PILGRIMAGE FESTIVAL
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NEW METRO COUNCIL
SEPTEMBER 28, 2023 | VOLUME 35 | NUMBER 38
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Street View:
Lipscomb University continues to expand its footprint BY LENA MAZEL
Freddie O’Connell is sworn in as mayor, Sept. 25, 2023
POOL PHOTO COURTESY OF
THE TENNESSEAN
Freddie O’Connell sworn in as Nashville mayor BY ELI MOTYCKA
Freddie O’Connell is officially the mayor of Nashville, thanks to a minutes-long swearing-in Monday morning from former Mayor David Briley, who is currently serving as a Circuit Court judge. O’Connell briefly addressed reporters in Briley’s fifth-floor courtroom before heading downstairs to his new office, the mayor’s suite on the first floor. He told reporters that the tense city-state relationship is a top priority and promised a good working relationship with the Metro Council, the mayor’s lawmaking counterpart where O’Connell served for eight years as a district councilmember representing District 19 downtown. “I have several former colleagues returning to a body that I work very well with,” O’Connell told reporters about his relationship to the city’s legislative body. “I have spent good time over the course of the
summer campaigning with several of those members. A lot of the council understands the important priorities of the city that range from safety to affordable housing to how we move around the city.” Over the past four years, the Metro Council frequently clashed with the mayor’s office under John Cooper. Latefiled legislation and compressed policy timelines often frustrated the 40-person body. In Nashville’s strong-mayor system of government, the chief executive sets major city priorities, specifically the annual budget. The large, often fractured chamber must act in complete concert to match the power of the mayor’s office. During brief remarks before 8 a.m. on Monday, O’Connell promised philosophical alignment with the council on policy areas and a mutually respectful working relationship. O’Connell told reporters >> PAGE 2
Street View is a monthly column in our sister publication Nashville Scene in which they take a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city. Over the past two years, Lipscomb University has been on a significant property-buying spree. In 2022, Scene sister publication the Nashville Post reported that Lipscomb purchased a property at 4101 Belmont Blvd. for $1.9 million in August, three nearby single-family properties for an additional $1.95 million in September, two properties on Ferndale Avenue for $1.38 million in October, and a home on Morrow Avenue for $949,000 in December. This year, Lipscomb’s buying spree continued: In February, it bought a Glen Echo Road property for $3.26 million, and in August, it bought another home at 1309 Grandview Drive for $909,500. Notably, Lipscomb bought every one of the above properties from RER Partnership, a group that includes Lipscomb alumnus Bruce Church. According to Post reports, Lipscomb has spent about $7 million buying RER properties in the past two years. (In late January, Lipscomb also bought a property on Ferndale Avenue from board of trustees chair David Solomon. Lipscomb officials did not respond to the Scene’s specific questions about their connection to RER and the Church family. )
Lipscomb University
As the university continued purchasing properties from RER, it also amended its master plan to expand its campus. In April, Lipscomb petitioned Nashville’s Metro Council to convert two areas of R10 and CN zoning adjacent to the campus to institutional overlay zoning. The R10 zoning currently limits the land’s use to low-density residential buildings — typically one or two homes per lot — whereas institutional overlay zoning would give the university more flexibility to develop properties differently, though the school would still have to go through a planning process with Metro to do so. An amended plan that didn’t include the properties west of Belmont Boulevard passed on third reading and was signed by Mayor John Cooper in July. Lipscomb spokesperson Kim Chaudoin tells the Scene that the updated institutional overlay is a routine process required by the Metro Planning Commission every 10 years. Lipscomb created its original master plan in 1988; the city adopted it in 2003. Since then, there have been amendments in 2006, 2012, 2018 and 2023. Lipscomb’s campus is currently about 112 acres — a bit larger than Belmont University’s (92 acres) and about a third the size of Vanderbilt’s (340 acres); Vanderbilt has also expanded significantly in recent years. Lipscomb’s latest proposed master plan includes new areas of >> PAGE 2
PHOTO BY ERIC ENGLAND
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