StructureHub

When I posted about former pro-football player Keyshawn Johnson’s new interior design gig, I assumed he was a pioneer out to prove that good fashion sense in post-game attire is indicative of design-ability.  I also assumed Keyshawn’s love of interior design was about as deep as his love of the television show that supplied him with a ready-made design staff and (paying) clients.

In light of the unique circumstances enabling Keyshawn to dispense opinions that are executed by someone else, I am increasingly of the mind that Eddie George is the true pioneer.

Like Keyshawn, Eddie George is an accomplished pr0-football player who retired after nearly a decade with the Tennessee Titans.  Besides dabbling a bit as a sports commentator and opening a popular restaurant next to his alma-mater in Columbus, Ohio (both predictable hobbies of retired pro-athletes), George also founded a landscape architecture firm.

Christened EDGE (harkening to a past nickname), George’s firm seems to focus on master-planned-scale projects instead of small residential or commercial plots; in any event, their portfolio is certainly more substantial that Keyshawn’s - which complements George even though it is unclear how deeply he involves himself in the dirty work of landscape design (naturally, his primary job is business development for the firm).  EDGE even recently won a competition to re-design the streetscape and public spaces in an old neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee.

Like the gash created by Interstate-5 in Vancouver, Washington that I wrote about the other day, Nashville’s Jefferson Street neighborhood was slashed by Interstate-40, which split the predominantly African-American neighborhood in two during a time when it was also struggling with de-facto segregation and red-lining.

EDGE’s re-development plan tries to minimize the gulf between either side by softening the freeway’s sides with plenty of trees (view-able from the roadbed and the neighborhood) and transforming exits into attractive tree-lined gateways into the neighborhood.  Whereas Vancouver’s plan involves a park placed over, but largely independent from, the Interstate, EDGE’s landscaping touches every plane - even so far as the roadbed itself, part of which would be sheathed in paving patterns.

The plan’s transformational power is limited since the freeway will remain a freeway (people are still trying to figure out how to make overpasses attractively walkable).  But even so, EDGE’s plan is certainly a game attempt at minimizing the freeway’s power over the neighborhood’s own re-development efforts.

I do have one suggestion that came to mind when I saw one of EDGE’s renderings:  Do not include the word “historic” in any signage or integrate it with any hoped-for name of the neighborhood (as in, “Historic Jefferson Street”).  ”Jefferson Street” is a perfectly fine name.

Latching “Historic” onto any name is a sure sign of doubt about why the neighborhood has any historic relevance in the first place and at minimum, suggests a lack of confidence in the neighborhood’s actual history as an effective marketing agent (as in, “I don’t know what’s so cool about the neighborhood, so I’ll say it’s historic so people will assume it is.”).  This almost never works because people quickly realize it for the marketing ploy it really is.

The solution for making people aware of Jefferson Street’s historic relevance is in marketing the reason for the relevance.  By increasing awareness of the neighborhood’s substantial influence in the jazz world (whether in tourism materials or simply by sculpting shrubbery in the form of a trumpet) Jefferson Street’s musical heritage will gradually be what comes to mind, without explicit reference, when someone utters “Jefferson Street.”  This awareness is precisely why no one refers to the French Quarter as “Historic French Quarter” or Hyde Park as “Historic Hyde Park.”

Image courtesy of urbanwoodchuck.