What kind of street will anchor Nashville’s East Bank? Advocates push for changes to Metro’s vision

As Nashville builds the new Nissan Stadium, its surroundings mostly consist of vacant lots, a recently sold scrapyard and a sea of asphalt.

But Metro hopes that one day the area across the river from downtown will be full of residents walking, biking, shopping and dining. And there’s a chance to build this East Bank neighborhood almost from scratch — and to run a new “East Bank Boulevard” right through the heart of it.

But, right now, there’s a literal fork in the road: Will the boulevard be a major six-lane highway, or will it evoke a tree-lined, European-style street?

Advocates brainstorm

In July, less than a mile from where the boulevard will one day exist, a group of bicycle and pedestrian advocates gather at the Civic Design Center.

They’re debating what they want to see on the boulevard. It’s a rare opportunity to envision a street however they want it.

Guests share anecdotes about streets — across the globe — that stick in their memories. Others looks at maps or sketch drafts of the imagined street.

“We are stuck in this 100-year culture of car-centric. And we have this blank slate of East Bank to build the road however we want to build it,” said Meredith Montgomery, executive director of Walk Bike Nashville and one of the event attendees. “At a time when we are actively retrofitting roads in our city to make them narrower, safer, better for pedestrians, more multimodal — it seems like the current [East Bank Boulevard] plan that’s out there is just building a new version of what we keep trying to fix.”

Advocates see the boulevard designers having opportunity to get creative and think outside the box, in what will likely become a high-profile and high-traffic neighborhood.

Cynthia Abrams WPLN News

Remington Lynch sketches a street design at the Civic Design Center’s East Bank Boulevard event.

It’s not often that Nashville has the opportunity to do this, although there are some examples, like the revitalization of the Gulch and the redesign of Korean Veterans Boulevard south of Broadway.

“Even though we fought for Korean Veterans Boulevard to be the street that it is today — which is a four-lane boulevard … ultimately it still does kind of feel like a road,” said Veronica Foster, community development director for the Civic Design Center. “The actual East Bank Boulevard and the developments that become adjacent to it are really, really important for crafting that complete neighborhood experience.”

The current proposal for East Bank Boulevard is a six-lane highway: two car lanes and a bus rapid transit lane in each direction, plus wide sidewalks on either side.

It’s not a done deal — Metro hasn’t officially selected any one proposal. But the six-lane highway is the leading design.

Cynthia Abrams WPLN News

Walking and biking advocates discuss the design of East Bank Boulevard.

That’s why, following the July event, the Civic Design Center, Southern Environmental Law Center, Think Tennessee and Walk Bike Nashville formed the “Everyone’s Neighborhood Coalition.” In recent weeks, the group has gone public with recommended adjustments to the design proposal.

These revisions include:

• moving the bus lane off the Boulevard, onto a nearby street;
• reducing car lanes down to one in each direction;
• adding bike lanes;
• narrowing sidewalks;
• and carving out space down the center of the street for a so-called “promenade,” which could be used for pedestrians and things like pop-ups and festivals. The group suggests the promenade be wide enough to place the 1990s-era Tennessee Foxtrot Carousel at the center.

  Courtesy Civic Design Center

  A rendering of the Civic Design Center’s suggestions for the design of East Bank Boulevard. In the center of the street runs a pedestrian “promenade,” wide enough to fit the Tennessee Foxtrot Carousel.

“It’s this opportunity to be this amazing example for a walkable, vibrant neighborhood street that has the feeling like you’re in Europe walking down a tree-lined boulevard with a beautiful linear park,” Foster said. “I think that if we move forward with the six lane option, it’ll just be like any other street.”

If you build it …

Nashville is currently led by a longtime walking and biking advocate: Mayor Freddie O’Connell. But he says Metro is still weighing its options. Amid a lot of public pushback against the six-lane design, the mayor’s office hasn’t been eager for a sit-down interview, and didn’t provide one to WPLN News.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve taken a position on it yet,” O’Connell told reporters last week. “The reason I’m not jumping out in front of that is because I do want to understand sort of what the full needs are and look at all the uses we expect there. “

But those “expected uses,” Montgomery argues, could be decided by the design of the street.

“The way that we build and design the road can have a huge impact on these traffic counts,” Montgomery said. “We can induce demand for more cars or we can induce demand for other modes of transportation. That’s a choice as a city that we can make.”

The city is still months away from a decision. But there’s been some confusion over who will be making the call. While the final say rests with the Nashville Department of Transportation, even East Bank Development Authority CEO Ben York admitted uncertainty over the Boulevard’s arbiter.

“There is some confusion, even within Metro, about decision maker and who that is within the stack of this process,” York said at an authority meeting in June. “We are working with Metro government as the policy holder for this decision. It will be a decision that lies with all of the all-access corridors in the county.”

But advocates fear the discussion could fade out of the public eye until it’s too late — and, suddenly, residents could be stuck with a six-lane highway instead of a more welcoming sort of street.