Tennessee’s oldest and largest institution for people with intellectual disabilities closed in 2015. But those driving along Stewarts Ferry Pike in Donelson still catch a glimpse of the Clover Bottom Development Center’s sprawling campus.
Mark Blakely was among those drivers when he and his wife went to a meeting last year at the state’s regional office for the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
“As we roamed around campus, my natural curiosity got me wondering about the empty buildings and the wonderful grounds,” says Blakely.
The campus includes about 30 buildings and homes over 362 acres.
So, he wrote Curious Nashville to ask:
What is being done with that property? Can nonprofits rent out the property for their offices?
Clover’s roots
The institution opened in 1923 as the Tennessee Home and Training School for Feeble-Minded Persons. At the time, it was the state’s first institution for the care of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
In the 1940s, it would be renamed to Clover Bottom Development Center.
At its peak in the 1960s, it was home to more than 1,500 Tennesseans.
But the state facility would run into legal problems over the next few decades.
By the 1990s, federal investigators found widespread and shocking cases of abuse and neglect, and a federal lawsuit in 1996 ordered the state to close Clover Bottom, accusing it of warehousing people with physical and intellectual disabilities.
“For a long time, it was not where people with disabilities were supposed to live,” says Cara Kumari, a spokesperson for DIDD.
Numbers of people living at Clover Bottom declined as “the community model” became increasingly popular. This model places people with disabilities in more traditional home settings with opportunities to interact with people and hold jobs in integrated settings, according to DIDD.
In 2010, then-Gov. Phil Bredesen promised that Clover Bottom would close by the end of the year.
But the state ran into long delays in construction of its new state-run homes as well as opposition from some family members.
This also caused uncertainty to those wanting to leave.
In November 2015, the last six residents exited the facility and moved into new community homes.
Work continues on campus
As for the future, Kumari notes that Clover Bottom still houses several DIDD administrative offices, and that the agency has plans to restore more of the buildings for its work.
It houses the agency’s Enabling Technology Model Home, which showcases a variety of residential technology options to help people with disabilities live more independently, and the Harold Jordan Center, which provides clinical support and treatment.
The campus also houses a Tennessee Highway Patrol training facility and a subcontractor for the state’s Department of Children’s Services. However, nine buildings remain vacant, including the Governor Roberts Infirmary, and the state says four buildings are uninhabitable without major renovation.
The grounds also include the historically significant Clover Bottom Mansion, which dates to the 1850s. While it fell into disrepair, ideas of restoring it and finding a “creative reuse” mounted in the 1980s, and the state restored this Italianate-style mansion to house the offices of the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1994.
That type of reuse has parallels to what Blakely asked about. Kumari says DIDD doesn’t have a near-term plan to bring new organizations onto the property, but that the state is open to the suggestion.
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