Design
Center to Focus on Revitalizing Edgehill
The City Paper
By Craig Boerner
June 28, 2002
The Nashville Civic Design Center will begin studying Edgehill’s
historic neighborhood next month to make recommendations to the city
for improving its quality while maintaining its history.
Edgehill contains, among other things, a neighborhood grocery store, Dollar General, historical homes and some public housing developments, Edgehill Branch Library, Edgehill Center, E.S. Rose Park, and the historic White Way properties owned by Wade Elam. “ We hope to focus in on the community assets and what you do with those and how to make those work for the neighborhood,” said CDC Executive Director John Houghton. “ Often you get into a situation where everyone knows all of the problems, or everyone has listed all of the problems many times over and, while those are important to understand, in going forward you need to build on the strength and the assets of the community,” he said.
The CDC will incorporate its meetings with other Edgehill neighborhood gatherings while they go through a planning and design process, do historical research on the area and study other reports or plans that have been compiled in the past. We try to get our arms around all of that and then make recommendations about specific projects that we could undertake,” Houghton said.
The recommended projects can involve infrastructure, such as changing streets that were closed in the 1950s and 1960s. It can also suggest changes such as adding a new community center or promoting a certain type of housing. “ The first step we take is we listen. We try not to have any preconceived ideas about the neighborhood,” said Mark Schimmenti, the CDC’s design director. “ We try to understand the history of the neighborhood. Neighborhoods that have gone through urban renewal have had a lot of their history erased.”
Boundaries of the
Edgehill neighborhood are Division Street to the north, Wedgewood
Avenue on the south, Eighth Avenue on the
east and
16th Avenue
S. to the west but recommendations will not stop at those borders. “
We’re looking at the neighborhood as a whole and, of course, anything
that affects it,” said Schimmenti. “
One of the issues that we are dealing with these days is that we’ve
tried to work with our neighborhoods in the past by doing little isolated
things. “
And while those things are definitely improvements and useful, it’s
very rare that we’ve thought about how all of those things work together,” he
said.
Challenges for the project will come in the implementation phase.
In the Cameron-Trimble neighborhood, for example, implementation
meant
networking with as many different groups as possible to expand
possibilities for
the
neighborhood.
Schimmenti and Houghton had their first meeting with Edgehill neighbors Tuesday night and hope to begin studying the neighborhood in the middle of July. “ [Tuesday] night we heard that they are a neighborhood that feels as though they haven’t always gotten a fair shake. They have been put through things like urban renewal and it has not affected their neighborhood in the best way,” Schimmenti said. “ To me it’s just absolutely beautiful that someone can be passionate about the neighborhood knowing that so many of the good things have been taken away from them,” he said. Because Edgehill has been victimized in years past, another challenge of the project will be to avoid pricing the community out of its own homes with surrounding improvements. “ Gentrification, which is really at the heart of any question, is a tough one but, as long as you have a clear idea and you are deliberate about what you want, you are in a much stronger position to try to keep that mix and build on it,” Houghton said.
Edgehill’s
tumultuous history vital to neighborhood study
Civic Design Center project excites residents, think tank
The Tennessean - Davidson A.M.
By Rose French, Staff Writer
Monday, September 9, 2002
EDGEHILL – This economically and racially diverse neighborhood that encompasses
both Vanderbilt and Belmont universities, Music Row and some of Nashville’s
first public housing has experienced volatile changes over the decades.
Rocked by federal urban renewal programs in the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s,
the Edgehill neighborhood is still reeling from the problems brought on by the
establishment of public housing and the segregation of classes and race the federal
program reinforced, some of the neighborhood’s longtime residents say.
The area’s long and varied history will remain a crucial element to the
study of the neighborhood about to be commenced by the Nashville Civic Design
Center, a nonprofit think tank.
The study officially kicks off Sept.17, when designers will hold the first public
meeting with neighborhood residents to get feedback for the study, whose purpose
is to help the neighborhood turn a corner in its divisive history, said neighborhood
activist Bill Barnes.
Barnes, the retired pastor of Edgehill United Methodist Church and an Edgehill
native, said he’d like to see more small-scale neighborhood commercial
development to the area, along with new single family homes.
Over the years, the neighborhood has lost 15 grocery stores, Barnes said, adding
that a bank is needed and that neighborhood aesthetics could be improved. The
historic White Way laundry building, which is being renovated for a mix of residential
and commercial uses, also probably will be looked at in the study, Barnes said.
“My feelings is this Civic Design Center study gives us for the first time
the option of being proactive instead of reactive,” Barnes said.
King Hollands, president of the Organized Neighbors of Edgehill echoed Barnes’ sentiments
while mentioning other issues and developments likely to come up in the course
of the study.
Hollands said he hopes to get recommendations from residents for spending a community
development block grant from Metro Development and Housing Agency.
The study also probably will consider options for a five-acre tract of land next
door to the new Edgehill Community Garden at the Murrell School Campus, which
lies between 12th and 14th avenues. Holland said the area may be the future home
to a track or tennis courts for residents.
“We like to see the expansion of the (Edgehill branch) library,” Hollands
said. “Also a Boys Club, something that would provide some support for
children in the area.”
Mark Schimmenti, Nashville Civic Design Center director, said the Edgehill study
will be the largest the center has done yet.
“We’re excited about this one,” Schimmenti said. “This
one’s going to be very challenging. It’s a much larger area than
what we’ve looked at before. There’s a history of issues between
Music Row and the Edgehill (residential) area. They border on each other. They’ve
had some problems.”
Barnes said that when the federal government condemned much of the area in
the
1960’s for public housing, it changed the area mainly for the worse, dislocating
more than 2,000 families.
“The theory at the time was you clear the poor folks out and you concentrate
them into public housing because that’s the cheapest way to do it,” he
said.
“Public housing is a very severe way of segregating people racially and
economically. In my opinion, it was a bad idea and it’s going to be with
us for generations.”
Design
Contest to Tell Story of Polar Bears
The City Paper
By Judith R. Tackett
December 08, 2003
An Edgehill bear proudly lofts a snowball.Staff photo. The
Edgehill Neighborhood Strategy Area CAC together with the
Nashville Civic
Design Center and
the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency is holding
a design competition to create a public space for the Edgehill
Polar Bears.
The Polar Bear site is located in the heart of the neighborhood at the corner of 12th Avenue South and Edgehill Avenue, adjacent to the I.W. Gernert Homes. Neighborhood leaders said it is a crucial site to the revitalization efforts of the community.
The design should be accomplished in a manner that begins to tell a story of the history and creation of the polar bears and how they came to become a symbol of the Edgehill Neighborhood. Each polar bear weighs 600 pounds and is over five feet tall. They were created by the G. Mattei Plaster Relief Ornamental company around 1930 and stood at 1408 Edgehill Ave. for more than 60 years. Originally they were constructed as advertisements for the Polar Bear Frozen Custard shops on Gallatin Road and West End Avenue, which closed after World War II. In the early 1940s, Zema Hill bought the bears and placed them in the neighborhood.
The competition deadline is Feb. 16, 2004, and it is open to everyone. The first-prize winner will receive $250, second $150 and third $100. Winners will be announced in early March. The winner will work as a consultant to the project architect, which will be hired by MDHA.
For detailed information about the competition requirements, visit www.civicdesigncenter.org. Maps and images will be posted after Dec. 15.
Bear’s
Story Bears Repeating
The City Paper
By Colleen Creamer,
March 15, 2004
The famed landmark polar bears of the Edgehill
neighborhood will finally have a permanent playground.
The Nashville
Civic Design
Center will
unveil the winning design of their new digs at
a press conference Thursday.
The Design Center, Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) and the neighborhood of Edgehill announced a competition in December to design a city-owned public space at the corner of 12th Avenue South and Edgehill Avenue - the "heart" of the neighborhood - that would tell the story and the history of the polar bears.
Fliers were sent
out, and regional architectural schools joined in for the prize money
and resume-building.
"
The judges met yesterday [March 11] and decided on a winner," Gary
Caston, associate director of the Civic Design
Center said. "We
had eight entries and they were all impressive
projects." Gaston said The Design Center
would exhibit all the designs at the press
conference at
4:30 p.m.
Thursday
at 700
Church St.
The polar bear statues have long been a symbol
of the community of Edgehill. They were the
creation of the
late Gio Vacchino,
who owned
the Mattei
Plaster Relief Ornamental Company around
1930. They
stood at 1408 Edgehill Ave.
for more than 60 years. They were constructed
as advertisements for the Polar Bear Frozen
Custard
shops on Gallatin
Road and West End
Avenue, which closed after World War II.
Edgehill resident Zema Hill bought the bears
and placed them in the neighborhood in the
early 1940s.
He placed
two in
front of
a funeral
home and two
in front of his house where they eventually
became a symbol and part of the
culture of Edgehill. The two funeral home
bears were sold to a North Nashville resident
in
1952. Two of
the four bears
are
now
in the
custody of MDHA
awaiting their new home.
Amelia Whitworth, daughter of Vacchino, said she was glad that the Nashville bears will now have a permanent home. " I know that they have been floating around. There are some in Memphis, and I just heard that there are some in Atlanta," Whitworth said. "I know that they have been in different areas in Nashville, but I never did know how many my father made."