On August 7th, 2007, Metro Council passed a bill setting in place the funding mechanisms for a new $600 million-plus downtown convention center. A site for the facility has been chosen: three square blocks in SoBro, bounded by 5th Avenue to the east, 8th Avenue to the west, Demonbreun to the north, and the future Korean Veterans Blvd to the south. As many Nashvillians know, this site is prime real estate; it is adjacent to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and very near to Broadway, the Schermerhorn, and a growing number of exciting new cultural, retail, residential, and office projects.

We, an assembly of concerned citizens, are launching a grassroots effort to make the case that this site is of crucial importance to the emerging fortunes of downtown Nashville. While a new convention center may be needed in our town, and while SoBro may be the ideal place in which to build it, we firmly believe that the average convention center--a monolithic, single-use box of insular character and aesthetic monotony--would be a disaster for the neighborhood and the city. Something different is required for this site, for the good of all: a diverse, flexible, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly, creatively designed convention center. Such a facility would contribute to the city's economy and urban fabric along with and regardless of any success enjoyed by the convention market, for decades to come. The design of the Music City Center will be key, and for this reason we have crafted a conceptual urban design study. Please note that this study is not focused on façades or stylistic details as much as it is upon the basic form of building masses, the arrangement of land uses, and the facility's integration with its larger context.

We advocate that the main hall be sunk into the site's slope, and that its roof become a series of thriving public plazas, wrapped by mixed-use buildings with active ground floors and accessed by a maintained street grid as 6th and 7th Avenues are converted into pedestrian thoroughfares rather than obliterated or entombed by the sort of "typical" convention center we do not want or need.

We respectfully ask the citizens of Nashville, and the government they have chosen to lead this design process, to deeply consider making the Music City Center exactly what its name suggests: a diverse, flexible, useful, strong, beautiful, and appropriate Center for Music City.