A tense fight over development and preservation goes to a final vote of Nashville’s Metro Council on Tuesday. At stake is the future of a 20-acre property in Green Hills that was long the home of the Monroe Harding foster care institution.
The proposal calls for a 31-home subdivision to replace what was Monroe Harding’s pastoral campus — including demolition of the 1935 Colonial Revival-style mansion at its center.
Preservationists and many neighbors, including Deborah Evans, told the council earlier this month that the proposal would be too much housing density and a loss of character.
“This plan is kind of ripping out the core and the heart of our historic neighborhood,” Evans told the council.
Many also fear that new development would worsen flooding from nearby Brown’s Creek.
But Monroe Harding board chairman John Horst told the council that the organization’s continued existence — training foster families and mentoring kids — depends on selling the land for a profitable subdivision.
“While we are trying to honor our history, we’re also trying to chart our future in moving forward,” he said. “As it is, though, we’ve been held hostage for nearly a year, unable to move forward and wasting resources all the while — resources that would otherwise go towards helping the children and families we serve.”
The nonprofit made the “tough decision” to relocate last year, calling maintenance of the aging buildings and property a financial burden.
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The tug of-war has been going for more than a year. Under current zoning rules, the developer already would be allowed to build dozens of homes, and Metro doesn’t have a tool to save the mansion or any buildings associated with Monroe Harding.
However, local Councilman Russ Pulley intervened to lead a series of community discussions about the future of the property.
He said that initial efforts to find another school or institution to buy the land — or Metro itself — were unsuccessful.
So he gathered feedback from neighbors, which led to the development team putting several concessions in writing as part of a “specific plan” that then went for review by planners and the county.
The developers agreed to build fewer homes, erect more sidewalks and replacement trees, expand the flood buffer and eliminate a traffic cut-through that had worried neighbors.
Urgent Worries As Vote Approaches
Still, the impasse has remained.
Last month, the nonprofit preservation group Historic Nashville Inc. put the property on its “Nashville Nine” endangered list, citing the historically significant use of the property by Monroe Harding and the notable mansion design by local architect Henry Hibbs.
The Metro Planning Commission also voted unanimously to disapprove the plan — largely citing concerns about the demolition of the mansion. Some commissioners asked why it couldn’t be incorporated into the subdivision.
That disapproval, though, is non-binding on the Metro Council. The primary effect of that is that the council would need a larger majority — 27 votes — to approve the proposal Tuesday.
Pulley, the councilman, says he’s moving forward and will try to pass the measure with that higher threshold.
He told his peers that all of the concessions from developers would be lost if the council votes to disapprove — and that the development team could still move forward with demolition and its subdivision.
“What I would hate to see is all these protections go out the window simply because this SP doesn’t address those historic buildings,” Pulley said.
In an interview with WPLN, he described the Monroe Harding team as being on what amounts to a voluntary “downzoning” — an agreement to build fewer units than the property is already permitted.
“When we start fooling around with downzoning of other people’s properties, we’re in an area of potentially taking somebody’s property rights away,” Pulley said. “We think the evidence is pretty clear they could build up to 45 units.”
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