Economy
Nashville's Fight for Music Row
With rampant development threatening the historic district, Music City is stepping up with a plan to preserve it.
Across Nashville, development fever has taken hold. The proliferation of construction sites reached such extremes last August that the Nashville Business Journal compiled a “Crane Watch” map, and has since been updating it as locals send word of new scaffolds. From above, the map shows a city all but obscured with 170 labels indicating the coming of multifamily buildings and office skyscrapers.
But zoom in a little closer, and there’s an area just southwest of downtown relatively untouched by the boom. There are a few sites being built up—a 19-story tower on 19th Avenue South; a 230-unit apartment complex on 17th—but for the most part, the streets of Music Row are quiet.