Layers of Bureaucracy

We were thinking that by moving from Atlanta to Nashville that we would be getting a little bit more of that small-town kinda vibe happening around us. It seems like the Nashville city government leans more towards Moscow (Soviet-era) than Mayberry. I could never have imagined that there could possibly be this much red tape, meetings, committees and approvals standing between us and a house. And much to my surprise, very little of the heat is because of the pre-fab nature of the home.

These are the different city departments that we will need to approve our project:

Metro Development and Housing Agency - This group is responsible for welfare housing and approves all new construction that takes place in "Redevelopment Districts". We are in the Phillips-Jackson Redevelopment District.

Metro Planning Commission is the bureaucracy that seems to be the ringleader for all of the other commissions, boards, and petty bureaucrats. I am not sure where they sit on the pecking order of governmental appointees. The Detailed Neighborhood Design Plan (DNDP) is administered by the MPC. I could have sworn that the East Germans proved once and for all that central planning does not work. We are subject to the plan for Sub-Area 8 which covers Germantown. It is interesting that the plan calls for much higher density development than the single-family home that we are planning - "3rd Avenue from Jefferson Street to Van Buren Street, as well as Jefferson Street between 3rd and 8th Avenues, should be developed with mixed-use mid-rise buildings of 4 to 6 stories."

The Metropolitan Historical Zoning Commission has a seat on the MDHA Design Review Board. Our property is not in a designated historic area and does not contain a historic building, but for some reason these guys will have a major amount of say over what our new home will look like. I just hope that they don't try to turn our house into some little DisneyWorldesque version of an old Germantown house.

And then there is the Nashville Civic Design Center which as far as I can tell does not wield any official power but they likely absorb a huge amount of tax dollars. This group has published the Plan of Nashville which includes a section that describes the long term plan (dream?) for Germantown and East Germantown.

The upshot of all this seems to be that even with a house that meets zonining (MUN - Multi-Use Neighborhood) and fits the Neighborhood Design Plan for our lot (Neighborhood Urban) we will still need to jump through many hoops to satisfy all of these people just for the sake of making these petty bureaucrats feel powerful.