Photo: Daniel Meigs

It has been 735 days since Megan Barry delivered a victory speech to a crowd of supporters packed into the Nashville Farmers’ Market after sealing her election as Nashville’s first female mayor. And she says they’ve flown by.

They certainly haven’t been dull. In fact, the mayor’s first two years in office have been largely spent reacting to events that were not on the agenda she brought with her to office. The reverberations of Donald Trump’s election have been felt in Nashville from a variety of angles — see the intensification of debates around immigration and the violent outbursts of emboldened white supremacists. In 2017, the police shooting of Jocques Clemmons brought renewed attention to discussions of race and policing in the city.

Still, it looks now as if the second half of Barry’s first term in office will go a long way toward determining her legacy as mayor. Before this year is out, her administration is expected to go to the Metro Council with proposals for a Major League Soccer stadium and a mass transit referendum that, she hopes, will be on the ballot next May. That goes on top of ever-present issues like affordable housing and short-term rental properties, and the halfway point of her term comes just a month after a life-altering personal event — the death of her only child, Max, of a drug overdose. The Scene spoke with Barry last week at her office.

How fast has this felt?

Fast. Really fast. It’s really interesting, I have this calendar on my phone that counts down, and today it’s 695 days [left].

Did your perception of how much time that is change once you became mayor?

Well, there’s so many things that are going on in Nashville right now. I think having that sense of urgency of wanting to move the needle significantly on transit, housing, economic development, education — I mean, all these pieces, you know you only have so much time. But it’s exciting. Nashville is a great place at the moment.

There’s obviously a long list of things to talk about, but we wanted to start by just asking how you are doing personally.

It’s been over a month since Max passed away, and I think when [husband Bruce Barry] was talking at his memorial, the statement that he made which was absolutely spot-on is that the counterweight to grief is community, and having that ability for so much outpouring of love and support in the community has just really filled that hole in our hearts a little bit, but it will never go away.

I’m almost certain we talked about this when you were running, but being a parent sort of changes how you approach everything, it changes your whole life. I have no doubt that losing a child affects your whole life as well. I know it’s early, but how has it changed how you approach being mayor when you come into this office?

I will tell you what one of the things that Bruce and I decided immediately was to have a really frank and open conversation about how Max died. And what that has done is [open me to] the overwhelming conversations that I have now had with so many other people who I would never have met. I would never have had a conversation with somebody who had lost their child to an overdose, because they might not have felt comfortable. That’s been the real eye-opener for me, is how many folks struggle with addiction or have a family member that struggles or has had a family member that they have lost because of an overdose. Those stories now are stories that people want to tell me and share with me, and it’s a pretty big boat and I don’t think I ever had a perspective.

How much of that can you listen to?

Actually I can listen to a lot of it, because when somebody is sharing their story with me, it’s not my story. It’s a way to connect, though, it’s a way for them to share their grief with me, which in that weird way that you are sharing grief, gives you a commonality that then bolsters both of you.

One of the dangers after you lose someone very close in your life is not finding time to cope, and certainly as the mayor, you have a zillion demands on your time. How have you built in any coping, any therapy, any counseling?

I think that for me, that first month it was — you are numb, and Jason Isbell did say it best: “I thank God for the work.” Because that means I can go in every day and do what I was doing anyway. It doesn’t mean I don’t think about Max, it doesn’t mean I don’t miss him. I think grief therapy is really important, and I started that. A lot of folks who have been through this said to me, “You know, you really should talk to me,” and I’m like, “You know what, this is new territory, and I’m willing to figure out this path of something and figure it out,” so that’s something I’ve started. I think again, just being transparent and honest about how you are moving through this might help somebody else. I’ve been told that the conversations that have happened now around dining-room tables with kids and parents have brought this up, and my hope is that maybe one of those conversations will stop another parent from ever having to go through this.

The term “opioid crisis” is fairly prevalent now. Does it have a different meaning for you?

Sure. Opioids didn’t kill Max, but they were in his system. Clearly for my child, the [opioid-overdose antidote] Narcan didn’t work, but for a lot of people it does. So making sure that we have access to more treatment beds and also getting Narcan into the hands of the first responders and the people who can use it will help alleviate some of that end of life, but this starts way before that. That’s why that treatment-bed component is so important. That’s why having access to health care is so important. That’s why access to insurance is so important, because the reason Max was able to have access to a treatment bed last summer was because we had insurance, but there are a lot of families that don’t. And that needs to change.

Photo: Michael W. Bunch



Among the things that are all going on at once is the short-term rental discussion that has been going on since you became mayor. How do you see the issue? Can you define the situation for us as you see it?

Sure. I think the Metro Council has defined it pretty well in the fact that you have owner-occupied VRBOs and rental organizations that are good actors, and people are going to seem OK with having an owner-occupied component in their neighborhood; where you see the more interesting conversations [are] around those … where they’re not owner-occupied, and what does that mean to a neighborhood? And what does that mean to me if I’m living next to somebody that isn’t living there all the time, or it’s a party house, that kind of stuff. And I think the council is working towards a solution with different parameters for each one of those, and I think that they are the closest to the neighborhoods that they serve. And so they are hearing from their neighbors what they want, what they need, and I think council is going to address that.

But there’s a macro component to that in the sense that whatever percentage of those houses are not in the system, for lack of a better term, they’re not available for sale, or they are not available for long-term rental, which affects housing, of which the city is in desperate short supply. So how does that affect anything that your office can do or you can do about housing in the city?

Our approach has been, how do we address the affordable housing component for Nashvillians? What we have done is we’ve said, “OK, first of all we have to build low-income and affordable housing.” Since we’ve come into office in the last two years, we’ve put $25 million into the Barnes Fund, and then we’ve put another $25 million in this budget cycle for bond usage, for properties that we can continue to keep low-income and rehab so that we’re not actually pushing out. Through the last two years we have actually either built or retained 1,900 units. Now I know that doesn’t sound as much as, you know, 20,000, but I have to tell you in this economy right now, that’s where we are. We have all these different components. We’re also working with the private developers who’ve got these already coming out of the ground to provide relief for folks who are nurses, police officers, firefighters, teachers. So trying to help find solutions so the private industries can also help us because we’re not gonna solve this on our own.

I know you keep pushing this to the Metro Council because it’s a very local issue, but in terms of the number, short-term rentals have been very good for the city in the sense of helping fill in the gap of hotel rooms that the city has not built yet. Those people come here and spend money, but rents are high — and even putting 1 percent or 2 percent of total housing back in could move the needle on rent. Someone who’s in the city who’s like, “Look, there’s a party house on my street that a family of four or a family of six could be living in.”

I would say to you again, going back to this idea of how the council can remedy that, I don’t think that 1 or 2 percent of the market — our issues right now on affordability, you cannot hang that all on short-term rentals. But they have absolutely addressed a need; you’re absolutely right, we’ve got 4,000 hotel rooms coming online in the next year or two. I don’t know how that will also impact the short-term rental market, and we also have more units of housing coming out of the ground, too. At some point you may see a market component here, but my concerns are much more around the neighbors’ and the neighborhoods’ [reaction of], “Hey I moved into a neighborhood, and I expected to have neighbors.” So how do you manage for that? And that’s what I want to see. I live on a street right now where there’s lots of rental, and I love that, because rental does make it affordable for folks who might not be able to buy a house in my neighborhood, afford to live in my neighborhood, and I like that. But I also have an owner-occupied rental down the street. He needs that in order to stay in his house, so I think that there’s a lot of conversations about this.

Amazon just announced that they’re going to build a second headquarters, which Nashville might be in the running to get. But along with that comes a secondary question too, which is, for the past 10 years or so, the focus from Metro and Mayor Karl Dean and from other people in Metro government has really been on growth. And that’s a complicated notion, but it’s basically been, “If you want to come to Nashville, we’re happy to have you. If you want to move your business here, we want you to come here.” Sort of growth as its own goal. Where do you think the point is where that stops being a good thing and you start having to say, “Well, that would be growth, but we may not want that, we may want to kind of manage this a little more”?

I think that, having spent a lot of time with other mayors in other cities where there isn’t any growth, trust me: You don’t want to move to a model of no growth. You don’t want to be the city where people are leaving. You want to be the city where people are still wanting to come. You know, 50,000 jobs, 50,000 people, let’s see where this really goes. Amazon has thrown out this gauntlet, but the reality of it is the way we actually go out and get companies, and I think we’ve had about 109 [relocations] or projects since we came into office, which equates to over 8,000 jobs. Those have been much more deliberate kinds of conversations — this is unusual for this kind of conversation.

Given how unusual the Amazon situation is, how do you approach it?

We’ll talk to them, we’ll see what they want. The focus in this administration has been much more around trying to say, “All right, where do we want to see and push the growth?” So we haven’t all focused on downtown. We’ve got five key areas that we have focused on in this last year, including Antioch. We’ve got Ikea coming out there.

Finally. Everyone’s thrilled.

I’m pretty sure [my communications director Sean Braisted] found that there was some promise I made that I would bring Ikea. Done.

But that’s the kind of infrastructure support that we’ve focused on. Bellevue, creating the partnership with the Predators to put two ice rinks down there in the community center as part of that mixed-use development. Putting a pocket park on Jefferson Street. Rehabbing Hadley library and the tennis facility. So we’re trying to say, “Where are the areas that we can focus on that aren’t all about downtown?” But also recognize the growth and the benefit of the growth to the communities that make up the county.

Something like the Amazon possibility, is that an arms race for cities to start giving things away?

I’m sure it is. I cannot imagine that there’s not some component that would be all about incentives. I don’t know that, they haven’t told us that. Maybe it will just come natural because we’re so cool.

In general, any kind of big investment from the city to attract something or build a stadium or any big spending project, the pitch is always, “We’re going to spend all this money here, and it’s going to create growth, and it’s going to trickle down, and everyone in the different neighborhoods is going experience this benefit.” And every time it comes up, it’s not hard to find people who are skeptical of that or who don’t feel like they see it. Are there clear examples where those have benefited the communities directly, and also how do you communicate that to people?

Well, I would use the Ikea, that all of that component is a great example. We’re going to invest in infrastructure out there, and part of this has to be, it’s a combination of upgrading the interchange with the state and also us providing some roads that aren’t there now but that can help not only [Community Health Systems], who’s out there, but Bridgestone, who’s out there, and Ikea, who’s coming. So it’s about that component or they wouldn’t come. But that’s infrastructure we need anyway, so that’s been my lens. We’ve focused on incentives that look at the infrastructure and for companies that are bringing really good jobs, and then we give them a component. But those have been the two things that we’ve done in our administration.

Speaking of infrastructure, transit is something that we’re gonna be talking a lot more about in the next couple months. This is a very ambitious timeline — it’s very fast. We’re talking about May for this referendum. My understanding is that’s quite a bit quicker than a lot of other cities have done. How much of a challenge is that?

Well, I think we have a window here of people right now who are sitting in traffic and feel the congestion in Nashville, and they want a solution. And the state has given us that window of opportunity by passing the IMPROVE Act, and I don’t think it’s responsible to wait. I think we need to do this because we have to pass this in order to get the funding mechanism. That doesn’t mean that as soon as we pass this rough window you’re going to have transit the next day. These are long timelines, and I just think Nashvillians want it sooner than later, so why wait? Right now the initiative starts with the petition drive. The petition isn’t necessary, because the council is ultimately going to improve the language that’s going to go on the ballot, but I think it’s exciting for people to want it before transit, and people are willing to pay for it.

What kind of conversations have you had with your counterparts in the surrounding counties around Nashville?

Oh gosh, lots of conversations. The mayors in all of our other surrounding counties and cities were all on the same page, universally and unanimously. Transit has to come to the region. In fact, Nashville has to come first. The reality is that once we pass the [funding], and once we start building the transit, then the connections into those other counties where they can go forward and also ask their voters to fund mechanisms, will, I think, be the natural progression. You’re not going to have a referendum in one of these counties that’s going to be independent of something that’s going to pass in Nashville. I think Nashville has to go first.

When you were campaigning, you talked about how transit doesn’t just mean a bunch of people on a bus. It’s broadly defined. In your two years in office, what has your administration done to make transit better?

When I say transit, again it’s multimodal. So we have increased funding for sidewalks, bikeways. We did upgrades to all of the traffic lights where we focus on making sure that the throughput could go faster. We decreased drive times that way. We increased frequency for buses. We took the downtown connector — which is the Music City Connector — it now runs all the way out down Jefferson to TSU and back, as a way to create some economic development along that corridor instead of stopping at the Farmers’ Market. We’ve invested a lot in our current infrastructure, but we need to go forward, and that means light rail, and it means much more dollars for more bus and [bus rapid transit].

You had a ringside seat for Karl Dean’s failed transit proposal, The Amp. Quite literally, front row. What did you learn from that?

I think that the resistance to that project was because it was just one project, I don’t think that folks could see the entire system, which is why when we go back to this, it’s ambitious. This is an ambitious plan that actually tries to address significant needs throughout Davidson County. It’s not just one line. It’s meaningful that we had that experience, but I think that Nashvillians right now want to be able to get around their city, and they want to be able to do that multimodal. If more people are on transit, the reality is some people are still going to drive, so we have to address that, too. So part of this plan is, we have to look at those interchanges to make them better so that cars can actually get through faster.

In terms of the actual campaign, what did you learn from The Amp process that you will bring to that part of it, in terms of going out and pitching people on it?

Well, I think people have to be educated. I think there’s a couple of things. … I am for transit, and I’m willing to pay for it. That’s the big idea. Over the next several weeks you will see the bold plan as it lays out all the lines of where everything will go and our major corridors. And you’ll also see the funding mechanism. The way this has to go on the ballot is 250 words or less — we have to explain everything we’re doing and how we’re going to pay for it, so that has to be a pretty tight paragraph. Now having said that, I can’t tell you the granularity, there’s no reason for me to spend a whole lot of time telling you where the stops [are] going to be on Gallatin Road if I don’t have any money to pay for it. So this is about being bold and being progressive, to say, “I want transit and I want it down Murfreesboro Road, I want it down Nolensville Road, down Gallatin, Dickerson, Charlotte — I mean all these places, and this is what it’s going to look like.” And then we can talk about all the specifics once we have the funding.

I know you think the answer to this is no, but I’m hoping you can explain it. During the campaign, one thing that Bill Freeman said was that The Amp discussion was kind of 10 years behind, and because of that we’re behind even if we go forward with this. And he didn’t win, so maybe he was wrong.

No, we’re behind. [Laughs]

Is there a possibility that this is just too late? If this succeeds and you get the funding, we’re talking 20 years before all these things are built.

Maybe a little less.

Is there a possibility that the mass-transit moment has just passed Nashville? We just missed it?

I don’t think so. Think about the cities that have had mass transit for 100 years. We’re gonna need mass transit. We’re growing, and I think one of the other components here is, this is not just about transit — it’s about the housing component that you just talked about. It’s about economic development. It’s about this idea that the folks who are moving here want to give up their car and those dollars that it takes for a car and put it into entertainment and travel and housing and other things. And I think that’s what makes cities attractive, and I don’t think we’re behind in the fact that, oh gosh, we didn’t do this 100 years ago. Well, we actually did, but we got rid of it [the streetcar system]. I think that to do nothing, that solves nothing, and we only know it’s going to get worse.

I don’t think we’ve missed the window. I think, sure, should we have tackled this 15 years ago? You bet, but we didn’t, and I don’t think any administration can throw up their hands and say, “Oh well, I guess we missed the window.” This isn’t just about one modality either. I think that’s the important component. Cars aren’t going away, whether they are gonna be autonomous ... or you’re gonna have Lyft or Uber or whatever, cars are still gonna be on the road. So we have to plan for that too, but there are absolutely folks who don’t want to be in those cars — they want to be in some other conveyance, and that’s what we’re gonna do.

We have to ask you how you are feeling about the soccer stadium proposal these days.

I’m feeling great.

Metro Chief Operating Officer Rich Riebeling has been very deliberate about saying it should be a “private-public” partnership, emphasis private.

Absolutely, that is the watchword of my administration.

Whether it’s $100 million, $200 million, whatever the price tag is on that, what do you think the city can pay for?

Well, I think that we’re still working through all that, and I think it’s going to still depend on the way the partnerships look. I do believe that we are absolutely at the front of the line with [Major League Soccer] to potentially be one of the two teams that get announced by the end of the year. It’s going to be dependent on the fact that we can say that we’re going to build a stadium, and I think that you’ll see that in the next couple of weeks, what those particulars look like. I do believe that the appetite in Nashville is high for soccer and high for private investment.

I heard some people on the council say, “Well, now there’s two billionaires as part of the ownership group, maybe the billionaires should just pay for this.”

Well, maybe they should help pay for a whole lot of it.

Is there a percent in your mind that you can’t go above?

The goal is to not put the city at risk. That’s the lens I look at this through.

What does “at risk” mean?

You know, at risk for how this is going to go forward. I want to see private dollars as much as possible in this to offset any kind of city involvement, with a low-risk factor that means our expenditures are minimal. But again, as we work through what the final plan will be, that will be a conversation that we will have with council and with Nashvillians.

What did you learn from the city’s experience with First Tennessee Park?

I learned that you have to be diligent and understanding where the components are. First Tennessee Park is a beautiful park, we’re really lucky that we have it. I think, again, that’s about risk, where do you assign the risk.

Did the city assume too much risk there?

I don’t know.

They ended up having to pay more than —

I think any time you pay more, you should be paying less.

One thing that some council members have said about this is that the momentum for these sorts of things increases, and if you’re a council member it gets harder and harder to say no, because now people have seen pictures of a stadium and a growing number are watching a soccer team play here right now. Do you think you and or your administration — are you prepared to say no, though, if the number is too high for the city? Is that something you are ready to do?

I think it’s our responsibility to make sure, again, that whatever is put forward is something that we’re comfortable with. We won’t put something forward that we’re not comfortable with. My hope is that the momentum you’re seeing in Nashville is that we’re kind of selling out these games, where you’ve got all these soccer folks come in to town. Booster clubs that come, I mean there’s a lot of people who love soccer in this town, and I think that that’s the next thing for Nashville.

For the average person who hears us talking about transit, hears us talking about a soccer stadium, what’s your explanation to them that these things aren’t mutually exclusive? That we can pursue both of these things, and it’s not too much?

Well, we absolutely can. You cannot ever become focused on, “We can only do one thing.” We have to think about the city in totality, which is why earlier when I was talking about the investments that we’re making all around Davidson County, you cannot just say, “We’re only gonna invest here,” or, “We’re only gonna do this.” The responsibility of government is to make sure that you’re looking through the lens of what’s best for Nashville now and in the future. Transit is absolutely what we need now and in the future. That, to me, is a conversation that is key. I also think that soccer is going to be transformative for the neighborhood along Nolensville Road, that component of the fairgrounds, all of that is really exciting. And it’s going be on a transit line. So again, we’re gonna be able to get people in and out of there to go see a soccer game.

One thing you could not have foreseen, I don’t think, was that Donald Trump would be president, and that things would be happening like Charlottesville, Va., and the ugliness we’ve seen in very public ways and violent ways. You’ve been outspoken after the events in Charlottesville and saying that this isn’t what Nashville is about, this isn’t what we stand for. But in practical ways, what can the city do to either push back against that or separate itself from that? There’s this conversation about Confederate monuments going on at the state level, but as far as the city is concerned, what are the practical steps you think you can take?

I think one of the steps has been that citizens can be engaged in that conversation. The bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest sits on state property. I’d love to see it gone, put somewhere else, where it doesn’t need to be there. I think citizens in Nashville can absolutely be part of that voice and that conversation to their state elective legislators to push for that. The reality in Nashville is that we actually have ongoing conversations pretty regularly across different constituencies. Last year we did the real dialogue — I don’t know if you remember that — and you’ll see in the next couple of weeks a comprehensive component of everything that came out of that dialogue and everything that we do to support what the community wanted on several of those initiatives. So I think that we’re accessible in having these conversations, we’ve got folks out in the community all the time. But I think the reality is that we had 500 folks who were protesting the [DACA decision] the other day, and our responsibility is to make sure that they have the right to speak, their First Amendment rights are protected. They are safe while they are protesting, and putting that infrastructure in place. Anytime that that’s happening, I think that that’s what the city’s responsibility is.

On DACA, after the statement you put out opposing the president’s decision, what do you plan on doing to have those people’s backs?

Well, the reality of it is that those Dreamer kids are here because their parents brought them here. Congress needs to take action. Before Congress takes action, there’s no reason to get rid of this and [we should] protect those kids. We’re working with Conexión Américas to figure out the best strategies and ways to help those kids secure whatever they can, and to continue to make sure that Nashville is warm and welcoming and that they are welcome here.

Photo: Daniel Meigs

