Exploring Nashville's Essential Structures for Togetherness with Guest Rick Williams on Episode 1 of NEST

This is your show, right? The podcast that covers issues and politics for Davidson County, the state of Tennessee, and national issues that affect us right here at home. And political strategist and former Davidson County GOP chairman Lonnie Spivak. And today, we're welcoming Rick Williams, native Nashville Republican strategist and consultant, to discuss something called Nashville Essential Structures for togetherness.

Now, I don't know what crazy person came up with a name like Nashville Essentials Structures for togetherness, also known as nest. But what a crazy name for a program. Now, before we get to Rick, Ness is essentially the structure of the city's build baby build policy and a quarter to. According to The Tennessean, nest is nine proposals led by At-Large Council Member Quinn Evans Segall and District 20 Councilman Roland Horton, which were introduced to Metro Council on February 2nd.

Now, in a nutshell, what this proposal does is it changes the zoning laws within this nest area, which is still really yet to be defined, but it basically will remove the single family home zoning and make all homes multifamily zones. So, Rick, welcome to the program. How are you doing today? Good to be with you now. Now, Rick, you and I go way back, probably 15 years now, and you and I have worked to kill some of the most destructive programs in Nashville's history.

And that is two transit plans. You and I worked with, stop amp on, Megan Berry's plan. And then we, called. Oh, yeah, Carl Dean's plan. And, and then also stop BRP with, Megan Berry. And, so you and I have really worked together and have put a halt to really some of Metro's dumbest ideas through the years.

Rick Williams

Well, we have unfortunately, we were not successful in the most recent election. The people behind terrible transit plans and things that don't do anything except provide more service to people that don't ride it is, this plan that passed kind of partizan. It was on, and they, they were smart to put it in November when everyone will be going to the polls and voting either R or D, and the Harris vote was almost exactly the same as the Ford Transit.

But now that transit plan, I think it's Nashville. Nashville next or move Nashville. What what's the name of it? I don't even remember anymore, but plan. But it was a transit plan. Choose how you choose how you move. But it's really not. But one of the main components of choose how you move was affordable housing. And so the, the choose how you move had these transit hubs and all these transit hubs are going to be high density, what they're calling affordable housing, which we don't really know what that is.

Lonnie Spivak

And all that really ties back in to this, nest program, what they're calling Nashville essential structures for togetherness or nest. And, so, Rick, why don't you tell us a little bit about what nest is? Well, let me just let me just put everything together and kind of give you an idea of how it all fits together.

Rick Williams

Nest is over here. Transit is over here.

Now you see a move to do away and put the historic and zoning commission inside the planning Commission. So what? That tells me. It tells me that there this is the fast track. All the quick build developers have come in from out of state, out of town. We've got some great builders here that have been here for years.

One of them, I can think of is own self properties, and they go out and find land and build houses and sell houses to people. This is to go in and take land in the Urban Services district, which the tell people they have not lived here their whole life like I have. Urban services district is the old city limits of Nashville. Before Nashville became metropolitan.

Lonnie Spivak

So basically, if you get your trash picked up by the city and you live somewhere close to a liquor store, you're in the urban services district. If you live outside that area, you're what's called the General Services District. And then in those areas, you pay for your own garbage pick up or your neighborhood does, you probably pay a little extra for your sewage, and you got to drive a few extra blocks to get to the liquor stores.

Rick Williams

And so that's the difference between the urban and general services districts. But if you live in that urban services district and there's it's a big part of Nashville, this bill would go in and where you might be live in a community of single family homes all at once. They would be able to rezone that and actually put four units on the same lot either together.

I think probably built in a back to back, kind of like a quad, but like they can be single family and owned, but you could put four of them on a particular lot.

Lonnie Spivak

So if you, if you've been out to the nations or out to East Nashville, you know, if you go into the nations, they've torn down all these old homes and they're building two tall skinnies on that lot. And if you go out to East Nashville, there's like blocks and blocks of apartment units for each. Each, apartment building has probably 300 units. Now, you take that. And this ness really puts that to steroids because like in in West Nashville where they're putting two tall skinnies on those out on those lots, now, they'll be able to put four or even more houses on the on that same land.

And, you know, Davidson County has really amped up the density. I think it's it's been their plan to grow as fast as they can to get as much additional property tax in as possible to help cover some of the shortfalls they've been seeing in recent years. And one of the things, Lonnie, I believe and I need to check this, but your readers can easily or listeners can easily Google it, if they can, see for Metro recently passed, a zoning change of commercial property can now be used as residential property pretty easily if you own a strip center.

Rick Williams

And now that property would make more money with 300 apartments on it, and it's on Charlotte or Gallatin Road, and you just go over to Metro, say, hey, I will put some more housing in the in the marketplace here. And they pretty much let you do that. They're not worried about. You no longer will have the grocery store on the corner or whatever is there.

And now, they're all about housing and it's all fast tracked. And the same with the historic zoning. They're trying to do away with this historic zoning commission or put it inside the Planning Commission, which will give it, the Planning Commission is on steroids. And, I'm afraid of now live in a city where if you want something, God, if you have enough money, you can get it. And I never want to live in a city like that. Now, not long ago, there was a meeting. A neighborhood meeting on next. Let's tell me how that went. Well, I was it was about a year ago, I guess. I can't remember the date. But it was a quite a while ago, not quite a year. And it was at Belmont University in one of their bigger meeting rooms over there.

It was called by, Council lady, Quinn Evans. Segall. Yeah, yeah. And she, she had a meeting there. And this rumor about what Nash was going to do and how it was going to change the complexity. Even houses in and around Belmont Hills for a village, all the old neighborhoods. How you could go in again and take a perfectly fine home and a developer can buy, tear it down and put four units there.

That place was packed that day. I mean, they couldn't get everybody in, hundreds of people out in the hallway. And when she got in there, she got an earful.

Lonnie Spivak

And if I remember correctly, there were there was room for, I think, like 250 people. And I if I remember, like 800 people showed up for that meeting. It was quite a lot of people.

Rick Williams

I was lucky enough to get there, and I was one of the last people to scoot in the door and get inside where I could sit down and listen. But she was verbally harassed, shouted down. People would ask questions, she wouldn't answer them. And I think she got the cold wind feel of this, what her legislation would do.

And part of that got made a lot of publicity. And I think probably mayor O'Connell probably went to her and said, look, I've got a transit plan. I don't need this out here. Bother my transit plan. He was all about getting that transit plan pass again. It's part and parcel that getting the next plan passed part and parcel and no longer worrying about our historic buildings, which if you go downtown, people love Nashville because we have been able to save our old historic buildings, just like on Second Avenue for years.

There was a Hooters in a historic building. Like, where do you find that in America? Right. We have been able to work together to have historic buildings saved and modern, more newer restaurants or bars or whatever put in there. So. So in addition to density, what the effect that this will have on traffic, especially as they start implementing this transit plan, I think will be pretty immense.

Just the number of people who are going to be moving into this city if they get this through will be enormous. Well, it will. And another thing I'd ask your listeners to look at the next time they drive down any road in downtown Nashville. The other day, the number of street, which has been two lanes each way for years, is now one way each way, part of Freddie's planning department, part of more wider of sidewalks than lanes for bicycle, is taking up what used to be the second lane on demand.

Right now we're talking from the interstate up to the statues at the top of the hill that is now one lane each way. And then people ask, well, you know, was it congested in Nash which congested because they're taking your the path for your car away. Take the vision street from that same statue around to the liquor store on ninth Avenue.

That used to be two lanes each way. Okay. That's a big, that's a big, thoroughfare in the afternoon when people leaving the Music Row area to get over to interstate, a lot of people take that does it down country through all the way to, I think, Fourth Avenue. That's a pretty busy street. Well, they've cut that back now.

It's one lane each way. So these kind of plans that are in Freddie's transit plan will make the traffic worse. No matter if you live in Rutherford County. Once you get here, you've got to deal with these crazy streets. And. And then when you get look, you add the next plan. On top of that, it's just going to amplify that.

Lonnie Spivak

And you throw you throw busses in these neighborhoods. And I don't know if you how many streets you've driven down lately, but they put all these darn speed cushions in and then they got all these reflector poles. And so you're going to have this next zoning if they get it through. I think they've deferred it to like April 2nd.

Rick Williams

It's coming up this spring. And trust me there there's going to be a push on it. And there's groups forming now to push back because, you're going to take away the character of your neighborhoods. Neighborhoods that are fantastic neighborhoods mean that. Just look at the Hillsborough area, Belmont area around, anywhere that you are in that urban services district.

And a lot of those homes are beautiful homes. But when money gets in the way because they're not, you know, the argument from the neighbors says, oh, we're going to make more affordable housing. I'm sorry if it's $1 million house here. Now, when they tear that house down, they're going to build four back and a half million and make $1 million.

Lonnie Spivak

Okay. So you're not wrong. Nobody can be a perfect example of this is the Vanderbilt area. The Vanderbilt area is in the urban services district. And they have these old beautiful craftsman homes. Some of them were Victorian style, but they're just old, beautiful homes that really set the character of Nashville. And if they get the most destructive part of this plan through, those houses will be torn down by developers, and they will put four, six or more houses in its place.

Rick Williams

Right now, they're just group of together. And another say that we're losing. And please look at this. When you drive around Nashville, look at how much own street parking we have. There's no difference than somebody's parking their cars on the street, and somebody camping in the park is still using government property that was meant to be for everybody.

But when Metro lets a developer then put parking spaces, in front of his, is building and doesn't have a paved meters, there are many can. Then you're providing you're providing parking for developers. They have to build less parking garages or parking areas for the units they're building. So look at, South Street that runs from Music Row over to, I think, Eighth Avenue.

Look at that street. Used to be two lanes each way. Now there's one lane. Wherever bike and park on the street and one lane for travel traffic. But yet everybody. And one reason why we have congestion. Same thing with, by Walgreens on West Main. If you turn and going the connector that was supposed to connect us all to North Nashville, and we had the connector bridge built, and that was going to be a great thing.

That street is down to one lane each way. Now, so it's not much connection getting over to, West End, but it was supposed to be able to connect the Tsu area over to West End quicker. But again, you're down to one lane each way. When you get over by, the park there. So it's I just watch it.

I watch parking and bicycle lanes creeping in on traffic and take our vehicle lanes away, which in turn adds up to you having more time in the car being congested. So it sounds like the zoning and transit, they're going to go hand in hand. They're all tied together. The transit plan, the zoning, the historic zoning, it's all together.

Lonnie Spivak

Now, you and I talked about this a little bit, but Mayor Freddie O'Connell is a very talented politician. You know, Nashville has had some really good mayors. We've had some really not so good mayors, but we've rarely had a politician who is articulate as a mayor. O'Connell. Now, he can really put on the sauce. And when you hear him talk about the plan, you know, he's like, well, you you know, we have we have to deal with our growth and we have this and we have that.

And he makes it sound well, yeah. You know, I think we do need that. But once you really look into the details, the people who live in these neighborhoods are really saying, no, we don't want that. Exactly. That's why they pay. So many people in Belmont that day. And they'll be back if their neighborhoods affected, they'll be back.

Rick Williams

We've got to let other neighborhoods know that, because this is not just part of Nashville. This is all of Nashville, where there's an, urban services district. So you're talking over probably around Stratford, Inglewood area, East Nashville, all these areas are going to see the same thing. And unfortunately, you know, I don't see it to be politicians, jobs, create house.

That's not their job. The housing market is a private market that will take care of itself. And I don't know that why we have to all at once. Oh, all these people are coming. I hate to tell the mayor they're not all coming here. They're going to Williamson County, Wilson County, Rutherford County, Sumner County, Robinson County. They're going they're not all I know.

They say that 100 people a day or something like that, come in here, then I'll stop. And in that, trust me. And with, with this problem with the license plate reader is not in place and crime soaring, they find that real quickly. They don't want to live in Nashville.

Lonnie Spivak

Now, what effect do you think this type of zoning would have on businesses, that are either currently in Nashville or want to move to Nashville?

Rick Williams

Well, that cuts both ways. I mean, businesses want their employees close, and, probably some of the big corporations would probably maybe support this. But I'm a native Nashville and we didn't get where we are by being quick and fast. Used to we had council members that would serve long terms because we only passed term limits in the last, what, 15 to 20 years?

We term limits went in effect. And we had a mayor that, I live in Paul Blankenship in Inglewood. He protected Inglewood like it was his nonprofit. Buster. Bogus. I can keep name Courtney Patterson all over town. These men protected their communities and made sure you didn't have bad zoning and that's one reason we have such a great city now.

We've got great homes in great communities, and this will be a way to decimate it. And, we just don't want that. I don't know, we'll see it happen. I mean, again, we got great. We are the hot city, everybody. There's a reason everybody wants to come here. It's cool. We've got these historic buildings. We got these old, beautiful homes.

And so people wanting to live here and. And it's not the government's problem to fix, is people can't afford to live here. There are places they can't afford to live. And that's what we need to worry about. Well, oftentimes these things have unintended consequences. So they may be trying to increase this density to maybe fix our housing inventory.

But really what they're going to do is just build a lot of expensive homes to developers to like, take one lot like $1 million. And the other thing to place, you remember part of the transit plan that long. And now we're opposed to that. Freddie O'Connell has had a housing feature in that, where they were going to build government housing around these transit centers.

So out of Green Hills, they had a spot picked out. They were going probably buy much more land and they needed for the transit center. But in turn either lace or sell to private developers to build, what they call workforce housing, which is another term for government housing. You know, the government finds a nice way to put a nice name on everything.

Lonnie Spivak

Yeah. So one of the things that really will connect to this nest plan is something that was passed last year. By the Metro Council, and really, with the help of the federal with the state government, well, has called the East Bank authority. And so what the East Bank authority is, is a nine member group of, a nine member board who's really responsible for the overall development of the East Bank.

They've really created a government inside of a government that will run 550 acres of the East Bank of Nashville. Now, this group really has complete authority over this zoning, and that will include these multifamily home units, am I correct? It will. And you know that. I mean, that's something that just grates me terribly, because I like the fact that everybody has a councilman they can go to with their problems with people living in this 550 acres.

Rick Williams

Just imagine a council district and now all at once you don't have your councilman no more. The mayor has appointed five people, the speaker of the House and, lieutenant governor and one each. You got seven. And the comptroller, I think has that has, Well, I think the mayor. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they have five together. The mayor and the council have I think maybe they have seven together.

And then the speaker and the lieutenant governor have one, so it's nice. Yeah, but those nine will now be in charge of that area, and there's nobody to go to or no way to appeal that. There are actually two developers who, before this was passed, want to get their building permits. One of them was a $60 million apartment complex.

He went to get his building permit, and the metro zone said, I'm sorry, we don't have anything planned for that. We have a street going through. There he goes, wait a minute. I bought my property. I paid for it. I'm ready to build my complex, make my profit like we do. And I'm like, oh no, we're not giving you a permit.

He's in federal court. There's another developer did that and this great deal that they put together for cheaper to move across the river has fallen apart. This same nine member board and Bob Mendez apparently is keep asking more and more out of a pack to do. And the Pat board has now walked away. Bring the two pack over there, just like some of us tried to tell Speaker Sexton and Lieutenant Governor and two senators, this is not a good idea, and it's coming to prove, factual.

Lonnie Spivak

Well, this was originally a nine proposals were part of this nest. Now, we don't exactly know how this will win. And, when Metro Council takes us back up, in, in the spring, when is the next set of metro elections? When will people be able to vote on their council members? Next 20:07 a.m. elected. Everybody in 20.

Rick Williams

We elected everyone in 23. And there'll be another Metro council and mayors election in 2020 7th August of that day. So the point is that you're not going to be able to elect these people out in time to make any of these changes. So it's really important for you to pay attention to this nest in the news and make sure that your council members know that you do not want this extreme multifamily zoning in your neighborhood.

You know, there's a group, Save National Neighborhoods, I believe is the name of it. I think they have a Facebook page. I think they have a web page. They're getting together, getting ready to have to fight this. And, it's going to be an important fight. We can't we can't let our character of our neighborhoods go away.

That's what made us the great city we are. And, we've got to maintain that. There are a lot of neighborhood organizations out there, and I encourage all of you, this is not partizan at all. This is about saving your community. And I say to this community, it's not it's not Democrat, Republican, independent. It's not gay, straight, whatever.

It's saving your community. Don't matter who your neighbor is. You want the houses to be the same in the neighborhood, so your value stays up. And, if anything, it's going to backfire on them. Make that their argument that this is going to add for more housing, affordable housing, unless they put some clause in there, you can only build for that or a certain price or something. It's not going to be affordable for anybody.

Lonnie Spivak

Well, we all know that the official bird of Nashville is the crane because you see them everywhere. Rick, thanks for joining us today. When we get more information on this, please come back and we'll give an update. Thanks so much.