In the past, America's cities were the centers for all sorts of activity. Cities were complete worlds where people resided, worked, shopped, entertained themselves, and visited. At some point in time, however, cites became less attractive to people who began to move to posh suburbs and quiet houses in the country. People would no longer put up with the noise and hectic pace of the cities. With the residents followed the businesses, the services, and the jobs. City populations began to shrink while suburban populations grew by leaps and bounds. This decrease in population has left many small cities destitute and failing economically. At the very least most cities have definitely past their golden age. Inner cities as well as old suburbs are effected. Nashville, is such a city where it's golden days have passed and it's downtown business is doing worse than it had in previous years. This leaves the question of what should be done to help revitalize the downtown area.
Sometime after 1900 a great exodus occurred from America's cities. The American dream dictated that people have clean, spacious quiet homes in the suburbs with a picket fence, a green lawn and a dog. America's love affair with the automobile and increased infrastructure and mass transit made this egression possible. Since people tend to purchase goods and services near to home, these businesses and services moved to the suburbs as well. All of the clothing stores, pharmacies, grocery stores, dentists, doctors, and restaurants moved to the suburbs to follow the people. The movement of businesses out of the downtown area simply quickened the process. When people still living downtown saw that there were no longer as many services as they once enjoyed, they too would move to the suburbs. Eventually, suburb residents don't even want to commute to the city each day to go to work. Thus, many jobs also move to the suburbs. This is where this trend becomes a never ending cycle. With the decrease in people living downtown the amount of housing decreases in which case people cannot live downtown even if they should so choose. However, once downtown housing becomes less desirable, the costs of such housing becomes less, encouraging low-income residents to live in that area. Or worse than that, no residents to live in that area since there are no retail goods or services offered to them. Crime increases since downtown residents are the most important to keeping away crime. This entire cycle keeps residents out of downtown and the lack of residents keeps commercial organizations out.
Generally, the population of downtown Nashville isn't the working middle class. There are only a few apartment buildings there, including one near Broadway on 9th Street and another fairly nice one directly across from the Public Library. The last of these has a large banner on the top indicating that there are apartments for rent. Apparently, even though there are few apartments, even those aren't full. There is another apartment building on Market Street in the middle of the one of the oldest and most run down sections of the town. It faces the river front and has very high security. However, these high-income apartments are not at all typical of downtown Nashville. The majority of apartments continue to be low-income. There are a couple of low-income housing projects just west of the Capital, next to one of the interstates. Other people that live downtown are homeless or else they are transients who will only stay in Nashville a few days or weeks.
The businesses and jobs downtown operate mainly from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.. If you were to walk downtown after around 7:00 p.m. and before about 6:00 a.m., then it would seem like a ghost town. The only places that are open and have people visiting are the bars, restaurants, theater, and hotels. Tucked quietly in the center of town there are a series of eateries and retail stores which do very well while the cities workers are still downtown. They supply places to eat to the government employees during their lunch hour. After work, these people don't really spend any time downtown. They simply go back home to the suburbs and on the weekends they go to the local malls. This is why you will see few retail clothing stores, electronics stores, department stores, convenience stores, drug stores, etc.. The businesses that do well are the ones that either provide eating places or small items for city workers or places that provide goods or services that the residents of the downtown area need or can afford. The Planning Commission of Nashville and Davidson County affirms this.:
The downtown office concentration provides a captive audience of day-time workers. While few people are likely to buy major appliances during their lunch hours, small ticket and impulse items such as clothing are well suited to this market (Davidson County Concept 72).
Since most of the downtown residents are low-income, if any stores are to do well there they will most likely not be trendy, expensive clothing stores.
The Arcade is an old mall that is centrally located near the shops and eateries downtown. It has been in existence since 1903, and is considered a historic place. At one time it was the most popular mall for residents of the downtown area. Currently, it does well for the simple fact that it is not trying to sell merchandise that is too expensive for their clientele. Many of its patrons are office workers on their lunch break. Others are tourists, and the rest are the downtown residents. Besides the Arcade, there are few other places that the people downtown shop at most of them probably travel to the stores outside the city to do their shopping. No one comes from the suburbs to go to shop downtown. In fact many of then have little idea that the Arcade and Church Street Center exist. The only time residents of the suburbs come to the city is to go to the theater or museum. Unfortunately, even the Arcade closes around 5pm and metro would like to see "a '24 hour' downtown" (Davidson County Concept 72).
By contrast, Church Street Center, a mall, is exactly the type of place that will do poorly downtown. The mall and the Stouffer Hotel were both completed around 1987. The Stouffer is connected to the mall and Nashville's city convention center. The people that come to Nashville often attend conventions at the convention center and stay at either the Stouffer or the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza which are both very expensive hotels. Sometimes these visitors visit Church Street Centre to eat dinner or to do a little browsing. Neither they, nor the other tourists that visit downtown do sufficient buying to support small shops. Church Street Centre contains many higher income chain shops that are found in Green Hills Mall which is an affluent suburb of Nashville. It is painfully clear when one visits Church Street Centre that the types of stores there are not successful. The mall is almost empty because the residents of downtown can't afford the merchandise sold there. Consequently, the Centre is now at bankruptcy.
The majority of retail stores you will find are on Market Street and Broadway. Together these two streets make up the historic district and the busiest area for the general public. During the day, the tourists like to look in the various souvenir shops. On Broadway you will see many country music shops with country and western style clothes, cowboy boots, etc.. You will repeatedly see Jack Daniels T-shirts and shot glasses sold in shops on Market Street along with souvenirs of Opreyland, the Andrew Jackson Riverboat, and Grand Ole' Oprey. The most well known home of the Grand Ole' Oprey, Ryman Auditorium, is also in that area. At night, however, you will rarely see tourists anywhere downtown. There are many restaurants around Market street that are popular, such as the Spaghetti Factory. Among the many other types of businesses in the area include the various bars and nightclubs which are all around the historic district and in nearby printers alley. However, these alley bars are frequented by the homeless, the transients, and the very low-income residents of Nashville. The tourist shops, the restaurants, and the bars are the main places that do well in Nashville today.
Nashville has many plans for revitalization. One exciting new prospect is the new South Central Bell Tower to be completed in 1996. It is in the center of the Ryman District which is by 5th Street and Second Avenue. Many hope that this building will revive the shaky second Avenue area. This is unlikely, however, because most workers will commute leaving the area a 9-5 graveyard. Another project in the Ryman District is Opreyland's announcement that they intend to raze two buildings on Second Avenue so that they can build a restaurant, entertainment facility and river taxi to Opreyland theme park. This project may significantly help downtown but if it is merely a tourist attraction then it will never be significant enough twenty-four hours a day to be helpful. The only true development that will significantly help downtown is residential and commercial that operates after working hours.
Although, there are several suggestions for the revitalization of
downtown Nashville, none of them can replace healthy growth. However, the
exodus of the general middle and upper class from the urban area will make
this nearly impossible since funds necessary to help the lagging downtown
economy would thus be scarce. Today little can be done to
reverse the trend. It is not just a trend in Nashville, it is a trend in
all cities. However, one thing is clear, it will not work for the
businesses that are there to try to sell to a public that once lived
downtown but will not return.