BOOM
Street challenged Will a key stretch of 21st Avenue reach its full potential? BY WILLIAM WILLIAMS
he topic is one for debate. Most Nashvillians likely would name Broadway/West End Avenue from First Avenue at the Cumberland River to Interstate 440 at Murphy Road as the city’s most important stretch of urban street. That approximately 3.5-mile segment bustles with Lower Broad’s honky-tonks, Whole Foods, the Cathedral of the Incarnation (arguably Nashville’s most historically noteworthy religious building), multiple buildings home to restaurants and offices, Vanderbilt University and Centennial Park. It is a roughly 35-block span that can rival those high-profile streets found in similar mid-sized cities.
T
ERIC ENGLAND
LEADERS
In contrast, there are some — and perhaps more than folks realize — who contend that the span of Broadway/21st Avenue South from 16th Avenue to Interstate 440 at Woodlawn Drive is almost as vibrant and vital to the city. The segment offers both Vanderbilt University (with the Peabody campus a highlight) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Hillsboro Village (with the Belcourt Theatre basically positioned on 21st) and a Kroger. Like its aforementioned and better-known sister street, Broadway/21st Ave. South (the segment highlighted here covers about three miles) also offers office buildings and some food and beverage businesses of note. Lastly — and clearly worth noting — this 21st Avenue South segment transitions into Hillsboro Road once it snakes south of I-440, leading its motorists into the extremely popular Green Hills. Regardless of one’s views regarding the comparisons and contrasts of West End and 21st avenues, the latter is a street of significance. Yet, it is that street’s segment from Portland Avenue on the north to I-440 on the south that needs some improvements, according to urban placemaking experts the Post interviewed for this article.
The roughly 0.8-mile span is marred by multiple flaws and “underachieving buildings,” the sources say. For example, six of seven buildings located on 21st’s east side between Portland and Bernard avenues offer surface parking “severing” them from the street in a suburban (i.e., vehicle-accommodating) manner. One of those buildings, located at 2020 21st Ave. S., is a nondescript modernist structure for which the bland design contrasts jarringly with the traditional former homes (and now offices) to its north side. This specific segment is simply one of many that are not fully urban in their form and function and, thus, less than ideal for a street deserving of better. Asked what buildings located within the 0.8mile stretch need to be razed and replaced, Mark Hollingsworth, president of the local chapter of international placemaking message board urbanplanet.org, is blunt in his response. “I suppose at least half of them that were built in the 1970s and 1980s could go,” he notes. “But I seriously doubt that’s going to happen.” Hollingsworth says the type of building perhaps most needed along the stretch is one that accommodates a live music venue.
NASHVILLEPOST.COM | FALL 2020
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