Councilman Mike Jameson points to the Popeyes restaurant near Gallatin and Trinity Lane, the new U.S. Bank building on Gallatin at Broadmoor and the renovated Anode Building as success stories for the Gallatin Road Specific Plan.

-- Ledger Photo: Lyle Graves

The Gallatin Pike Specific Plan that went into effect in 2007 is, depending on whom you ask, the best thing or the worst thing to ever happen to East Nashville.

And with some new faces headed to the Metro Council, both viewpoints are likely to get fresh airings.

The special zoning overlay set up strict guidelines for development along the corridor from where it intersects South 5th Street all the way up to Briley Parkway. Landscaping, signage, street-setback standards and other measures were put into place, the idea being that a more cohesive formula would spur new business while also driving out some less desirable elements.

For Councilman Jamie Hollin, the improvement district was OK on paper but has proved to be a business buster. Councilmember Mike Jameson, a major proponent of it, says it has helped offset the lack of business diversity and regulation along the corridor.

And Councilman Erik Cole says it’s a work in progress with both strengths and weaknesses.

All three leave office following the August elections, and if they are joined by sitting Council member Karen Bennett, whose Madison-area district contains the top part of the corridor, Gallatin Pike will have four new voices representing the business and residential interests that lie along it.

What, if any, changes remain to be seen. In fact, there’s a fair bit of agreement between the pro- and anti-overlay factions. Both sides say that they see Gallatin as a thriving business corridor, albeit one that’s been taken over in recent years by such low-rent businesses as check cashing operations and other financial-oriented shops. All say they want to improve the area, it’s just how to spice up the mix that separates them.

For Hollin, who has spoken against the overlay during his council term as the representative from District 5, the answer to East Nashville’s business doldrums lie in tax-increment financing and other targeted efforts rather than what he sees as a draconian master plan.

“I think the SP was well intended, and the goal of an aesthetically pleasing, neighborhood friendly redevelopment of the corridor is a good one,” Hollin says. “But as this is written, it requires buy-in from two groups: the property owners and the government. Where the government comes into play is tax-increment financing for the corridor, which hasn’t happened.”

Hollin says he believes the older buildings along Gallatin have a lot of life left in them, despite their dated exteriors. Just how they’re going to be used remains to be seen, though. The SP prohibits new check-cashing facilities, title loan operators and pawn shops from coming in, which its backers thought would drive out the plentiful existing ones, thus freeing the building owners up to renovate and make their properties more inviting for a wider variety of businesses. In this instance, the SP is a study in unintended consequences.

“The thinking was that this would get rid of those that were there, but the opposite has happened,” Hollin says. “They are entrenched. Their leases expired, the landlords upped the rent 50 percent and they paid it. They want to stay right where they are. The landlords ended up doing nothing and making a lot more money, and that is a disincentive for an owner to reinvest in his property.”

Hollin readily ticks off other things he sees as side effects of the SP, including issues with power line relocating, existing signage being grandfathered in by Metro’s code department and other things that have continued to make development along Gallatin hodgepodge at best.

“We’ve got to get everyone at the table, and I don’t think that happened initially,” he said. “If you’re a developer looking at property all over town, are you going to look at sites with a 50-page overlay, or a place that doesn’t have one? I think it has a chilling effect.”

Quite the opposite, asserts Jameson, who represents District 6 and continues to be one of the SP’s major proponents.

“The Gallatin Specific Plan has taken a lot of heat as the economy has declined, because a lot of people blame it for the business atmosphere,” Jameson says. “But I’ve gone back and looked at the number of business licenses, permits and real-estate appraisals for a period of three years after its implementation, and compared to every other similar commercial corridor or street in Nashville, Gallatin leads the pack.”

The period from 2010, Jameson’s review took place, to now has seen continued business sluggishness, but has also seen several successful projects pop up along Gallatin, which Jameson says indicate that the SP is working.

“You can’t blame a lack of development on the SP,” he says. “Blame the economy. We’re beating every other commercial corridor that doesn’t have an SP, which I think argues the fact that we’re doing pretty well.”

That said, he insists the document was designed to be a “living, breathing” instrument, and that opponents need to work with proponents on its perceived shortcomings in order to continue planned, orderly development.

“The community had a strong consensus, and I well remember a four-district meeting held at East High School,” Jameson says. “Those people wanted a control on signage, where they’d been seeing an ‘arms race’ of bigger, uglier signs; landscaping requirements and buffering; as much control as was legally possible on types of business uses; and a more cohesive look.”

He points to the new U.S. Bank building on Gallatin at Broadmoor, the Popeye’s restaurant near Gallatin and Trinity Lane and the renovated Anode Building as successes, adding “I doubt that you’ll see anybody clamoring to drop all the regulations. Every new council member is going to want to improve upon it, and I have no doubt there will be some continuing effort to do just that. But I doubt that they’ll let it go back to what it was becoming, and would become, without the SP in place.”

For his part, Cole says that the overlay’s intent was positive, and that the criticisms don’t take into account all that it has done and will do. He also denies charges of lost business due to new regulations.

“There’s not a lot of data that shows that we have turned away business, or that people have chosen to locate or relocate elsewhere,” Cole says. “But that said, I’ve talked to enough developers, and small- and medium-size businesses to know that it would be helpful to have some incentives in there along with the punitive measures. We are in an economic downturn, and I do agree that it’s time we put some incentives in to make the SP a more complete package.”

Hollin, Cole and just about anyone else interested in East Nashville quickly refers to the Publix supermarket — or lack thereof — as proof that the overlay either doesn’t work, or needs improvement. After much back and forth with developers and property owners, the chain took a pass on a Gallatin Pike location. Hollin said it had to do with inflexibility within the plan, while Cole and Jameson said that the area’s demographics as far as income and spending levels also played a role.

And given that East Nashville’s high-end renovated neighborhoods abut those with much lower per-capita incomes, all three council members agree that demographics will continue to play a role in business development along Gallatin.

“It’s all about the that,” Cole said. “The big chains and other large developers need to see a critical mass of customers, and that’s not happening for us yet. We do have it happening at the smaller level, and off the corridor in areas like Riverside Village and along Eastland. Eventually we can move that toward Gallatin Pike, and start casting a wider net.”

Tinkering with the existing plan in order to create subzones for the Five Points area, and other mechanisms for specific parts of the corridor, would be helpful, he adds. And like Hollin, he added that such movement will require work between several Metro departments, the new council members and the business and residential communities. Based on his knowledge of his constituency and what he’s hearing from the council candidates up and down Gallatin, he thinks that can happen.

“The four of us on council have collaborated pretty well in the last few years, and I think the next group representatives will be able to build on that going forward,” Cole says.

“Gallatin Pike is just too important to not keep working toward a consensus on a plan that provides that ongoing economic development.”