Plans to raze downtown's Church Street Park for a 60-story condo tower are on hold and a New York-based redevelopment expert has been retained to present a new vision.

Dan Biederman, widely acclaimed for turning Bryant Park in New York City from a criminal hotbed to a thriving upscale destination, has since helped Houston, Dallas, San Francisco and other cities bring new life to deteriorated public spaces.

He will create a plan for the historic corridor that runs from the limestone columned Tennessee State Capitol to the modern classical-style Metro Public Library along and around Sixth Avenue North.

The corridor includes Church Street Park, Legislative Plaza, the War Memorial Auditorium, Anne Dallas Dudley Boulevard and the five-star Hermitage Hotel.

"The spaces are large between the hotel and the Capitol and not well occupied," Biederman said. "There's a consensus that the avenue could be much more exciting than it is."

Biederman is working with the newly formed Historic Capitol Corridor Foundation independent of Mayor David Briley's office, which most recently promoted developer Tony Giarratana's plan to build a condo tower on the park.

"I’m very hopeful that a combination of beautification programming and changes in the street furniture and lighting can make a big difference here," Biederman said. "This is not as hard a problem as Bryant Park was. What was going on in Bryant Park was much worse — drug sales everywhere, assaults, murders, rapes."

Biederman partnered with businesses to successfully fund revitalization of Bryant Park without using any tax dollars.

Public discussions to come

Last year, Briley negotiated a deal to trade the park for Giarratana's parking lot at 301 James Robertson Parkway and $2 million in cash. Giarratana would also have been given rights to commercially develop the underused Anne Dallas Dudley Boulevard flanking the park

Church Street Park is a rare patch of green space in downtown but it is used daily by homeless people because there are places to sit and it is next to public bathrooms at the library.

The parking lot in that land swap deal is next to the historic Morris Memorial Building that Briley hopes to purchase and renovate.

Homeless advocates, and some downtown business leaders and architects called the land swap poorly planned and decried the loss of the rare urban park.

Instead, they advocated for a public process to come up with ways to make the park more desirable to downtown residents and workers.

Briley's administration responded with a promise to consider other public bids to redevelop the park.

This week, Briley's spokesman Thomas Mulgrew said the public bid process is still being considered.

"However, before moving forward with any of that process, the Planning Department, in consultation with other departments, would hold a series of public discussions to gather community input and feedback," Mulgrew said.

'A special place'

Meanwhile, the Historic Capitol Corridor Foundation formed in January with a consortium of community leaders including the Hermitage Hotel, which is adjacent to the park and a leading opponent to Giarratana's tower plan.

Hotel owners presented their own proposal to buy the park and redesign it with outdoor dining, a waterfall fountain and paved walking areas.

The foundation board includes Hermitage Hotel Managing Director Dee Patel; attorney Charles W. Bone; local historian David Ewing; Ann Butterworth, assistant to the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury; businessman Lee Molette; attorney Hal Hardin; and resident Cary Slatery.

This week, they hired Biederman.

"This corridor is a special place with its community assets and rich history," Butterworth said. "Dan is the perfect person to help us create a vision for what it could be."

The first rally in the southern states for women's right to vote took place on the corridor, led by Anne Dallas Dudley, in 1914.

Biederman said he would like to include historical markers honoring this and other events, and that his proposals will be presented at future community meetings.

Critically, he will present plans to finance the work. Those could include corporate sponsorship and public events.

"We like to have the community decide what would be most appealing," Biederman said. "We don't just take a setup from one city and apply it to the other. Each city has a different taste in music, intellectual content and horticulture."

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Sandy Mazza can be reached via email at smazza@tennessean.com, by calling 615-726-5962, or on Twitter @SandyMazza.