Displaced: Riverchase residents feel tension as community groups split on their demands of developer

On a sweaty Friday morning in April, three P.A.T.H.E. workers and a volunteer are coordinating moves for Riverchase families. One family needs a huge bean bag brought to them in the motel or their storage unit — depending on logistics.

The 180 families that called the Riverchase apartments home have heard chatter of a potential redevelopment for years. Now it’s happening. And residents are hearing mixed messages from those wanting to help.

“Sometime when you start getting two or three elements fighting each other, that’s not good,” says resident Derrick McKissack, who has been feeling the tension between two different groups of organizers.

One of those groups is P.A.T.H.E. The mission of the People’s Alliance for Transit, Housing and Employment is to identify the most urgent issues facings marginalized Nashvillians and pressure city officials to act.

Sometimes that puts organizers at odds with property owners and developers.

In general, organizers have used media coverage and relationships with members of the Metro Council to get to the negotiating table. But in this case, the advocates have forged a productive relationship with the developers and city leaders.

Ambriehl Crutchfield WPLN News

Two P.A.T.H.E employees search for a tool to loosen screws on furniture at Trinity Community Commons

Testing out bigger ideas

In this case, P.A.T.H.E. is working with Texas developer Cyprus Real Estate Advisors LLC to soften the impact of displacement.

The developer is providing financial support through the Salvation Army, which has paid out $150,000 in direct assistance, with more money available. The developers also funded more staff with Salvation Army and P.A.T.H.E. The McFerrin Park Neighborhood Association will receive $40,000, and the developer will contribute another $100,000 to neighborhood improvements, mostly to help with traffic calming if rezoning happens.

The outreach to organizing groups started two months before purchasing the prime real estate with a downtown view for $30 million.

“Our job as private developers is not incompatible with meeting the affordability crisis,” CREA principle Victor Young says. “But it’s not the exact same as the solutions that have been around for decades.”

CREA came to town with an open mind and willingness to put money towards application fees, moving expenses and even the first month’s rent for new places. But P.A.T.H.E. nudged the developer to do more. So Young extended the move-out deadline for families and knocked down barriers like past due eviction and utility bills.

Collaboration to create a housing navigator program

Back in August, when P.A.T.H.E.’s executive director Jackie Sims sat down with Young, she laid out a proposal to help families navigate finding a new home that included children, food and employment.

“If I’m going to move you, I need to know something about you,” Sims says.

When finding a home for residents, she wants them to feel comfortable so they can become part of the community for the long term. So far, the organization has worked with the Salvation Army to find new housing for roughly 130 of the 180 families.

Sims has experienced homelessness herself and says housing insecurity ripples through every part of a person’s life.

“It affects your work. It affects your children’s education. It affects your sense of feeling whole, your sense of value and self-worth,” Sims says.

These tenants have also suffered mentally and physically from living in substandard conditions.

A WPLN News investigation found units often failed MDHA inspections, which reported electrical hazards, evidence of infestation and bad ceiling conditions.

Sims was set on finding better housing and tracking residents for at least two years in case they needed support.

City celebrates but there’s a plot twist

The city’s housing team has met with P.A.T.H.E. to understand how to get developers working with local community groups and make Riverchase a model for future redevelopment that involves displacement.

And organizers are getting a lot of praise from the city’s new housing director, Angela Hubbard. “I love the level of conversation that community groups are pushing to make sure that the right thing is being done,” she told WPLN News.

But in February, another camp of organizers started applying pressure on the developer to do a lot more.

Stand Up Nashville is the umbrella organization that includes Equity Alliance, NOAH, SEIU Local Union 205 and worker’s union LiUNA. They’re calling for a community benefits agreement, a legally binding contract the developer signs in exchange for the community’s support for a project.

The groups successfully signed a CBA in 2018 with Nashville Soccer Holdings, before construction of a stadium on the Metro-owned Fairgrounds. And NOAH had already been involved at Riverchase about what the future would be.

Now at Riverchase, they want affordability guaranteed in the deed, for contracts to go to unionized construction workers and for the previous promises to be put in writing.

“All we’re trying to do is guarantee certain rights for them under this contract,” says LiUNA’s David Rutledge, “and make sure that the assistance provided is followed through on.”

Motives and power

P.A.T.H.E.’s original agreement with the developer became a starting point for Stand Up.

In an old draft, Stand Up axed P.A.T.H.E. out of any deal and asked the developer to pay the organization $1.25 million for breaking the agreement.

The demand caught some side eyes and has since been dropped.

“We took that million dollars off the table,” says Nathaniel Carter with Stand Up Nashville. “We don’t want people to think we’re trying to take somebody down for some money. You know, that was for us paying for a monitor over a certain amount of years.”

He says the point was to make sure there were teeth in the agreement to discourage the developer from breaking it.

Community benefits

In Nashville, voluntary agreements are among the few ways to put conditions on development. In recent years, Tennessee lawmakers have shown they are happy to step in and kill local laws they think will restrain business or reduce property rights, limiting what Metro can require.

“The work is made a lot harder by the state because we have to do the organizing work,” Rutledge says. “We have to mobilize the community to say that we believe this is important and bring the developers to the table in that way rather than through political or through like direct policy means.”

For the developer to create a mixed-use development with retail, rental apartments and open green space, they need the city to rezone the land. Right now, retail isn’t allowed.

So, organizers are using the city’s rezoning power as leverage.

After helping to stop a previous proposal made before he joined the Metro Council, Councilmember Sean Parker says he has been working with organizers.

“This is by far the most significant proposal we’ve ever entertained in McFerrin Park,” Parker says. “We’re going to get it right. I am less concerned about getting it fast.”

But the lack of urgency puts the developer in a tight spot financially, especially while shelling out money to take care of tenants.  And the developer, which already owns the land, could decide its original business plan will no longer be profitable and just build what’s currently allowed without a rezoning.

“But we’re spending all of our time, all of our effort, on taking care of the residents and coming up with a pathway to build this affordable housing,” Victor Young with CREA says. “And this hopefully won’t be our last deal.”

Tension and confusion

Right now, negotiations between the developer and organizers are stalled until July, when the Metro Council is expected to make decisions about the site. And residents like Derrick McKissack are caught in the middle.

“One group is trying to help you find places and help you get there,” he says. “The other group is almost complaining against this group isn’t doing that they’re supposed to be.”

He says conflicting advocates are just adding confusion for families trying to figure out where they’ll lay their heads next month.

Corrections: This story originally misstated how much money CREA LLC will provide to the McFerrin Park Neighborhood Association. It will receive $40,000, not $140,000. This story also originally mischaracterized Councilmember Sean Parker’s role in opposing an earlier proposal to redevelop Riverchase. He did so before joining the Metro Council.

Editor’s note: Next week, in the final story of WPLN’s three-part series Displaced, we’ll look at the challenges for Riverchase residents as they search for new homes with a housing voucher in Nashville’s tight rental market.