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Mayor O'Connell says historic zoning move will be managed by Metro Planning, cites state preemption risks
Summary
At the Metropolitan Historical Commission awards ceremony, Mayor O'Connell defended the Metro Council decision to move historic zoning to the planning department, said Metro Planning will update the city—s preservation plan and pledged to protect local regulatory authority and related jobs.
Mayor O'Connell said Metro Council voted in March to move historic zoning into the planning department and that Metro Planning will update the city—s functional preservation plan and integrate it with Nashville Next.
The move, O'Connell said at the Metropolitan Historical Commission—s annual preservation awards, was partly a response to what he called "aggressively preemptive state legislation" and an effort to "preserve local regulatory authority." He said the city—s first priority was to preserve jobs tied to historic zoning and that Planning would take a holistic approach "from archaeology to landmarks to historic zoning."
Why it matters: shifting historic zoning to Planning changes the departmental home for review and policy work on locally regulated preservation tools. O'Connell framed the decision as both protective of local authority and practical, aligning zoning expertise with preservation work.
In his remarks, the mayor said Metro Planning would "update the functional preservation plan and integrate it with Nashville Next," and invited Lucy Kempf, Metro planning director, to revisit Nashville Next at the 10-year mark to assess preservation outcomes. He also noted tension between local priorities and some state-level positions on regulation.
Discussion versus direction: O'Connell described the reasons for the council vote and articulated next steps for staff and Planning. The transcript records no additional formal council motions or vote tallies in the program remarks; the mayor characterized the March vote as the initiating formal action and described Planning—s programmatic direction to update the preservation plan.
No statutory citation or state bill number was provided during the remarks; the mayor referred generally to recent state legislation and to actions affecting the Tennessee Human Rights Commission.
"I think there is a natural alignment, between planning and historic," O'Connell said, adding that the city must balance local approaches with the state context. "First and foremost, our priority was to preserve all of the jobs that go with this and the respective departments."
