I went over to vote this morning in the Democratic primary and I was just so tickled. First, I vote at the elementary school right around the corner from me, so I was tickled by seeing all the tiny things. I do have a tiny thing fetish. I don’t know what it is. Anyway, the polling place is always staffed by the most awesome and amusing people. Voting here is very strange. You sign in and then go to another place and sign something else and go a third place and hand over a piece of paper and then they let you vote. I don’t know what all it is, but it goes quickly so I don’t mind.
But the guy handling the second signing was all “Do I know you from some place? Why do you look so familiar to me?” (Believe me, he was not hitting on me.) and then we talked about dogs and gardening. I couldn’t figure out where he thought he knew me from, until I got in the car. I almost went back in and asked him if he read the City Paper, which made me submit a headshot for my guest column.
Anyway, not that there was anything wrong with voting at the library at our old place, but voting in Bordeaux/Whites Creek is so awesome it almost makes me giddy with delight. I’m talking from people cheering and crying while voting in the Presidential election (when I voted at the Bordeaux library) to the cheerful friendliness of the folks at the grade school.
So, I was not surprised to see that they’d like to rezone some land just north of us to put in a subdivision. I don’t have an opinion one way or another except that I hate the name “The Cove at Whites Creek.” How can you have a cove without a body of water? Other than that, I can’t really blame people for wanting to build up the area. It really is a lovely place to live.
But it just reconfirms my suspicion that we will be the last people to live in our house. In the zoning materials, there’s all this talk of making Clarksville Pike 4-lane in the distant future and, eventually, if you’re going to have more people in the area, you’re going to need businesses to support them. Right about where we live makes the most sense for places of business.
I don’t know. I could be wrong. I just imagine someday, they’ll tear down our house to put up something else. And I image that “someday” will be sooner rather than later.
Filed under: About Town
I mentioned this on the Twitter – but a “cove” is also a small valley between two ridges, not necessarily a water feature. I’m not sure if that’s what the developers were going for, but it’s certainly an accepted usage down these parts. Cades Cove, for example.
http://tinyurl.com/27yw53m
You Inmover You!
I think we can all read between the lines here, JR. Clearly, those developers have gotten to you! And Wikipedia! And history!
They are a powerful entity. It’s true. Things were so much better when Richard Lawson covered real estate. Those heady days! Everything was better way back when …
That’s not a cove…that’s a holler. I guess “The Holler over Yonder” isn’t is too down-market, though.
This actually brings up an interesting question. Is “Cove” more upscale that Hollow? Because we have hollows here in my neck of the woods. Burton Hollow is right across from where they want to put this “Cove” and we also have Bear Hollow Road and Seymour Hollow Road up towards the ridge.
Or is it a cove because it’s shallower than a hollow? Looking at it on the terrain map, it’s almost half circle shaped, nestled under some hills. Where as the hollows are long and narrow.
I’ve always thought the easy distinction was coves were more circular and hollers were narrower. But I also thought that coves were ON the mountains/hills themselves and not between ridges. Richard Lawson would know. Probably Kleiny too.
If you think your property will end up being zoned commercial, then I would hang onto it even if you move out of the house. It will probably be worth more as a commercial property than what you could sell it for as a house.
Well, don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to move any time soon. But I just have a sense of the lay of the land.
JR, I can remember when I moved here and people were dogging on Liz because she wasn’t as good as… I can’t remember now, but someone. And then they dogged on Pete for sucking compared to Liz. And then they dogged on Jim’s version of Pith for not being as great as Pete’s.
If people are dogging on you for not being as good as your predecessors, I can only assume that means you’ve arrived.
Well, I was joking sort of. No one misses Richard Lawson and if they do, they can happily shell out the $50 million to read his site.
As for the rest – everyone has a boss. And complaining about the messenger doesn’t change the message.
Also, it’s definitely a cove. And there’s public hearing May 24, apparently, about it. Maybe you can ask them where the name came from.
Now seemingly off-topic, but you could always be like the little old lady who lived on the strip in Knoxville and vehemently refused to sell her house. She lived right next door to a building that’s housed a music venue, a deli, and some other stuff. She passed away and they tore down the house to make room for a parking lot for First Tennessee.
I still miss her house.
So, yeah, you could always hold out. I bet toward the end of her life she was offered astronomical sums of money.
Of course, which downtown skyscraper it is escapes me (does Tom Wood ever come over to this site, he’ll know). But one of em has a little notch in it and it’s because some elderly couple (which I know imagine looks like the old couple in “UP”) refused to sell, but they went and built it anyway, just leaving a little space for their roof. This, of course, could be apocrypha and the house is now long gone, but I like to pretend it’s true.
Standby…
No, I can’t find anything on the Google about it.
JR, this story HAS TO BE TRUE! It just delights me so much.
It is true. Tom Wood reports to me via telecon:
The building at 4th and Church (the SunTrust Bank Building, which may now be the 5th/Third Building) has a funky plaza, which is there because a small-time merchant (not a home, sadly, but still a good story) held out on the developers. Eminent domain didn’t work but eventually, once the design was settled, the guy eventually sold.
The architects had already left space for this intransigent opponent of skyscrapers (sarcasm off) to continue existing and it was too late in the process to change it.
So now the building has a funky plaza and a weird overhang to accommodate the little store that isn’t there.
When I am queen, Tom Wood will be REQUIRED BY LAW to be available to me by phone at all times and to tell me delightful facts like this.
Man, the comments on The City Paper really are a big circle jerk aren’t they?
I gave up after the first thirty or so because they seemed to have nothing to do with what I wrote.
If I owned the building with the notch in it, I’d have totally built a little house in the notch even after the guy sold his store.
Sadly, it was not as heroic as all that. Per Bill Carey’s FF&FC (pp. 412ff.) developer Pat Emery bought the Petway-Reavis store parcel near 5th & Church when he suspected Third National was going to build a tower there.
Emery had his own project in the works, later to be known as Nashville City Center (which was supposed to include a second parallel tower nextdoor where the little park is). He denied to Carey that he bought the P-W property just to frustrate the plans of Third National.
But a political drama ensued, with Council eventually denying eminent domain to the bank on third reading — a procedural rarity.
The Houston developers allied with Third National designed their tower around the Petway-Reavis building. In 1984, Emery sold it to Joe Rodgers, who immediately flipped it to the developers. But they were too far along to change plans — hence the plaza in front of the tower. Hey, let us now praise open space downtown, any way we get it.
Bill’s fine book does not explain why that tower was built to mimic an oversized Chippendale chest of drawers.
Ya know, some areas call coves/hollers ‘gulfs’. See for example Savage Gulf State Natural Area.