bobby allyn

Seven months after Metro Council overwhelmingly shelved the idea of building a $17-million pedestrian bridge connecting the Gulch with downtown, the mayor’s office is proposing a new way to fund the ambitious project.

At a public forum held at a YMCA in North Nashville, Department of Children Services Commissioner Jim Henry spent more than an hour telling a crowd of around 300 what has changed since 32 teens broke out of the Woodland Hills facility.

The Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency is appealing its nearly $400,000 tax bill on two of its signature affordable housing properties.

An attorney working for the Tennessee Department of Children Services says a decades-old consent decree prevents teens from being locked in their rooms.

Housing advocates and developers say if it doesn’t change, private builders might completely pull out of subsidized housing.

In 2012, Then-Commissioner Kathryn O’Day recommended closing the Taft Youth Center. It was the most expensive detention facility to operate — around $8.5 million a year.

Although the announcement points to Nashville’s “vibrant city” status as part of the reason for the expansion, a generous state subsidy package was also a major consideration.

A few minutes before 11 p.m., which was shortly after a shift change, security guards at the Woodland Hills facility in Bordeaux started to sense “the rumblings of trouble.”

This comes a year and a half after Haslam first started talking about the so-called “Tennessee Plan.”