by Stephen Elliott, Nashville Banner
April 15, 2026
Last year, the Metro Council approved an expansion of the downtown Central Business Improvement District (CBID), which authorizes property and sales tax surcharges to be allocated for additional services within the downtown core. But the approval did not come without debate, and some residents and Metro councilmembers pressed for more oversight of the CBID and the Nashville Downtown Partnership (NDP), which manages the additional services for the CBID.
Specifically, councilmembers sought to reinstitute the required council approval of the district’s annual budget. For years, that budget went to Metro Finance and was implicitly approved as part of the annual council budget process, but it was not directly submitted to or discussed by the Metro Council.
Councilmembers and the public also had questions about NDP’s work with the homeless community downtown, its commitment to pedestrians and cyclists, its contract with a controversial private security company and its management of a city-owned garage where a fire last year led to the months-long closure of the main branch of the Nashville Public Library.
On Wednesday, the NDP is distributing a budget to councilmembers. Tom Turner, the partnership’s CEO, spoke with the Banner this week about the submission and other recent events.
Solaren
As the Banner reported last year, NDP’s contract with security firm Solaren to pay for Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officers to walk the district is up for renewal this spring. That work attracted scrutiny after THP officers working for NDP in 2024 made 11 arrests of people experiencing homelessness under a rarely-enforced felony camping law. Those cases were dropped and, as far as is publicly known, no more have been made.
Solaren, led by CEO Jack Byrd, has attracted its own scrutiny, including from state regulators, who determined that the company allowed security personnel to pose as sworn law enforcement, among other allegations.
Turner told the Banner that the contract with Solaren will end in a “probably not unexpected move” and that the organization will instead contract with a firm called Civicity to do basically the same work with THP officers.
“I think it’s good for us,” he said. “We go to a more structured environment of a service provider with a larger footprint, more depth of management staff.”
“There’s just more corporate structure” with Civicity than with a sole proprietor business like Solaren, he added.
Troopers working for the partnership are downtown 14-16 hours a day, Turner said.
“Adding that police presence is always, I think, an advantage that makes people feel comfortable,” Turner said.
THP could be even more prevalent downtown after the recent passage of new state legislation that gives the agency authority to enforce laws in tourist development zones like the one in Nashville’s core.
Civicity is a newly launched division of Block by Block, a contractor for business districts, including the CBID. Photos from inside the burned library parking garage showed fuel containers, and the NDP confirmed that Block by Block kept fuel there.
“Talking about the garage fire, it’s an undetermined cause from an undetermined source,” Turner said. “So I think to imply that somebody had a role in it is maybe not the best conclusion to draw. … Because Block by Block was in the garage doesn’t mean that they have anything to do with what’s going on with a fire of unknown origin.”
THP and arrests
Turner said that the arrangement with THP officers will remain mostly the same under Civicity, and he confirmed what NDP told the Banner last year, that the partnership has no control over which laws sworn THP officers do or do not enforce when working under the agreement.
He also said that he doesn’t know why the felony camping arrests started or stopped.
Asked about THP’s work with federal immigration agents last year, in which troopers ignored traffic violations, cited broken English and other demographic markers when turning people over to ICE, provided a marker for federal agents to mark detainees and competed to arrest as many immigrants as possible, Turner said he remained confident in THP officers.
“They’re POST-certified in Tennessee,” he said. “I think if they’re doing things that are out of line with THP guidelines, THP will address that. I don’t know if that was done with the things that you mentioned, so we have confidence that THP will address those issues that arise with us or anywhere else.”
NDP officials sought to contextualize the number of arrests downtown within the broader picture of the organization’s work. In a memo provided to Metro Council earlier this month, the NDP detailed nearly 100,000 interactions between CBID-affiliated officers (including THP but also security guards and safety ambassadors) and members of the public in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, with about 300 detainments or referrals to law enforcement.
“They would rather be able to address any issues they see or encounter without making an arrest,” Turner said. “I don’t think that they’re intent on making an arrest any more than Metro Police is or police from really any jurisdiction.”
Downtown safety funds
Late last year and earlier this year, the Metro Council debated the use of state grant money obtained by the NDP, which was planned to be split between the partnership and the city for downtown safety measures. The council ultimately accepted several items but rejected money for replacement police surveillance cameras in the district.
Turner said that, in the months since, NDP has used the money to invest “in additional outreach” and is working on hiring a facilitator to begin planning public restrooms downtown. The partnership will also hire a firm to conduct a lighting study for pedestrian spaces. There is no plan yet, Turner said, for the money earmarked for cameras, and the state would have to approve its reallocation to other uses.
What’s next
Turner is unsure what would happen if the Metro Council rejected the CBID’s budget.
“We think that the majority of the council will look at it and say that these are additional services that are funded from additional assessments paid for by property owners that make downtown cleaner and safer and do other things as well, including communications and economic development,” he said. “We’re going to continue to provide great, clean and safe services within the boundary of the district that are above and beyond what Metro provides. There’s no additional cost to Metro, yet there’s an additional benefit that accrues every day of the year to the Metro budget.”
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://nashvillebanner.com/2026/04/15/metro-council-nashville-downtown-partnership-civicity/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://nashvillebanner.com”>Nashville Banner</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/nashvillebanner.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/favicon-300×300-1.png?resize=150%2C150&quality=80&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://nashvillebanner.com/?republication-pixel=true&post=27993&ga4=G-7M2L6EHPYT” style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://nashvillebanner.com/2026/04/15/metro-council-nashville-downtown-partnership-civicity/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/nashvillebanner.com/p.js”></script>
Click Here For The Original Source
