Metro Councilman John Cooper has changed his mind and will run for mayor of Nashville, saying the time has come to turn the page on a political era that has focused too much on downtown development and not enough on outlying neighborhoods.

In February, Cooper said he wouldn’t seek the office.

But since then, Cooper said he has been urged by a cross section of stakeholders to run for the job. And Cooper added that initiatives pushed by Mayor David Briley, notably a $750 million affordable housing plan, forced him to reconsider his initial decision.

Cooper told The Tennessean in an exclusive interview that he is uniquely qualified to serve as mayor because of his background in finance, real estate development, project management and his four years on the council.

His sales pitch is a return to simpler, more nuts-and-bolts government that favors paying police officers and teachers more instead of big-ticket projects like sports stadiums and expensive downtown tax incentive deals.

The focus of his campaign will be putting neighborhoods first and the financial stewardship of the city budget. Nashville also needs to rebuild public trust in city government, Cooper said.

Cooper joins a mayoral field that also includes state Rep. John Ray Clemmons and retired Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain challenging Briley.

"If you could write down two sentences to summarize my campaign: the first would be that teachers are the developers we need to support," Cooper said, juxtaposing the political focus on tax incentives for development projects. "It's all about human capital. That's the ladder of opportunity and success. The teachers are developing the human capital of our community that is going to create the great future.

"And the second point is the small property owner in Madison should not paying for the cost of downtown," Cooper said, adding that the tourist-driven downtown economy should be self-sufficient.

Cooper is acutely aware that he must overcome his late entry into the race. He calls himself an "underdog," whose "lack of ego in not deciding to run for the job a year ago" puts him at a disadvantage.

Cooper must hurry to build a campaign infrastructure, and he trails Briley, Swain and Clemmons in fundraising.

But Cooper has the name recognition, the ability to serve as his own campaign's biggest donor and a unique track record to make a compelling case to Nashville voters. During his nearly four years as an at-large councilman, Cooper has been a thorn in the side of two mayors.

He has vocally opposed economic incentive deals, city land sales and the ballot referendum to create a financing mechanism for mass transit.

Cooper said the battle over redeveloping the old Greer Stadium property next to the federal Civil War site Fort Negley changed his political life.

Cooper led the charge in opposing then-Mayor Megan Barry's plan to bulldoze the ballpark to build condos, an artist village and makers' space. Citing the historical significance of the land where slaves and freed slaves camped during the construction of the Union Army fort, Cooper said the proposal was misguided and the city should build a park that honors the cultural significance of the property.

"My view is the stadium portion should be returned to the original 1928 city park, which includes what is now the stadium," Cooper said.

Shortly after he became mayor last year, Briley announced plans to convert the old baseball stadium back into a park and demolition for that project is underway.

Cooper to focus on neighborhoods

Cooper's focus on neighborhoods and fiscal policy that doesn't feature economic incentives for downtown projects hearkens back to the 1999 candidacy of Bill Purcell, whose pro-neighborhood message earned him two terms as mayor and a high approval rating when he left office in 2007.

"My issues are neighborhoods first — density is not its own reward," Cooper said. "When density happens, we have to use it to build a livable city. And my second issue is financial stewardship. There is no question the city has deep financial issues. We've maxed out the credit card, so the easy decisions are behind us. Debt service is going to probably be once again the biggest item in the new budget."

On the issue of public trust, Cooper said "we must think of the people" in all of the deals the city enters into, adding that "part of it is a cultural shift that transparency shouldn't be something we have to ask for, but is assumed."

"The business of the city is to provide universal services, and services for the needy," Cooper said. "That's the absolute duty of the city, and we use regressive property taxes to pay for that. Once you step out of that lane, then of course there has to be policy corrections from time to time based on the facts at hand."

Professional background makes Cooper 'uniquely qualified'

Cooper, 62, is married with one adult child and two teenagers. After earning his MBA at Vanderbilt University, he worked in finance on Wall Street before returning to Nashville to embark on a career in real estate development and business.

He mostly focused his development projects on Williamson County, particularly the mixed-use office and retail district of Maryland Farms. Cooper referred to the retirement development The Heritage at Brentwood as his most important and complex project.

He also founded the charitable business Happy Retales, which donates 100 percent of its profits to animal rescue nonprofits.

Cooper first ran for office in 2015, earning one of five at-large council seats representing all of Davidson County. Even though it was his first bid for public office, his family is familiar to Nashville voters.

His brother is U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, and his father Prentice Cooper was governor of Tennessee in the 1940s.

"I think I am uniquely qualified to do this job well," he said. "To solve the financial stewardship and the trust issue, we need to be better at negotiating deals. And we need to remember who we are negotiating for. That means including the people first in all these deals."

Cooper called the city's reliance on economic incentives to lure businesses to relocate here an outdated "trickle down approach," and said it's time to turn the page.

"It's interesting that Nashville is a very Democratic city and we accept this policy that most people on the surface of it would reject. But we just don't realize that trickle-down is exactly how we've been managing the city," he said.

"The time has just come to recognize that we're in the next chapter. It's not as much about incentives as much as it is how to build a livable city."

No campaign staff, behind in fundraising

In February, Cooper told The Tennessean he wouldn't run for mayor or seek reelection to the council. He called his decision "tortured," but said it was a personal choice.

In the ensuing months, Briley has built a sizable fundraising lead for the August election.

According to the most recent financial disclosures, Briley has over $400,000 on hand compared to $116,199 for Swain and $103,727 for Clemmons. Swain was the most recent to enter the race, and she said in February she initially planned to support Cooper should he run.

Cooper said an announcement on campaign staffing would be coming soon. His campaign chairwoman will be Metro Councilwoman Brenda Haywood.

Cooper said he is prepared to be his campaign's largest donor and although he hopes his brother will vote for him, he does not expect campaign assistance from the congressman.

Reasons for changing his mind

Cooper cited a number of factors for why he changed his mind. First on the list was Briley's $750 million affordable housing plan.

Briley’s proposal would commit $500 million of city funds, over the next decade, to two major affordable housing initiatives. The Metropolitan Development and Housing Authority would receive $350 million for its redevelopment of aging public housing complexes, including the construction of 1,000 new heavily-subsidized apartments.

WHAT TO KNOW:Affordable housing and Nashville's new initiative

Also, the city would devote $150 million to the Barnes Fund for Affordable Housing, which provides grants to developers. Besides dedicating city funds, Briley also said he would push for the private sector to invest in affordable housing.

"I wanted to give the administration every chance to show we are in a new era and need a new deal for putting people first," Cooper said, explaining why he didn't enter the race sooner. "I would say the affordable housing plan in particular was a shortcoming. After a year it was one page. It included a completely hypothetical $250 million (from private developers), and the $350 million seems to be a subsidy for MDHA, our least transparent agency."

While the relocation of cherry blossom trees downtown to make way for a stage and media tent for next week's NFL Draft didn't play a role in his decision, Cooper said he does believe the incident serves as a metaphor for the state of Nashville.

"The cherry blossom tree story, for me, is a symbol," Cooper said. "It's always going to be hard to know fairly what they did and didn't know, and what they said or didn't say. But for the community it's a symbol that we are the trees, that we perhaps with all this growth may be removed. The growth may be forcing us to be removed."

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Tennessean reporter Mike Reicher contributed to this story. Reach Nate Rau at 615-259-8094 and nrau@tennessean.com. Follow on Twitter @tnnaterau.