Environmental Sustainability Gains Ground in Nashville Redevelopment
Sourced from Tennessee Lookout
When Nashville Mayor John Cooper gave an update Wednesday on the redevelopment of historic Second Avenue following the Christmas 2020 bombing, he talked of revitalization plans that wouldn’t have happened were it not for the incident — a making of lemonade from life’s lemons scenario.
Among the improvements Cooper discussed were creation of an integrated downtown park and greenway system along 1st and 2nd Avenues, wider sidewalks, a restored tree canopy, more outdoor dining, public art and food kiosks.
But some of the improvements that will have the most significance for the city, and particularly downtown denizens, are less glamorous than trendy dining areas.
Waste management, for instance, emerged as a priority during a series of public meetings with Second Avenue residents and business owners.
“Recycling and composting, consolidate waste, get the food waste out of the waste stream, get the smell out, remove the grease on the ground,” said Tiffany Wilmot, president of Wilmot, Inc., a Nashville-based sustainability consulting firm. “All that got rolled into one thing.”
Wilmot worked with project manager Ron Gobbell, experts from the Urban Land Institute and Metro Nashville’s sustainability director Kendra Abkowitz to develop plans to enrich the district through environmentally sustainable measures.
“We went through several public meetings and the Urban Land Institute brought in a panel of experts. In those two things sustainability became an item but it wasn’t necessarily a prominent item,” said Gobbell. “Through (Wilmot’s) work a few months in we thought, ‘we’ve got some real opportunity here.’As we started to put this vision together, it kept floating up.”
From the Living Architecture Monitor
