Kix Brooks to lead new group pushing park vision for Greer Stadium post-Cloud Hill

Nashville's historic preservation community scored a big victory this month when developers and Mayor Megan Barry abandoned plans to redevelop Greer Stadium with a mixed-use project called Cloud Hill.

But it's now on to the next challenge, with the same army organizing to make sure the former baseball stadium site is reincorporated into Fort Negley Park.

Country music star Kix Brooks, a Civil War buff who helped preservationists fight Cloud Hill, is leading a new coalition that will advocate for the future of Fort Negley Park so that it "meets the potential that it has."

Tops on the to-do list: fundraising, both privately and through potential public sources, and to push for the quick demolition of the abandoned Metro-owned stadium, former home of the Nashville Sounds, which sits directly downhill from Fort Negley.

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The new group will operate as a committee under Friends of Fort Negley, an advocacy group that supports the Civil War-era fort.

"I know this place is important, and funds have been raised before," Brooks told a room of more than 100 gathered for a meeting of the nonprofit Historic Nashville at the Fort Negley Visitors center Thursday night. "And now that we have this opportunity, it's an amazing tipping point.

"What do we got to do first? We got to tear the Sounds mess down," he said. "That's what really has the city concerned. And it should have all of us concerned. The last thing we need is, now that we're in a turning point, now that we're kind of in charge, is, 'See I told you so,' if something bad happens over there."

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He was speaking to a enthusiastic room of history lovers and park advocates, just two weeks after the development team behind Cloud Hill — planned as a mix of creative and maker space retail and housing — withdrew their plans.

It was part celebration, but more looking ahead.

Brooks: mayor has been receptive to park vision

Brooks said he's spoken to Barry four or five times about the future of the site. He said she's now "very excited about the prospect of this property being a green-space city park.

"And I think I really made her believe we can do this. Oh, oh," he said to laughs. "Which means we've got to do it."

Brooks might seem an unlikely leader of the effort. But he's lent his support for Civil War preservation in the past. And he joined the Cloud Hill opposition last month with an impassioned letter that called the Cloud Hill battle a onetime chance to reclaim the Greer site as a park.

He recounted his first exchange with the mayor about Fort Negley.

"A couple of weeks ago, much to my surprise, I was contacted by the mayor when this thing kind of broke loose," Brooks said. "I'm like, 'Boy, I'm in trouble now.'

"It was a conversation that was basically like, 'You think you guys can really make this happen?'" Brooks said. "And I said, 'I absolutely do.' She goes, 'Do you guys think you can raise that kind of money?' And I said, 'I have no idea.'"

He later added: "I really have faith in things that matter, and to me, this really matters."

Group seeks to answer charge

Cloud Hill developers, led by Bert Mathews and music producer T Bone Burnett, scrapped their plans on Jan. 12, calling the project "more complex than anticipated" and no longer viable to pursue.

It came as the mayor's office said a final archaeological review of Greer found it is "highly likely that human remains are still present" on portions of the city-owned site. Historical records indicate they could be graves of slaves who built the Union Army fort, constructed during the Union Army's occupation of Nashville.

Barry, who had supported Cloud Hill, has said the future of the Greer property now needs to better honor those who died building the fort. She's called for a reassessment of plans to "so as to better honor and preserve the history of the men and women who died in the construction of a fort that helped save the Union."

The mayor has called for a shared vision that brings the community together.

"In a way, this committee that we are forming is answering her charge to make those things happen," said Clay Bailey, president of Friends of Fort Negley. "So, we come to this, not in the spirit of going to battle against anything, but in forming a coalition of people where we can all move forward and help Fort Negely realize the potential that it has.

He said Fort Negley can be a place recognized across the country as an example of how to bring people together to memorialize the Civil War and Reconstruction.

"This is a site for reconciliation, and that is our mission as this committee."

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236, jgarrison@tennesesan.com and on Twitter @joeygarrison.