Introduction

The Project:

Nashville's Music City Center (MCC), expected to be completed in 2013, is the most expensive public project in Tennessee history. The Music City Center is in the heart of downtown Nashville, adjacent to the Bridgestone Arena and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

After a few years of planning, in 2007 newly elected Nashville Mayor Karl Dean made the MCC one of his top priorities. In January 2010, the Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson Council (Nashville has a combined city-county government, commonly referred to as the Metro Government) voted 29-9 to approve the Convention Center project. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in March 2010.

The MCC sits on a 16-acre site, and will include a 1.2 million square feet convention center when complete. The cost of the project is approximately $624 million, most of it financed through bonds which are to be paid off with sales taxes and levies on hotel rooms, rental cars and other tourism related items. The bonds were issued under the Build America Bonds program, in which state and local borrowing costs were subsidized by the federal government as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment ("Stimulus") Act.

Financial reports on the project are available here.

The Promises:

The city of Nashville has suffered in recent years. The recession's impact on tourism combined with flooding that killed ten people and caused $2 billion in damage have hit the city hard. Mayor Karl Dean and the Nashville business community sold the Music City Center as a mini-stimulus package for the city. City leaders appeared to be reading from the same list of talking points:

• "I truly believe that the Music City Center is going to be the economic driver for our city's economy. It is our own stimulus package" - Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors.
• "This is like Nashville's version of the stimulus" - Greg Adkins, Metro Councilmember.
• "And let us not forget the nifty local stimulus package that is the $415 million construction bill. We're not sure anyone could argue against that and still contend to have a conscience" – Nashville City Paper Op/Ed.
• "For every dollar spent on building Music City Center, the people that use the facility will spend two new dollars on goods and services in Nashville. When we refer to this project as our own economic stimulus, that's what we're talking about. Those new dollars go directly into our local economy" – Mayor Karl Dean.

Most local unions, believing the promise of a local stimulus package, supported the project. But before the Music City Center project was approved, opinion polls repeatedly showed that a clear majority of local citizens were opposed to the massive project. In reaction to a local TV station poll, Marty Dickens, chairman of the Convention Center Authority, apparently felt that the people simply weren't informed enough about what was good for them:

"My reaction to what I heard in the poll is really tied to the way the question was asked. I wasn't surprised by the answer to the question of do you support the efforts to finance and build the Music City Center, the new convention center, because if I were asked that question without all the details and all the facts and all the financial impacts and the economic impacts and the employment impacts and how it's so important to our overall economy, if I didn't know that information or even if I sort of peripherally knew it but I didn't know exactly how this was being paid for, how it's being financed, my answer to that question would be no also."

But perhaps it was the lack of specifics in the promises that led to public skepticism. None of the cheerleaders for the project ever committed to a minimum number of local workers or companies that would be hired.

The Reality:

Of course a project of this size provides some boost to the local economy, but it has not been what many supporters expected.

CLICK HERE to see our Special Report on contracts awarded to companies based outside of Tennessee.

Now Karl Dean, Marty Dickens and other leaders appear to be reading from a new list of talking points. Every time new statistics about hiring and contracting on the Music City Center are released, an MCC supporter will invariably point out that the project is far from over, and the numbers will improve.

What is clear is that there is no true goal or target when it comes to local hiring. Percentages are thrown around meaninglessly, and the Dean-Dickens team talks about the numbers getting better over the life of the project as often as they used the word "stimulus" before it started. The reality has not matched the promises the Dean team made in the news articles excerpted below:

June 16, 2010 - A company called Ceco, out of Hazelwood, Mo., won a concrete bid of $42.5 million to help construct the convention center. Though it's not specified in the contract, Ceco pledged "local participation" on 84 percent of its contract amount. As of mid-June, only about 50 people are employed for the project.

"I do understand that probably not 100 percent of the labor is going to come from here, and I understand if they bring in some supervisors. But yes, I would expect there's quite a bit of labor around here and would like to see them plug as many of those folks in as possible," said Holly McCall of the Music City Center.

Ceco released a breakdown of its current work force. The company admits 38 employees came into town from its San Antonio division, though they say 11 of those are Middle Tennessee residents.

Overall, it's claiming that 35 percent of local workers are on the still-growing Ceco concrete crew.

June 21, 2010 - Of the $155.1 million already awarded, just $13.6 million has gone to eight Nashville firms, according to authority records. The four largest awards have gone out of state:

• The $50.1 million mechanical/plumbing job went to Nash Inc./W.R. Nash of Orlando, Fla.
• The $42.5 million structural concrete contract was awarded to Ceco of St. Louis.
• The $39.5 million structural steel job went to Lenex Steel Co. of Indianapolis.
• The $6.3 million fire protection contract was awarded to National Fire Protection of Rockwell, Md.

"In addition to building a high-quality project Nashvillians can be proud of, we're very committed to ensuring minority-owned, women-owned and small businesses get a fair share of the job," authority Chairman Marty Dickens said in a news release. "Mayor (Karl) Dean made local jobs and minority involvement his priorities for the project, and our team works hard on this effort every day."

June 28, 2010 - When the Music City Center project was approved, it was described as a stimulus project to create local jobs; but lately, there are a lot of Michigan license plates at the construction site. At Thursday's meeting, the authority decided to rebid one of its three biggest contracts after finding the Florida company that won the $50 million job didn't have a Tennessee license. The lack of local workers on the project has been an issue because several council members supported the project after hearing that 3,000 local jobs would be created. The reality is that Bell/Clark and its subsidiaries don't have to hire any set percentage of local workers.

October 12, 2010 - A Metro audit shows that 2,100 people had come by the Workforce Development trailer at the convention center construction site to apply for jobs, but only 34 of them were hired. One worker, Star Jackson, says he was hired, but after five days, he was told he was no longer needed because a crew was coming in from San Antonio. When local labor organizations asked to see certified payroll documents (which are public records) from Bell/Clark, the lead contractor on the job, they received copies with workers' cities and states of residence blacked out.

January 20, 2011 - "Our construction manager says over the life of the project (it will) have seventy to eighty percent local workers," said Holly McCall with the Convention Center Authority. The Convention Center Authority said numbers fluctuate. Based on November's certified payroll, 60 percent of their one thousand employees are local workers.

January 21, 2011 - "We've awarded 28 major contracts and 19 of those are from companies in Davidson County," said Metro Convention Center Authority spokeswoman Holly McCall. "We still have two and a half years left on this project. I think you'll see more and more local workers coming in."

Mid-State Carpenters Regional Council, Operating Engineers Local 369, Cement Masons Local 909 and local carpenters union members organized the protest, marching from the courthouse to the Music City Center site.

"I think it's completely fair to question local hiring, since economic stimulus was a big selling point," McCall said. "But when it's only three unions complaining — when six or seven other local unions are providing a lot of the labor force — it's also fair to question their motivation."

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85%, not 100%, quite a bit, as many as possible, 35%, a fair share, 70 to 80%, the numbers fluctuate, 60% , more and more - Quite clearly, the Dean- Dickens team can guarantee that somewhere from 0% to 100% of the workers on the project will be local, but not much else.

In his presentation to the Metro Council on the Music City Center, Mayor Karl Dean promised that the "vast majority" of the 3,000 workers on the project would be local residents. While opinions can differ on what percentage constitutes a "vast majority," it does not appear that Mayor Dean has kept this promise.

Despite Dean-Dickens team mouthpiece Holly McCall's questioning our "motivation," we have developed this site to look closely at the Mayor, the Convention Center Authority, the financiers, the vendors and contractors, the local businesses and many others who will benefit from this project.

And we will be looking at their "motivation" in this deal.

We can say quite clearly that Ceco Concrete Construction and others on this project are not meeting Area Standards for crane operators. And we are urging the Dean-Dickens team and Bell/Clark to only use contractors that meet Area Standards for wages and benefits.

For those who might be confused – this is what a union does, advocate for its members, in this case, Nashville-area operating engineers who need work but aren't getting it on the largest public works project in their state's history.

We must note that there are a handful of tower crane operators on the job who are working for employers who do meet Area Standards. We have no dispute with any company, organization or individual not specifically named on this site.

We begin with a look at

The Players