“What’s important to keep in perspective is that we’ve got a good plan,” Owens said this evening. “This is not a discussion about changing any of those projects or not doing any of them. I know the mayor is fully committed to implementing the plan.”
“Otherwise, you would just end up with a variation of a theme,” Owens said.
He declined to specifically rebut any of Metro Councilman Mike Jameson’s criticisms of the alternate approach.
“We’re obviously interested in Mr. Jameson’s thoughts and opinions,” he said.
A new plan for redeveloping Nashville’s downtown riverfront falls short on several counts, a Metro councilman said today.
The http://www.tennessean.com/assets/pdf/DN13008439.PDF“>original plan would start with an urban forest on some of LP Field’s parking lots and an “adventure and water play park” south of the Shelby Avenue pedestrian bridge on the east bank. http://www.tennessean.com/assets/pdf/DN13008539.PDF“>The alternative would push those projects back to the third and fourth years of the redevelopment effort. It would start with several smaller east bank projects instead, then move to the downtown side of the river in Year 2.
Jameson said the adventure area and the urban forest wouldn’t need permits from the Corps of Engineers because they wouldn’t touch the water, so it makes sense to build them first.
The original plan was “meticulously sequenced,” he wrote in an email, to deal with environmental concerns and to generate considerable activity on the riverfront from the outset, which would create momentum for later projects.
“The Riverfront Adventure Park has the right combination of programs that will bring large numbers of people to the riverfront, is located in a highly visible and accessible location, has minimal regulatory constraints, provides an opportunity to demonstrate ‘green’ building practices, will enhance existing uses and will be a tangible project that adds excitement to the riverfront redevelopment,” the city’s consultants wrote in a presentation to Metro Parks and the Corps of Engineers last October.
The adventure area also would eliminate the only contaminated “brownfield” in the redevelopment area, and it would provide an alternative staging area for downtown events once construction started on the west bank, Jameson said.
Ed Owens, MDHA’s waterfront redevelopment director since September, said Saturday that the economic recession had forced Metro to “be more flexible and adaptable and kind of reassess our priorities.”
In a statement, Mayor Karl Dean’s office said the city needs to determine if the agreed-upon projects still make sense in the order presented in the original plan.
“After Mayor Dean took office, he appointed Ed Owens to MDHA to work on riverfront redevelopment from a comprehensive approach,” the statement said. “The riverfront redevelopment plan was completed over two years ago. Ed is now going through a public process of determining if what was set out two years ago still fits the needs of our community today. That was the purpose of the community meeting at East Park.”
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