Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell last week unveiled the details of his transportation improvement program, “Choose How You Move: An All-Access Pass to Sidewalks, Signals, Service and Safety,” which Nashville residents will vote on in November.
The program was built from ideas generated over a decade of transportation planning, weeks of community engagement, meetings with Metro Council members, and feedback from two citizen advisory committees.
“Ninety percent of Nashvillians told us through Imagine Nashville that they support investing in public transit and the Choose How You Move Program will get us where we want to go faster and safer, no matter how you’re moving,” O’Connell says. “This is the best opportunity we’ve ever had to build out our priority sidewalks, to synchronize signals so you’re spending less time at red lights, and to connect neighborhoods via a better transit system that doesn’t have to come downtown just to go somewhere else. This is about the sustainability of our workforce and this community, and how we bring the cost of living down so that our residents can afford to live here.”
Details of the program, along with maps and timetables, are available at nashville.gov/transit, representing practical and tested improvements that will make an immediate impact and touch every council district.
Lee admits defeat in voucher push
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee conceded defeat Monday in his push to enact universal school vouchers this year, acknowledging there was not a “path forward” after months of Republican infighting.
It’s a blow to school choice advocates who had hoped to add Tennessee to the growing list of states drastically expanding voucher programs with little to no income limits.
“I’m disappointed for the families that were hopeful that their child might have the opportunity to choose the right path educationally,” Lee, a Republican, told reporters. “There is broad agreement that this needs to be done. I feel confident it will be, but we couldn’t put the final pieces together this year.”
According to the National Education Association, the largest U.S. teachers union, 11 states have adopted universal school voucher laws.
Supporters argue that doing so gives students in low-performing schools a way out and stress that vouchers give parents more control over what their children are taught.
Critics counter that whether students who change schools with the use of taxpayer money achieve better educational outcomes is in dispute.
Lee first unveiled his plans last fall to allow families to access public money for private schooling, regardless of income. At the time, he was surrounded by the state’s Republican legislative leaders and Arkansas GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had signed into law a voucher proposal just that year and used the event to tout that a conservative education revolution was happening around the country.
Yet despite the initial support, Lee’s vision was always considered ambitious in a state where rural GOP lawmakers have remained skeptical of losing limited public school money in their own districts and local education officials have been loudly unanimous in their opposition to any hint of vouchers.
East Bank developer agreement approved
Last week, the Metro Council unanimously approved the Master Developer Agreement between Metro Nashville Government and The Fallon Company to develop 30 acres of Metro-owned land on the East Bank.
The agreement allows Metro and Fallon to bring to life the Imagine East Bank Vision Plan, which was developed by the Nashville Planning Department after two years of deep community engagement to create a vibrant, mixed-income, multimodal community adjacent to Nashville’s downtown – an economic engine for the city and state.
“Nashvillians told us they wanted great neighborhoods on the city’s East Bank,” says Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell. “This agreement with The Fallon Company will help us deliver a neighborhood for all Nashvillians – with unprecedented commitments in affordable housing, child care and complete streets.”
Fallon, a leading national real estate development firm, was selected to be Metro’s master developer for the Initial Development Area’s (IDA) 30 acres of the East Bank after a highly competitive procurement process. The company’s commitment to bringing the community’s vision to life and prioritizing providing much-needed affordable housing is part of what led Metro to select the firm.
The agreement lays the foundation for building neighborhoods that prioritize safe and simple multimodal connections by prioritizing alternative modes of transportation for Nashvillians – wide sidewalks for pedestrians, protected and separated bike paths and Nashville’s first-ever dedicated transit lanes, so residents can decide how they want to move throughout the neighborhood and, subsequently, the city, safely and easily.
Metro Register of Deeds moving to Deaderick
The office of the Davidson County Register of Deeds will relocate in late May to 350 Deaderick Street from its location inside the Bridgestone Arena at 501 Broadway.
The new location is just a few steps from the Historic Metro Courthouse, where the Register’s Office was once located. The new location is convenient for attorneys and anyone in need of registering property documents that must go through the court system.
Specific dates and detailed instructions regarding customer parking will be provided to the public as the information becomes available.
Redfin: ‘Luxury’ home costs up 8.7% from 2023
The median-priced U.S. luxury home sold for a record $1,225,000 in the first quarter, up 8.7% from a year earlier, according to a new report from Redfin, the technology-powered real estate brokerage. Prices of non-luxury homes rose at roughly half the pace; they were up 4.6% to a median of $345,000, also a record high.
Redfin defines luxury homes as those estimated to be in the top 5% of their respective metro area based on market value, and non-luxury homes as those estimated to be in the 35th-65th percentile based on market value.
New listings of luxury homes are soaring – but not enough to curb the price growth that comes with rising demand; the total supply of luxury homes is still far below pre-pandemic levels.
Sales are growing for luxury homes and declining for non-luxury homes largely because so many affluent buyers are able to pay in cash, meaning today’s elevated mortgage rates don’t deter them from purchasing homes.
Nearly half (46.8%) of luxury homes bought during the three months ending Feb. 29 were purchased in cash. That’s the highest share in at least a decade and up from 44.1% a year earlier.
Edison Partners opens new Nashville office
Growth equity investment firm Edison Partners announced it has opened a new office at the Nashville Warehouse Company in the Wedgewood Houston neighborhood.
The 38-year-old firm is known for its investments in growth-stage technology companies in emerging tech hubs of North American markets outside of Silicon Valley and was one of the first software investors in the mid-Atlantic corridor.
More than 70% of its portfolio companies reside in markets beyond Silicon Valley and New York City. Cities represented by the firm’s last dozen investments range from Birmingham, Alabama; Dallas; Houston; Newark, New Jersey; and Zionsville, Indiana.
Edison Partners specializes in high-growth, capital-efficient companies in health care IT, financial technology and vertical software sectors, and is deploying its 10th fund. The firm is generally the lead investor, making $10-40M minority and control investments.
Roughly half the firm’s staff will be based in the Nashville office initially, with plans to expand significantly in Nashville going forward.
TN unemployment drops 0.1% in March
Tennessee’s statewide unemployment rate dropped for the second consecutive month in March, according to new data from the Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
The seasonally adjusted rate for the month came in at 3.2%, 0.1% lower than February’s rate of 3.3%.
Tennessee’s all-time low unemployment rate is 3.1%, which the state recorded during three months in 2023.
Between February and March, 10,600 nonfarm workers started new jobs across the state. The leisure and hospitality sector created most of those new jobs, followed by the education and health services sector and then the manufacturing sector.
In a year-to-year comparison, Tennessee’s latest jobless rate of 3.2% mirrors the state’s rate from March 2023.
Over the year, Tennessee employers added 16,700 nonfarm positions to the state’s workforce.
During the last 12 months, the education and health services sector saw the biggest increase in new jobs. The leisure and hospitality sector added the next largest number of jobs, followed by the other services sector.
Across the nation, seasonally adjusted unemployment dropped by 0.1% in March, from 3.9% to 3.8%.
Smart Heart Act aims to save lives
New legislation requiring that automated external defibrillators (AED) be located within 1,000 feet of any high school athletic activity in Tennessee is a win-win for a team of physicians at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.
The Smart Heart Act, a sudden cardiac arrest prevention law, establishes various requirements for AEDs in schools serving grades 9-12 and requires response protocols for cardiac-related medical emergencies. Introduced in the state Legislature in January, Gov. Bill Lee signed the statute March 27.
English Flack, M.D., M.S., associate professor of pediatric cardiology, and Alex Diamond, D.O., M.P.H., professor of orthopedic surgery, pediatrics and neurological surgery at Monroe Carell, have long been advocates of providing appropriate lifesaving responses for cardiac events as well as ensuring a safe and healthy environment at all sporting levels.
Flack is the medical director of Project ADAM, a national organization committed to making schools “heart safe” by preventing sudden cardiac death in schools and communities through education and lifesaving programs.
Diamond, a youth sports safety activist, is co-founder of Safe Stars, the first youth sports safety training system in the United States, and director of the Vanderbilt Youth Sports Health Center, an innovative program geared toward treating pediatric and adolescent athletes’ physical, mental and social-emotional well-being.