NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The fate of Fairgrounds Nashville may soon be up to a judge. A group against the construction of the city’s Major League Soccer Stadium filed an injunction on Friday in hopes to stop construction of both the new Fairgrounds facility and the MLS stadium.
They're trying to stop the Fairgrounds from being, in their words, “destroyed.”
Newly elected U.S. Rep. John Rose leads the Tennessee State Fair Association, and he said the current plan to revamp the fairgrounds and build a professional soccer stadium doesn't leave room for the 160-year-old State Fair.
“In designing that building, what they’ve done is attempted to kind of match square footage and things like that, but the facility as it’s designed and laid out and situated is really just not going to accommodate the Tennessee State Fair," Rose said. “The folks who designed it are good people and well meaninged, but I don’t think they had the depth of understanding that you need for designing a fairgrounds.”
Rose said the state fair board has been "patient," and made "every effort possible to resolve its issues.” At times they thought progress was being made, but in reality, concerns haven't been addressed and to them, the production of the 2019 State Fair is in serious jeopardy.
“The city of Nashville, Davidson County, is taking our home. And if they took your home, you’d expect them to make you whole, to help you find a new home, and the city has failed to do that," Rose said.
Some of the main issues brought up by Rose and the Tennessee State Fair Association include the lack of parking in the new plan, the lack of accommodations for loading animals into the Fairgrounds, and the idea that they'd have to put the fair's rides in a floodplain, which they say will not be allowed to happen.
“If you had millions of dollars invested in equipment, you wouldn’t want to set that equipment up in a flood plain, and in fact, it’s my understanding that their insurers would not allow them to," Rose stated.
The group is filed the lawsuit on the basis that the Metro Charter requires Metro to host the State Fair and other activities and the construction that is already underway threatens that.
