The Super Bowl Is Coming to Nashville, and We’ve Got Work To Do. Plus, Redistricting Catchup

Today on CityCast Nashville, it's time for our Friday News Roundup. The Super Bowl is officially coming to Nashville in 2030, but will the city actually be ready for it? Plus, a new Vandy poll, updates on redistricting lawsuits and Turks lawsuit against THP, and some really good news to end the week. Oh, and don't forget, our members-only bonus segment, hell not. This week, move over, Mickey Mouse. Is Nate Bargazzi Tennessee's new Walt Disney? We've got thoughts on his new theme park, Nate Land. It's Friday, May 22nd. I'm Maurice Cecil Anderson, and this is what Nashville's talking about. On Tuesday, NFL owners voted unanimously to give Nashville the Super Bowl in 2030. Sarah Grace Taylor from the Nashville banner, are you ready for some football? I'm not a football fan. I'm the wrong person to ask. Same, Sarah Grace. Obviously, we've known this was coming for a very long time. Former Mayor John Cooper, the Titans, and state officials made it very clear during their pitch for our new $2.2 billion publicly funded football stadium that the whole point was to get a Super Bowl. So now I guess the only question left is Whitney Pastric, CityCast executive producer. Will Nashville be ready? Well, Marie, I don't see why not. We've only got to finish what the Tennessean estimates as $10 billion in construction and infrastructure projects. Some of the things on their list beyond the stadium. Nashville International Airport, $3 billion New Horizon expansion, where they're doing a central core renovation and hopefully making the roadways more efficient. That's set to be done in 2029. About $300 million in New East Bank infrastructure around. Nissan Stadium, you know, they're moving all the roads around and stuff down there. Music City Loop, who remembers tunnel time? We haven't heard from them in a while. The boring company, obviously, is supposed to have their tunnel system under Nashville opening in 27. So that's any day now. The $600 million, Tennessee Performing Arts Center. On the East Bank, that's slated open in 2030, and they're already talking about having great events and tailgates there at T-PAC. And then Bridgestone Arena, who keeps getting left out of this conversation, Sweet Bridgestone, they're working on a $750 million expansion to add more square footage to the arena, adjoining towers that could become an office and a hotel. and a 60,000 square foot rooftop that Bridgetone said will be the largest rooftop on Broadway. There's also the 15,000 new hotel rooms incoming that we talked about last week. And of course, you know, the East Bank isn't just infrastructure and parks. They got up at buildings there like stuff. And, you know, at Mayor O'Connell's press conference after the Super Bowl announcement, he estimated that development there would only be 20 to 30 percent complete in 2030. Oh, what a vision.

I don't know. Sarah Grace, how are you feeling about all of this? Out of what you said, I'm hung up on where are they going to put more Bridgestone arena? Like, where is there room for that downtown? Up, right? Up, up. Only up. Levels, Jerry. That feels absurd. But like from what you know from what's going on around Metro, do you feel like we have a shot at getting all of this done in time? I mean, I doubt that all of that development will be done. Apparently the mayor is not even saying that it will be done. But the question, I guess, is what will get prioritized and what needs to be done before the city can support that many visitors. No matter what, $10 billion is a lot of money to spend to attract one big event. But we're going to make it all back with the economic impact from the Super Bowl, right, Whitney? Well, from the banner or Sarah Grace works, they've said overall, even conservative estimates of the Super Bowl's economic impact number is in the hundreds of millions. Some estimate that it can exceed $1 billion overall. 10 billion minus $1 billion equals nine. billion dollars it's not 10 billion they're not we're not going to make all this money back and while we know that hospitality and gig workers in the downtown core definitely looking forward to this you know according to a recent story in ink super bowl economic impact continues to be overblown in terms of small businesses in the local economy and they reported that historically the majority of super bowl revenue goes to the NFL large hotel chains real estate developers you know and they do say that the big game can help boost the tourism profile of a city. But does Nashville really need a boost? I do not think so. Absolutely not. I mean, I grew up here and when I moved back two years ago, I have found it insufferably hard to avoid tourists downtown. So I certainly don't know that we need it. Well, Mayor O'Connell does seem aware of this concern. As he said in his press conference, the measure of success won't just be what visitors think about Nashville for one weekend. It will be whether the people who live here feel like Nashville work for them too. I don't plan to be here. I know me neither. I already looked to see how much I could get from my place for the whole month. I don't want anybody coming in for a Super Bowl in my house. This is why you have to start now, Whitney. You have to start vetting these people now. Okay. If you would like to rent my place during the Super Bowl, email us at Nashville at citycast.fm, please include three references. Aless and dollar. Yeah, exactly. And a background check. But here's my question for the group. Are we actually hoping to be one of the repeat host cities like Miami or New Orleans? Is this like Nashville's big audition to be a part of the regular Super Bowls? And if we fumble this, see, I put that sports reference in there. Very good. I know sports. Will we be out of the running forever? And sorry, not to catastrophize this. I've been told by my therapist. I do that too much. But what could go wrong?

I don't mean this to be shady, but aren't the cities that regularly host also cities with better football teams? From what I understand in the sports world, yes. But also stadiums that are located in warm places. And so I'm going to just throw this card out there. What if I said ice storm? How would that make you feel? I mean, not to mention our own catastrophic ice storm that happened. Right on around that whole Super Bowl time this year in the year 2000. In the year 2000, the Super Bowl was held in Atlanta. And many Titans fans should remember this as that was their one and only Super Bowl appearance. Two ice storms hit Atlanta back to back, which paralyzed the city. And it made the whole experience so miserable for everyone that the NFL did not give Atlanta another Super Bowl for 19 years. You know, the only football experience I've ever had was in the dead of winter. And it was absolutely miserable because it was snowing and I was sitting on ice. So. Well, that's why we have the roof. But I mean, look, even with the roof, y'all, do you guys remember a few years back the Titans had that game that was supposed to be happening? And the whole city was experiencing rolling brownouts because it was so damn cold. But the Titans were like. heating their field and had all the lights on. Yeah. The rest of the city suffered, but yet they kept their lights on. I mean, that to me is worst case scenario, is a weather event. Also, February is our fourth most tornado-ish month of the year. I looked that up too. I do have one last question for the group. According to the Associated Press, the NAACP is calling for black college athletes and fans to boycott Southern College sports due to the racial gerrymandering that's been sparked by the Supreme Court's decision to roll back a key part of the Voting Rights Act. Could concerns about civil rights affect the success of our Super Bowl? You know, there is, in fact, a history of major sports leagues moving big games out of states entirely due to discriminatory legislation. In 2021, Georgia passed a law reducing ballot access in communities that lean Democratic. Folks might remember this is that law where they, like, couldn't hand out food or water to people who were waiting in line to vote. And Major League Baseball responded by moving the All-Star game out of Atlanta. And everybody very much applauded them for doing that. If you roll it all the way back to 2016, North Carolina passed HB2, which was the first big bathroom bill in the U.S. And people were horrified, including sports leagues. The NBA pulled the All-Star game. The NCAA pulled their tournaments. Even NASCAR voiced their opposition to the law. And now here we are 10 years later. Tennessee has stripped residents of proper representation. And Governor Bill Lee has passed like... a ton of different bathroom bills. There's a bathroom bill for everything. Yeah, I don't think we're in a political climate where Tennessee is going to suffer from that.

And I also don't think the average voter can afford Super Bowl tickets. So I don't think a boycott would particularly affect that game. I mean, around the Colin Kaepernick stuff, the NFL was really resistant to respond to progressive politics. So it's not surprising that in a climate where businesses aren't being held accountable for doing that now like they were, the NFL is not going to be the first place that tries to be progressive and to respond to policy. Well, I've just been seeing a lot of this talk on threads and on blue sky and people trying to empower folks not to come to the South because of what's happened. But then people chime in and say how much it really actually hurts the working class people when people stop coming and supporting us with their money. So I say everybody come on down to Nashville for the Super Bowl. Don't go to the Super Bowl and spend your money at small businesses in Madison and Antioch. Come on down. Rent my place for $10,000. Thanks.

And so there's definitely some discontent among Republicans. And then there's others who, like Representative Andy Ogles, who now has the most gerrymandered district in the state that goes all the way from Murray County to the Arkansas border, we're begging for redistricting because it benefited them. So now Andy Ogles doesn't have to answer to his middle Tennessee constituents who he's been antagonizing to some extent this whole term. And he gets to go have a lot more rural counties than he did previously. So it's a mixed bag, I guess, of Republican results. Do we think any of these lawsuits have a shot? Having the temporary restraining orders rejected originally and the lawsuits combined doesn't bode well. Yeah. I don't think that's a positive indicator, especially for it. The idea that this lawsuit or any of these challenges could prohibit them from using these maps in the August primary. And I think every day that passes without them accepting that idea makes it less likely that that's going to go through. You know, I was talking to a friend of mine last week. There's so much focus on how these gerrymanders are racist, right? That it was intended to crack what is the last majority minority congressional district in Tennessee out in Memphis. And this friend of mine who is black said the thing y'all have to understand is that it's not just me who this is impacting. It's you too because nobody now is going to have proper representation with these new lines. And I hadn't thought about it that way. Yeah, if you get past the politics. And you think about like the baseline constituent services that your congressman offers, that can be getting your passport. Like these really basic things, how is a congressman who has a dozen counties that are hours apart driving distance going to possibly have offices that are convenient for all of his constituents? Right. And there's nowhere in Nashville that you can go to talk to a congressman now, even though we have three. There is not an office you can walk into and say, my unemployment insurance is screwed up. Well, and imagine Memphis, which will now have three representatives, are those three, if they all go red, are they going to build Memphis offices and be convenient to that huge number of Tennessee ends or not? None of them want to be in Nashville, so you have to assume none of them want to be in Memphis either. I don't know. Why do they hate us? God. All right. Finally, in lawsuit news, the banner reported that this week, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. District 17 Councilmember Terry Vaux and several Tennessee taxpayers sued the Tennessee Highway Patrol in Davidson County Chancery Court, seeking to stop THHP from collaborating with ICE on operations like the one we saw in South Nashville last year. They're saying that Turk members suffered injuries due to unlawful searches and seizures and that the taxpayers object to their tax dollars being used for this stuff. Sarah Grace, do they have a case here, in your opinion? We know you're not a lawyer. Yeah, I'm not a legal expert at all. I think the essence of what Turk is saying here, and it's all based on that same footage that we did our project on earlier this year, is when THP was working with ICE, they were not fulfilling the duties that THP is supposed to be doing as a state-funded organization. And therefore, as taxpayers, they have stake to make a claim against it and try to prohibit that kind of partnership again in the future. We'll keep an eye on that lawsuit for everybody along with all the other lawsuits that are floating around. And then real quick, before the break, we want to mention that Starbucks is now officially poised to receive $30 million in tax incentives from the state to move a portion of their corporate office to Nashville. I even got to go on CityCast, Seattle, to talk about it this week. That was so fun. And 22 Metro Council members have now signed on to a letter to the CEO of Starbucks, demanding that the company respect the rights of their employees to order.

organize, writing, quote, we are aware that Starbucks is the biggest violator of labor law in modern history. So that was kind of a banger. Sarah Grace, though, it seems like they're not alone in their concerns about this incentive deal for Starbucks. Yeah. You have kind of a strange pairing of allies on this because you have the typically more left-leaning metro council opposing it, but you also have... Republican gubernatorial candidate and Congressman John Rose said that this is corporate welfare to pay as much as the state is paying to get Starbucks to come here. And you also have Americans for Prosperity, which is an extremely conservative group coming out against this. So there's a lot of pushback on this idea. And I think... It's not only the amount of money that the state is spending to court any one business to come to Nashville like that, but also Starbucks is controversial no matter your political beliefs for different reasons. I lived in Seattle and covered Seattle for a while. And I doubt a month went by that we didn't have some labor issue to write about regarding Starbucks. Oh, wow. And the question for me remains, is this actually going to happen? Are they going to bring the 2,000 jobs they're promising? I mean. Don't make me cough in Oracle, who got way more in tax incentives to move their headquarters here, and it remains a field. Well, that was some of the early pushback when they started talking about the Starbucks thing. Starbucks employees don't necessarily want to move to Nashville. Right. But that also means that of these 2,000 jobs, a lot of them are already filled. These are people who they're asking to relocate, not new job opportunities necessarily for Nashville. It's so funny that John Rose is upset about corporate welfare. How does he feel about the Super Bowl? Just asking questions. Add break.

All right, what time is it, Whitney? Da-da-da-da-da-na. Good news. It's Memorial Day weekend, and you know what that means. Pools are open as well as water parks, which includes national shores, sound waves at Gaylord, Opryland, and Wave Country. I'm so excited. My friends and I are going to ride our bikes to Wave Country. We're all adults, but we're totally going to ride our bikes to Wave Country. That's so exciting. Have you been to Wave Country before? I have ridden my bike past it. I am not a water park enthusiast, but my goal for this summer is to find more fun places to ride our bikes to. Like we rode them to The Secret Shake Shack a couple weekends ago, and that was amazing. So we're going to take a little field trip to Wave Country. I love that. Well, something that also caught my eye this week is the Nashville scene summer guide, specifically Hannah Herner's article, connecting Nashville's public pools to the civil rights movement. If you've ever wondered why our city doesn't have more public pools, well, the answer is segregation. So cities across the south close the pools rather than integrate them. So it's just something for you to think about when you look for. a metro public pool this summer because they don't really exist. Thanks, Marie. Yeah, sorry, good news. Yeah, that's your good news. Well, here's the good news. Hey, we did an excellent, might as well pat ourselves on the back. We did an episode this week with Betsy Phillips on why Nashville should have a civil rights museum. So if you're curious about this history, go back and listen to that episode so you can learn more. Yeah, that was great. And I do think it is a bummer that we don't have more outdoor pools for the kiddos and the adults and everybody else who needs to cool down. But that's okay. We're getting the Super Bowl. Speaking of things that our city wishes, they could go back and redo, remember that one time that they tore down the groove, the record shop in East Nashville? And the developer said he was embarrassed for him and his family because he didn't realize it was under a historic overlay. Well, great news. This week, Nashville's historic zoning commission voted to approve his plans to recreate the structure as close to its original condition as possible. Funny as possible outcome. Listen, I had a bunch of friends who were like, they should put housing on that spot. It should be six level, single, stair, multifamily. And I was like, that would be good. Making him rebuild it meticulously piece by piece is funnier. That's a humiliation ritual. Exactly. That is an expensive mistake. It is a bummer of a mistake. And that I love that there's like not actual plans for them to go by. They'd have to just refer to photographs. Yeah. Everybody, if you went to a record store day party at the groove, send us your photos at Nashville at cidicast.fm. And we'll pass them along. We'll pass them along.

Oh, and we have some sports. You know we always have sports. It's also the last Nashville SC game before the World Cup break on Saturday, and it's Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Night. So get out there. Sarah Grace, you're not a football person, but have you been to the soccer's? Yeah, I'm a soccer person and I've been to quite a few SC games. Heck yeah. That's my whole goal with this section of the podcast every week is to just get people to go to National SC games. We're in first place, folks, not just first place in our division. We are in first place in the entire MLS standings. We currently lead the supporters shield race. We have the most points of any soccer team in the country right now. Wow. Get on board. Go support. I'm on board. I'm not going, but I'm on board. I'm cheering from afar. Sarah Grace, do you have any good news for the weekend, something you're looking forward to? I think I'm going to have a far less politically interesting time at the pool with my nieces on Monday. Well, then let's get all of our griping. out of our system right now as we slowly transition into our exciting new bonus segment for CityCast National Neighbors only. Hellnaw. Marie, tell us about how Hellnaw works. Well, folks, if you want to just hit pause right now and go on over to membership.citycast.fm and join right now, you'll be able to listen to this exclusive segment only for neighbors' ears right now. Do you want to tease our topic? Do you want to tease what we're talking about, who we're grateful about? We'll tickle your fancy. Get ready, folks. We are going to talk about Nate Bargatsy's theme park. The park. All right. So this is your sign. If you want to hear what we have to say about Nate Bargazzi's theme park, pause it right now. We'll give you a second. Marie still hasn't written a jingle. What else are we doing this weekend, Marie? Well, circling back to the Nashville scene summer guide, we are absolutely thrilled to see musicians corner highlighted in their events since it's one of our absolute favorite things to do this time of year. And we encourage folks to come out for their Memorial Day weekend of shows. Tonight, they start at 5 p.m. and go till 9. Amanda Shire's is headlining. Amazing. Which is fun. Tomorrow, 12 to 6, I looked it up. They've got Viva, Mexico mariachi, Nicole Atkins, and the verve pipe, who I was told by a friend last night. Last time they saw the verve pipe, they played their incredibly depressing song, the freshman second to last. And then they ended with a collective soul song because I guess they were like, we can't send people out on this sad song about suicide. So fingers crossed. Nice. All right. And then on Sunday, folks. We're going to be there, CityCast Nashville. That's right. We're going to be there hanging out in our yellow tent from 12 to 6 o'clock. And we are especially excited to see Maddie Diaz, who is headlining. Yes, we are there by Marie's request. Marie, what do you love so much about Maddie Diaz? Go.

Well, according to my Spotify last year, it was basically the only artist I listened to about a thousand times over and over again. Her songwriting, her performance. I've never seen her live. It's always hard to get tickets. And she's performing for free in Centennial Park on Sunday. So come on out. I will be there. Bring the kids, bring the dog, bring a picnic or eat from the local food trucks. We can't wait to see you. Sarah Grace, will we see you out there? Sure, why not? She's like the anti-Nicol. She's so amenable. She's like, okay. Well, I hope everybody has a safe and dry Memorial Day weekend. Yeah, it's going to be a little drippy, everybody. But we need that rain. We need it. The crops. Better than hot. Exactly. That is true. Find a pool and get into and eat a hot dog. Unless there's lightning. All right, we did it again. We all take care of each other. That's all for today here on CityCast, Nashville. And don't forget, you can support this show and get great perks by becoming a CityCast Nashville neighbor at membership.citycast.com. I'm your creative producer, Maurice Cecil Anderson. Our executive producer is Whitney Pasturek. Our interim producer this week is Katie McMurran, with additional mixing by Tyler Lindgren. Our CityCast Nashville newsletter editor is Margaret Kingsbury, and our theme music is by Prop Jenkins, with additional music by Carl Christensen. all the kimonos, and Los Smokachetes, from Triple Scoop music via Getty Images. If you enjoyed the show, why not tell your friends? Rate the show. Leave us a review and subscribe to our CityCast Nashville newsletter. We'll be back Tuesday morning after celebrating Memorial Day with more news from around the city. Tootles.