Metro Council members unhappy with location plans of African American Music Museum

The city is giving developers seventy five million dollars to turn the old Convention Center property into a mixed use development including eleven million for the museum.

Developers and the Museum Board say a main entrance on 5th across from the Ryman Auditorium offers more space on one level.

The sights sounds of Broadway give "Music City: its name.

Metro Council Member, Erica Gilmore says, “everyone is familiar with the Broadway the honky-tonks, and fifth avenue just does not have that same prominence."

Metro is giving developers seventy five million dollars to redevelop the old convention center ... Including a national museum of African American music.

Museum President and CEO, H. Beecher Hicks, III says, "it will be just off the corner from fifth and Broadway and there would be a secondary entrance on Broadway itself, both of which have pretty prominent signage."

Hicks says to increase the size of the museum from 35 to 55 thousand square feet on one level, the main entrance will be on 5th Avenue.

"This was the location in the project that was going to make the most sense everyone and still provide for the prominence that we know the city and all of us want for the museum" says, Hicks.

Council members say that's not what the development team promised or what the council agreed to.

"We have given them $75 million. The developer shared with us it was going to be in those renderings on Broadway and that's what we're sticking with. The contract was not with the African American museum.. The contract is with the developer who we gave our money to in good faith.

Hicks says 5th is the Avenue of the Arts, and they'll be a secondary museum entrance off Broadway.

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