Morris Memorial Building
A coalition of local organizations is hosting a fundraiser concert Saturday at the Ryman Auditorium with the goal of saving downtown's Morris Memorial Building. (After press time, an organizer announced that the concert had been postponed until later this year or early 2024.)
Funds from the concert, headlined by Grandmaster Flash, will be dedicated to the potential development of the historic Nashville building as a civil rights museum. An earlier fundraiser was held in June, and the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee is managing the fund.
The building, located at 330 Dr. Martin L. King Jr. Blvd., is designated on the National Register of Historic Places for its rich history and is billed as the only building left in downtown Nashville originally associated with the Historic Black Business District. It was built on land where Black people were once sold into slavery. Still, there are no historical protections for the building.
According to Metro records, the National Baptist Convention has owned the building since 1922, when it was constructed to house that entity's Sunday School Publishing Board. Now, the group has moved out of the building, Breonus Mitchell, senior pastor at Nashville’s Mount Gilead Missionary Baptist Church, said on behalf of the convention.
“It’s a part of our history, but we understand that it’s a piece of property so we’re willing to liquidate the property,” he said.
The pastor said he knows a sale means there will be a chance the building could be demolished, and that is not the convention's desire. Ideally, the group would like for some protections to be in place for the building when it’s sold. But, he said a lack of protections would not stop the group from selling. The convention is not involved in any of the efforts to preserve the building, he said.
“We want to sell the property. That’s our desire,” Mitchell said. “We’re just looking for someone who can make a solid offer on the building. So we’re not a part of the conversation with everything that is going on to save the Morris Building. We appreciate it, but we don’t have a relationship to that.”
At a Metro Council Budget and Finance Committee meeting in June, At-Large Metro Councilmember Zulfat Suara introduced an amendment to the budget to purchase the Morris Building. It ultimately received a negative recommendation from the committee. She said at the meeting that the National Baptist Convention was willing to reduce the price by half, giving Metro the option to purchase it for $6 million instead of $12 million.
“Every time we try to do something with this building something happened,” Suara said when she brought the amendment up to the full council. “This is a matter of what we think our priorities should be. People can come up with all the excuses and all the reasons. ... For the first time, let’s do this for this community.”
Other councilmembers agreed the funding source was not appropriate and ultimately the proposal failed 13-24-1.
Even though Metro decided not to purchase the Morris, Mitchell said that does not mean the $6 million deal is off the table. With an election coming up, Mitchell said it could be a priority for a new mayor. Mike Jameson, a representative for Mayor John Cooper, told the council that the best way to pursue purchasing the building at this point is through the capital spending plan. Suara said that two or three mayoral candidates have told her that they would be willing to fund renovations at the Morris.
District 26 Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston said the city should figure out how to pay for renovations before buying the building. Additionally, she objected to the funding source identified by Suara.
“Would this just be another asset that sits there that needs an extraordinary amount of renovation?” Johnston said. “This is just not the appropriate place to pull money from and I think we can do better and have a better plan in place for this building.”
During the budget committee meeting, Johnston suggested selling 88 Hermitage Ave., the former site of the Tennessee School for the Blind, another property with ties to Nashville’s Black history, to pay for the Morris Building. Suara and District 29 Councilmember Delishia Porterfield objected to the suggestion that the properties were interchangeable.
This isn’t the first time Metro has talked about buying the Morris Memorial Building. At-Large Councilmember Sharon Hurt, currently running for mayor, said she had been working with others for six years to get Metro to purchase the building. The property was discussed as part of a potential land swap in 2018 with Nashville developer Tony Giarratana; that effort stalled. The Post reported in November 2018 that Brian Kelsey, then Metro’s chief strategy officer, said the city was discussing acquiring the building from the National Baptist Convention. By 2020, Mayor John Cooper’s office told the Nashville Business Journal the city declined to purchase the building for $13 million because of Metro’s budget constraints.
Mitchell, the pastor with NBC, said the convention first started talking about selling about 2015 or 2016 but, despite many different talks and potential other buyers, no deals have materialized. He said the group remains open to buyers.
