HEADLINE HOMES
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FRANKLIN ALDERMAN
MAY 4, 2023 | VOLUME 35 | NUMBER 18
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Metro Council approves funding for new Titans stadium BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT
Mayor John Cooper gives 2023 State of Metro address at Lawson High School.
PHOTO BY MATT MASTERS
Mayor Cooper gives State of Metro address at Bellevue’s new Lawson High School BY ELI MOTYCKA
The extended Metro universe joined councilmembers Thursday morning at the under-construction James Lawson High School in Bellevue for Mayor John Cooper’s final State of Metro address. Three months after Cooper announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection, Nashville’s fix-it mayor declared victory on a turbulent four years. “These past few years have been a golden age of fixing government,” Cooper told the crowd early in the speech. Since his time as a councilmember, the mayor has worked hard to associate himself with economic bedrock. He took the opportunity to rattle off metrics that reflect the city’s fiscal stability and job growth, specifically vaunting increases in staffing and pay among Metro employees. “We have fully recovered from crisis,” said
Cooper later on. He left out some of the biggest projects of his administration, despite their timeliness and relevance. The council approved the mayor’s $2.1 billion deal for a new, domed Titans stadium on the East Bank just two days ago, following 18 months of negotiations headed by the mayor’s office. Today marks a year since Cooper addressed the city from the Global Mall, a pricey real estate gamble with Vanderbilt University Medical Center that hasn’t panned out. Neither got air time during the hour-and-a-half program. Speakers, including the mayor, focused on recent lightning rods of civic identity. Faith leaders and officials nodded to expelled-and-reinstated state Rep. Justin Jones, whose district stretches from East Nashville
to Antioch. Nashville Youth Poet Laureate Lochlan Cook spoke about trans identity and gun violence in a stirring spoken-word performance. Cooper took every opportunity to commend the city’s emergency response infrastructure to loud applause — police have been a point of pride for city boosters since MNPD’s swift response during last month’s mass shooting at Covenant. Wrapping up his remarks, Cooper thanked officials and the audience. Serving Nashville has been an honor, he said, capping a speech that landed like a victory lap for the mayor who campaigned on getting Nashville back on the right track. According to a recent Vanderbilt poll, most people think the city’s priorities have been upside-down. More and >> PAGE 2
Rendering of stadium PHOTO BY TENNESSEE TITANS
The Metro Council early Wednesday morning voted to approve funding to build a multibillion-dollar enclosed stadium for the Tennessee Titans. The vote followed hours of public comment that started Tuesday evening and months of debate. The financing structure for the $2.1 billion project includes $500 million in bonds from the state, $840 million from the Titans and the NFL and $760 million funded by Metro debt and repaid through an increase to the city’s hotel tax and sales tax redirects from the stadium and the surrounding campus. The proposal represents record public spending on a stadium. The city is also preparing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure for the surrounding East Bank, the development of which is necessary to pay back the debt on the future stadium. Supporters said the deal would benefit the city in two key ways. One, it would free Metro from the yoke of the >> PAGE 2
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