Making Tracks in Nashville

Once the site of a bustling railroad roundhouse, The Gulch development in Nashville, Tenn., now teems with the comings and goings of shoppers, diners, workers and residents in a neighborhood ranked as one of the greenest in the world.

The Gulch recently received LEED for Neighborhood Development certification, only the 13th neighborhood in the world to earn the new designation from the U.S. Green Building Council. “Nashville is showing the world that we can be a leader in environmental action, and that we can become the greenest city in the Southeast,” said Karl Dean, the city’s mayor. “The Gulch is a historic gem in our city [and] its revitalization is crucial to our very fabric.”

Among The Gulch’s LEED-friendly attributes are its tree-lined streets, high-density mixed-use buildings that support public transit networks, easy access to more than 1,100 daily bus rides, new LEED-certified buildings, adaptive reuse of existing buildings, and preservation of historic structures. In addition, over the past 10 years “all of the development has had some sort of remediation associated with it,” says Dirk Melton, development director for Nashville-based MarketStreet Enterprises, the chief developer for The Gulch. “We have a voluntary cleanup program in place with the TDEC [Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation], and we’ve had a great working relationship with them.”

Back in 1999, however, The Gulch area was “not someplace you’d want to spend any time,” says Melton. “There was zero residential, and it was a pretty rundown area, industrial and quasi-industrial. All the infrastructure was already here, but just underutilized.”

The 60 acres near Nashville’s city center had once housed a busy railroad roundhouse, among other structures, and the area was contaminated with arsenic and PAHs, according to Andy Shivas, program manager of the Voluntary Cleanup, Oversight and Assistance Program (VOAP) and brownfields coordinator for the TDEC.

The initial remediation, which was done in conjunction with the railroad that originally owned the property, primarily involved capping and placing buildings on top of the area of contamination, he explains.

“We worked with [the railroad] and got the project to a certain point, and then they began marketing the property and the MarketStreet people came in,” he says. Adds Melton: “There’s a very large public-private partnership to what we’re doing. The city had to get on board and make a pretty large commitment to allow us to do what we’re doing. As a result of investment by the city and the projects recently completed, you’ve got a total investment of over $400 million in our area.”

That investment included a $7million improvement program for infrastructure, streetscape and beautification projects by the city and Davidson County’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA), which worked with MarketStreet to lead the redevelopment effort.

Fluid process
Today, MarketStreet is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its first land acquisition in The Gulch and the fourth revision of its original master plan.

“We don’t control the entire area, but guide the development of it,” says Melton. “Other companies have come in and made significant investments, which we encourage. The pie gets bigger as more people want to come in and add amenities.”

The neighborhood is also led by The Gulch Business Improvement District (GBID), a public-private partnership established by the city in 2006 to help fund improvements through an extra assessment on Gulch owners’ property tax bills. The GBID is run by a volunteer board of local business owners and residents of The Gulch to handle neighborhood signage, streetscape maintenance and other community projects.

“We have several dozen different commercial property owners, along with residents moving into the area, so this allows us to bring these people together,” says Melton.

The still-growing entertainment and dining district offers both office and retail space, along with market-rate loft apartments, studios and condominiums and affordable housing.

“We’re looking for new large projects over the next couple of years, [such as] a hotel complex and an office building,” says Melton, adding that $250 million in development is currently under way. “We have several deals in the works to bring in various restaurants, apparel and home furnishings [stores] in the next couple of years. We have the ability to put in virtually every type of commercial and residential [project] except for big box and single-family residential.”

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