By MATT MASTERS
This story is part of a series Home Page Media Group is running to celebrate our 10th anniversary.
Like most of Middle Tennessee, the City of Brentwood has grown over the past decade bringing with it new residents, businesses and some new challenges.
Brentwood City Manager Kirk Bednar sat down for an interview about the changes, challenges and opportunities for the city.
Bednar served as the Assistant City Manager from 2000 until his promotion in January of 2013 after the retirement of longtime City Manager Mike Walker who served in the role for 22 years.
Bednar said that the city has seen some big changes over the past 10 years but has retained its identity as the face of region continues to evolve.
Among those changes, Bednar said, was the acquisition and development of Smith Park which officially opened in 2014 and this month’s construction of new $29 million police headquarters which is the largest single capital project in the city’s history.
One of the reasons for that project and others is the population growth in Brentwood.
According to the US Census Bureau, Brentwood’s estimated population in 2010 was 37,060 and 42,502 people in 2018, an increase of 14.7%, which brings with it a major challenge and source of frustration for many residents — traffic.
Bednar talked about the increase in traffic, something that Brentwood Police Chief Jeff Hughes also touched on in his recent 10 year look back interview.
“[Traffic] is probably the number one, single most issue on the forefront of citizen’s minds is the traffic issues here in Brentwood, particularly during rush hours,” Hughes said.
Bednar said that the traffic increase is a byproduct of the growth especially with I-65 passing directly through the city.
According to Inrix.com’s 2018 Global Traffic Scorecard, Nashville is ranked as the 20th most congested city in the country, and that congestion is felt all across the Metro area.
While the population boom and strong economy can seem like a constant reality, it wasn’t always that way, as Bednar pointed out that some of his time as Assistant City Manager was during the Great Recession that had a significant impact on the housing market nationwide.
“There was a significant slow down in housing and development and from a financial standpoint, we’ve always been very conservative in our budgeting so we were able to stand it, now we weren’t able to give pay raises to employees like we had in the past, but we didn’t have to lay anyone off,” Bednar said.
Bednar said that while the city operated with tighter belts and more conservative choices, the economy started to gain strength again, improving the same housing market it hurt in 2008 even as some were skeptical that the high-end housing market could bounce back.
“It’s interesting that at the time that happened, and as we were starting to come out of it in 2009 and 2010, there was talk that the housing market for million-dollar-homes would never come back and never be the same again but the reality is today that it’s back and even bigger than what it was before,” Bednar said. “We kind of thought that higher-dollar-housing market would never really bounce back or get as high as it was but I think that today’s market tells you that it really is, and that’s not so much a byproduct of Brentwood as much as it is a byproduct of the growth in Middle Tennessee as a whole.”
“Community-wise obviously things slow down,” Bednar said. “It happened at a time where we had some major road projects going on so it kind of helped us to catch up a little bit on those road projects and it also happened about the same time that a sewer moratorium was put in place and under the moratorium, anything that had previously been approved could continue.”
Brentwood Mayor Rhea Little said in an email that even in the face of the recession, the historic 2010 Middle Tennessee flood and other challenges the city was able to make improvements that put today’s Brentwood in a better place.
“In the last ten years we have added one of the top recognized children’s sections at the James P. Holt Brentwood Library, Ravenswood Mansion and made improvements to Smith Park. Ten years ago, while America was in a recession and banks were collapsing all over the world, Brentwood and Middle Tennessee survived the 1,000-year flood. The city and its residents picked up and rebuilt from the damage,” Little said.
Bednar said that although the city was sparred the worst of the recession and has bounced back that they still operate with a conservative attitude, pointing out that the city isn’t itching to promote growth.
“We’re not necessarily looking to promote growth here, and certainly some of the other communities are going to annex land and extend growth, and we’re just certainly not going to do that or wanting to do that,” Bednar said. “But we’re still severally impacted by what goes on around us, with the interstate cutting through the middle of town. So whatever growth happens in Franklin or Nashville passes through us one way or the other through our road network so we have to deal with that.”
Bednar said that the city does benefit in some ways from surrounding areas growing more rapidly as Brentwood can remain a destination for people to want to live in between their commutes.
“From an economic standpoint we get some benefits from some of that growth, so when a new corporate headquarters relocates to Franklin or Nashville, there’s a fair chance that some of the senior executives may be buying homes and living in Brentwood so that helps even thought business may not be relocated here, those relocations do help support our housing market by creating demand there of the higher-end homes.”
Bednar added that some of the economic impact that has changed the face of the city is the addition of some mixed-use development such as the Hill Center and CityPark.
Little added that challenges can become opportunities for the city in how that growth is managed, pointing out the city’s recent AAA bond rating.
“One of the most important advantages of being financially strong is the ability to make road improvements when there is an opportunity. This is especially important as we continue to handle the challenges of pass-through traffic created by the growth around us. Our challenges are opportunities to excel for both citizen and governance,” Little said. “Our financial strength is the key to protecting our overwhelmingly residential nature of our community. Brentwood’s future is very bright for 2020 and beyond.”
Bednar said that while the makeup and layout of the community has certainly changed over the years, especially in racial diversity, that the draw and spirit of the community is still the same as those that first incorporated the city.
“The sentiment of the community that lives here today is very similar to the sentiment that was here in 1999 and really was the founding reason for the incorporation in 1969, so while the makeup of the community has changed and the physical layout of the community has changed, the reason people want to live in Brentwood and what they like about Brentwood I don’t think has really changed that much,” Bednar said. “People come here because they expect a good quality of life, both in terms of government provided things like libraries and parks, quality services, they expect nice homes in nice neighborhoods that are well maintained, good schools, those fundamental reasons that people live in this community really haven’t changed.”
Bednar said that he believes that the majority of citizens are content with their local government and the efforts to retain Brentwood’s identity amongst overwhelming change throughout the region.
“I think all in all, most people are pretty satisfied with how the city operates and the level of services,” Bednar said. “We’re not perfect. We make mistakes every day in what we do but we try to be efficient and effective at the lowest cost possible.”
The city was joined by community members earlier this month to take a group 50th birthday party photo that will soon be hung on a second story wall inside city hall and in ten years it will be joined by the 60th birthday photo with some new faces and some familiar. And for city leadership, they hope that through vision and hard work Brentwood will remain, as Little said, “the sweet spot.”
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