Build it, and they might come
🌇 American favela · Subsidizing affordability · WeGo WeGoes · Week in streaming · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone.
As Democrats do some soul-searching over where to go next, one thing to keep an eye on is how they reposition their pet issues. Yesterday, Ezra Klein, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, put out a decently persuasive video on what Democrats need to do to get back in the good graces of the American people.
He frankly acknowledges that Democrats biggest failure has been with regard to how they govern the cities and states they control. “You cannot be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live,” he says near the beginning of the video. These areas are hemorrhaging people to red states and red counties, staying above water only through the good graces of loose immigration policies and the generous influx of international migrants.
Towards the end, Klein portrays the divide between Democrats and Republicans as those in favor of abundance and those in favor of scarcity. The Democrats are the party of abundance, he claims, citing in particular the focus of Democrats on “building more housing.” That’s a talking point we hear a lot around here. There is an “affordable housing” crisis, of course.
The push for affordable housing is the only plank of the party platform that Democrats can reasonably point to as indicative of their “abundance” mindset. But, its apotheosis—absent any of the other more traditionally Republican concerns around public safety, education, and culture—is best found in the Brazilian favela or the Kowloon Walled City.
You're talking about a group of people who believe that resources are so scarce that a non-negligible number of their constituents refuse to have children. Turning that ship around towards the flowery utopia of abundance seems like a task befitting a God more than the technical maneuverings of a political thinker like Klein.
Just anecdotally and peripherally related, I doubt many of these new homes popping up across the city to meet demand will even last the mortgage. The tall and skinny, which reigned supreme for a while, has recently been replaced by what I'm calling "big black box homes" that take up the entire lot, tower over the street, and are usually painted black. For example, this guy is going for nearly $6 million. Expensive now, for sure, but ten years from now, what will these monstrosities be worth?
In more parochial matters, the effort to rename Nashville International Airport, colloquially known as BNA, was resuscitated on Monday then summarily executed this morning after the House Naming & Designating Committee voted against it. In other airport related news, Southwest airlines is ending it’s free check bag policy on May 28th.
Slim and Husky’s, the Nashville-based pizza chain, closed its downtown location in a “strategic move” to focus on “community-rooted locations.” Not long after the closure broke, news circulated that Plaza Mariachi was suing them for $331,914.80 in unpaid rent.
If you recall, Plaza Mariachi filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy last summer, so who knows who’s the good guy and the bad guy in this situation. So, in that spirit, let’s hear it for financial solvency!
Onward.
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🖋️ Edited by Megan Podsiedlik.
🏠 Subsidizing Affordability Last week, the mayor announced the first fruits of the Nashville Catalyst Fund. Metro seeded the new affordable housing tool with $20 million back in June. At the time, Vanderbilt University and First Horizon pitched in an additional $55 million to get things started. “This week, that fund announced their first investment,” said O’Connell during Friday’s media roundtable. “A $450,000 loan will help an investor acquire and preserve a foreign unit property in Madison. Two of the units will be required to be maintained as affordable.”
The mayor also commended Governor Lee on his dedication to affordable housing. In January, Lee proposed “a $60 million starter home revolving loan fund” with 0 percent interest construction loans for new single-family homes. He also suggested a tax credit for rural and work-force housing in his budget, emphasizing that affordable housing should be addressed “through innovation, and not through regulation.”
“The fact that he included housing as a statewide priority is a big deal,” said O’Connell. “If you look at the themes that he struck in the State of the State, it was housing, childcare, and conservation, and frankly, those three things have been pretty consistent with things we're working on locally.”
💻 Breaking Up Google’s Monopoly On Friday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced that the final proposal to remedy “Google’s illegal monopoly over internet search engines” was submitted. “We proved Google violated antitrust law in an epic federal trial,” said Skrmetti in a press release. “Now it’s time to solve the problem. Today’s proposed final remedies package holds Google accountable for its search monopoly and protects consumers by promoting competition.”
Thirty-eight State Attorneys General signed onto the revised proposal alongside the Justice Department to ban the company from making “all search-related payments to distribution partners, including Apple and Android.” It also requires Google to divest from Chrome and share “portions of its search index, user, and ads data with its competitors.” Going forward, Google will be subject to a period of oversight where its “future financial interests in online search and generative AI competitors” can be reviewed.
A hearing on the proposed remedies is currently scheduled to begin on April 21 and conclude by May 9.
🚍 Is WeGo WeGoing Last week, Mayor O’Connell avoided defining an exact bus ridership goal that would signal the program’s success. Though Nashville has seen commutes rise slightly above pre-pandemic levels, WeGo serves less than 3.5 percent of the population per day. “I would say we don't have fixed, like, ‘Hey, this year we hope to see this many [riders],’ because this is literally the first time we've been able to see an expansion,” he said.
As Metro continues to add night and weekend bus services, O’Connell explained that WeGo expects special event rides to pick up, but emphasized the importance of increasing core ridership. “Nashville MTA, for years, has tracked ridership data and adjusted service based on, you know, changes in housing density, employment density, and just where riders are telling them they're needed to be,” he said. “We’ll start to forecast some of that more intensely once the program really starts.”
Given the violence and crime that continue to plague Nashville’s bus system, rider safety has also become a priority. At the end of February, Captain Brian Williams was appointed to serve as the Metro Nashville Police Department’s first permanent transit liaison. Mayor O’Connell also hopes for more ridership growth associated with the integration of new workforce campuses: “I know when Amazon announced their presence in Nashville, they anticipated 50 percent of their workforce shouldn't be driving alone to that campus, and we want to see scenarios like that increase.”
🗳️ ReOrg in WilCo The Williamson County Republican Party (WCRP) held its highly anticipated reorganization convention on March 4, 2025, drawing a record-breaking crowd of 1,555 voters to the Marriott Cool Springs Conference Center. The election saw a heated battle between the Elevate-2025 slate and the Williamson County Conservatives (WCC), with Elevate-2025 candidates narrowly securing leadership positions. Steve Hickey emerged victorious as Chairman, edging out Brian Clifford by a razor-thin margin of 44 votes. In his victory speech, Hickey called for unity, pledging to bridge the party’s internal divides and refocus on shared conservative values. The event also featured prominent state GOP figures, underscoring its significance beyond the county level.
But the dust didn’t settle after the ballots were counted. On Sunday, the WCC officially contested the results, alleging election integrity failures, including voter eligibility disputes, procedural mishaps, and even a controversial remark about burning spoiled ballots. They’re demanding a new convention, further intensifying the party’s internal divide. Adding to the tension, the two factions are also clashing over the party’s future: open primaries versus a caucus system, a decision that could significantly impact grassroots participation. With emotions running high, Williamson County’s Republican leadership is at a crossroads, and the coming weeks could determine the direction of the party for years to come.
DEVELOPMENT
- Ocean Prime has landed a $6 million permit for its Nashville Yards (NBJ)
- Trade apprenticeship program lands on East Bank (NBJ)
- Developers set to buy East Nashville commercial property (Post)
- NYC company pays $18.9M for SoBro tower parking garage (Post)
✹ THIS WEEK IN STREAMING (March 11th)
Heretic (Max) Hugh Grant deserved a lot more awards buzz for his turn as a sadistic atheist who entraps two Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) in his house of horrors to punish them for their belief in A24’s fall horror hit. Somehow, the film succeeds at treating Mormonism even handedly and calling out the the worst tendencies of armchair secular humanism while remaining tense as all heck. It’s a shame this wasn’t out when we published our thoughts on horror’s religious turn last summer.
Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+) Marvel reboots its signature TV series about a blind lawyer who moonlights as a Hell’s Kitchen vigilante to promising results by favoring premium cable character development and making audiences work for the shock and awe.
Sideways (Hulu) Twenty years on, Alexander Payne wine country buddy comedy about a loser high school teacher with literary ambitions (Paul Giamatti) and a fading soap star (Thomas Hayden Church) remains as visceral and hilarious as ever. Millennials will enjoy the arthouse nostalgia until their realization that they are the same age as these dudes now may send them into a spiral.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🪕 Pam Setser Band @ Station Inn, 8p, $20, Info
🎻 Gregory Alan Isakov with the Nashville Symphony @ Schermerhorn Symphony Center, 7:30p, $39+, Info
🎸 Colleen McKenna @ The Underdog, 7p, $10, Info
🎸 Honky Tonk Tuesday @ Eastside Bowl, 8p, $10, Info
+ two-step lessons @ 7p, The Cowpokes @ 8p
🎸 Cole Ritter and the Night Owls @ The Underdog, 11:30p, Free, Info
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
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