Villa Rich
by
Jeff Lane is a soft spoken man who chooses his words carefully before he speaks.
The bespectacled man moves to the chain link fence and sighs heavily as he looks at the sub atomic structure being constructed.
The wind here on Love Circle is blowing forcefully, scattering sparks from a welder’s torch. The air is filled with the unmistakable sound of power tools and mechanized chaos.
We are standing at the site of Villa Rich. The controversial home being built at the top of Love Hill.
When completed, the modernized glass tower, will stand 73 feet tall and be a cavernous 11,000 square feet.
On the surface, there is nothing wrong with a home that big. But compared to the rest of Love Circle, this will look like a lanced, bloody boil in the middle of a super model’s face.
Can you say incongruous?
A question resonating on Love Circle among residents is: How tall is too tall?
Love Circle is all ready 744 feet above sea level. According to the historical sign at the park; this hill was known as Bald Hill in the early days of settlement. During the battle of Nashville in December 1864, Union defensive lines ran across Harding Pike near here.
The sign goes on to say: Hillside lots were subdivided for residences in 1910. This site was the highest point in the old city of Nashville and in 1926 the city acquired access mainly from John Love and built the Love Circle reservoir. This two million gallon water supply sits beneath the hill
So that’s the history of Love Circle.
But it is the future that Jeff Lane is concerned about as the wind blows his long silver pony tail back onto his shoulders.
“I think it is crazy,” the owner of a modest 1500 square foot home nearby says. “Because it really doesn’t fit in with anything out here at all, and the bad thing is, it blocks the view from the public park! It doesn’t seem like you should be able to build a structure like this.”
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