in the fourth year as development and property values increase in the area.

In addition to the Gulch improvement district, the Metro Council could also vote on the 296-million dollar capital improvement budget. The most expensive item on that list is the new high school in Antioch.