The Plan

Creating an affordable, active, and creative park space.   

When Metro issued a Request for Qualifications to reimagine what this area could be, it listed seven strict guidelines:

1. Maintain publicly accessible green open space as the focal point of the development, and provide connectivity to greenway
2. Provide affordable and workforce housing options
3. Encourage neighborhood-scale retail and resources
4. Create a design sensitive to Fort Negley
5. Activate Chestnut Street
6. Connect to the neighborhood and draw neighbors into the open space
7. Limit the financial risk to Metro

Our plan delivers what the city and neighborhood have asked for - open space, affordable housing, neighborhood resources, children's resources, and entertainment/activities. These are important ingredients to any great neighborhood, and we look forward to delivering an accessible, open, and fun place for all Nashvillians to enjoy. The complete proposal and RFQ response can be viewed and downloaded here.  This is a flexible/working plan, and the Cloud Hill team is committed to engaging with the community to deliver a  final product that meets the needs and wants of the city.

Adding to the neighborhood. 

Along Chestnut Street, Retail and Neighborhood Resources will activate the street creating a front door into Cloud Hill and Wedgewood Houston. Traffic will slow down, pedestrians will be able to cross the street, and bicyclists will feel safe.

Greer Stadium’s ball field will be transformed into a Great Lawn and neighborhood park. It’s a place for pickup sports, barbecuing on the weekend, Little League practice and family reunions.

Activating this lawn is the Arts and Culture Generator, whose mission is to support artists in production, entrepreneurship, exhibition/education, and performance. It’s a place for young artists taking after-school classes and also for entrepreneurs building businesses to change industries.

On the other side of the Lawn, the Culture Shed is a place of community connection on multiple levels. For the active community, space for indoor games and exercise. For the food community, space for cooking classes, farmers’ markets and community meals. The Culture Shed will also support a vibrant and vital maker community with studios that spill onto a public plaza filled with everyday activity, making a place where artists can take over on weekends with festivals and markets.

Surrounding a Community Courtyard and Rampart Play Park, classrooms and lecture halls are located close to the existing Fort Negley Visitor’s Center to expand its educational offerings so students - both young and mature - can learn about Fort Negley’s history and connect to it visually.

The Ledge Meadow and Alley Courtyard buffer Fort Negley and create a sensitive and respectful park edge. They are parks within a park that will be a place to play and relax, accomodating pop-up events to energize them in every season.

To deliver a vision that works for everyone, we want to make sure we are listening, learning, and collaborating with the community throughout the process. We look forward to expanding these ideas with you!

Adding to the park.

The foundation of our plan preserves and expands usable open space, dedicating the majority of the land in the plan to accessible, active green spaces. This includes multipurpose playing fields, areas for community events, smaller-scale spaces for outdoor performance and concerts, as well as more natural walking, biking, and relaxing spaces. These various scales of open space work to effectively unite the entire Metro Parks property (Fort Negley, Adventure Science Center, and Greer Stadium) into a more usable, cohesive, and connected parks environment.

Adding to the history.

We're excited to work with the Friends of Fort Negley, the Metro Parks Department, and the Metro Historical Commission to ensure collaborative exploration of the important historical issues of this site. With their help, we hope to create interpretive trails that will help link Fort Negley and the Greer site in their experience, creating new opportunities to tell the rich stories of Fort Negley’s past and provide new spaces to create stories for its future. Additionally, we want to preserve the exposed cliff faces that separate the two sites from one another, purposing them for programs like "Fossils at the Fort" and everyday enjoyment of the park.

Adding to affordability.

Our mixture of housing units is designed to accommodate Nashvillians at every stage of life, offering a mix of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom units. Our proposal creatively utilizes federal resources to provide an affordable home for 294 households from all income ranges. We hope to attract and foster a mixed-income community that reflects the macro-level demographics of Nashville as a whole, rather than target solely one end of the economic spectrum.  

Our team has significant experience securing and syndicating federal tax credits and managing income restricted communities. With these skills in mind, we’ll pursue the most efficient capital structures to allow for the development and delivery of high-quality housing that will be desirable and affordable at all income levels.

Adding to an open, and active process. 

We believe engagement is important. We hope you will join us in making this site a place for everyone in Nashville, particularly the adjacent neighborhoods of Edgehill, Wedgewood Houston, and Chestnut Hill. To do this, we are dedicated to engaging the community at multiple levels - we look forward to incorporating input and moving forward together.