MDHA to oversee Nashville’s downtown redevelopment

By Candy McCampbell

Nashville’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency has won the job to oversee the city’s multi-year, multi-phase downtown redevelopment effort along the Cumberland River.

MDHA has hired Ed Owens, a principal in charge of planning and urban design at the architecture/engineering firm Gresham Smith and Partners, to be the agency’s waterfront redevelopment director. Owens earlier was a longtime manager of the Metro Planning Department’s Current Planning and Design Division.

“The Cumberland River should be a focal point of our city,” Dean says in a statement announcing the selection. “I know MDHA, working with Metro Parks, will be able to guide a comprehensive plan that will integrate the improvement and expansion of Riverfront Park with other redevelopment projects along the river and downtown.”

Chris Koster, riverfront development director for Metro Parks and Recreation Department, will head that agency’s effort.

The plan’s five-year first phase will cost an estimated $40 million, and about $8 million will be included in a capital spending plan that is to be presented to the Metro Council this week.

The plan involves changes to both banks of the river between the Gateway and Memorial bridges and includes an “urban forest” and tailgating area around the Tennessee Titans’ LP Field, expanded parks on the east bank and a boat landing near the Interstate 24 bridge.

The result of 16 months of public meetings and discussions, the plan presents a redeveloped waterfront as a recreational, environmental and economic development draw, with a combination of mixed-use development and greenways, boardwalks, piers and boat docks.

The riverfront area includes the site of the former garbage-to-energy thermal plant that was considered but later dropped as the site of a new stadium for the Nashville Sounds minor league baseball team.

The plan was developed by Hargreaves Associates, a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm that designed waterfront projects in Chattanooga and Knoxville, with participation by Kennedy Coulter Rushing Watson of Chattanooga; Everton Oglesby Architects of Nashville; Hawkins Partners Inc., Nashville landscape architects; Moffatt & Nichol, Long Beach, Calif., engineers and consultants; and Christopher B. Leinberger, urban land use strategist with the Brookings Institution.

It was funded by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Metro Parks in partnership with Nashville Civic Design Center.

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