Church Street Park Revival

Most Recent Update

Focus Area

Parks + Greenways

Partner

Nashville’s Most Central Park

Since the release of the Dreaming Big for Public Space blog series, the Design Center has demonstrated the reasoning and need for an alternative choice for Church Street Park – one that alters the status quo without forfeiting public spaces in doing so. Accessible and exciting public spaces, located throughout our downtown, should be the hallmark of a thriving, healthy city. We have the chance to send a message that investing in public spaces matters to our city, that public spaces carry the power to shape who we are, who we wish to become, and through thoughtful design they can be welcoming places for all.

We have hosted a myriad of community engagement events, taken public life surveys of those in and around the park, and collaborated on the park’s programming. The Historic Capitol Corridor Foundation agreed to finance continued programming in the park as we explore formal design changes. We intend to release our newest design visions within the next couple of months.

Visionary image for Church Street Park and Anne Dallas Dudley Blvd looking towards the Main Library. Rendering by Taylan Tekeli, Civic Design Center Research & Design Assistant

What makes a downtown park important?

A downtown park is for everyone. It’s different from a neighborhood center, which we discuss in our Madison Park Project because a downtown park can be an oasis amidst high-rise development and it can be a space to relax during the workday. A downtown park is a central resource and a place that has the potential to demonstrate the identity of a city. Many major cities have this identifying public space, like Millenium Park in Chicago or the Boston Commons, but what about those special local spots like Pioneer Square in Seattle? Pioneer Square is a place where all walks of life, including the homeless, coalesce to play board games or ping pong, relax on the moveable chairs for lunch or much longer and spill out of the surrounding restaurants and office buildings just to take a walk.

With a similar demographic to Pioneer Square, Nashville’s own, Church Street Park, has been hotly debated for over 20 years. In 1997, our founders recall the worst Urban Design Forum in history as the one about Church Street Park. An engineer new to the community made a presentation that got torn apart by every attendee. People were simply not in agreement over what this park should look like. The Nashville Public Library was completed across from Church Street Park on the axis of the capitol building in 2001, demonstrating the civic importance of the area, reinforcing the civic unity that could exist within and around these public resources.

The Church Street Park conversation sat untouched for many years until a land swap was offered to Metro to build a high-rise development in place of the park that would erase all of the design problems and build a brand new park somewhere else in a less ideal location. It made people question why is that location important for a park? Who gets to enjoy the park? How does the design make some feel welcome and others excluded? In 2018, we released a blog series fighting for the park’s existence yet demonstrating visions that would improve the design and revive the area. Since then, a lot has evolved, including the formation of the Historical Capitol Corridor Foundation with a mission to improve the area along Anne Dallas Dudley Boulevard.