Seems I'm Not Alone In Missing Polaris

Curious Nashville on WPLN is one of the best NPR local programs. Loved this look at the former Polaris on the roof of the former (now Sheraton) Hyatt.

The building and its rooftop "UFO" have always been one of my faves. My grandmother would take me up there in the 80s for dessert and talk me through the history and sites, as the 45-min rotation played out.

Fun trivia: the entire rotational apparatus was turned on and off with just a basic little light switch alongside all the other switches in the central core of the space.

As an event planner I can tell you it was impractical for some needs. There was NO power in the rotating floor "donut," so in the 20 or so years it was just an empty rental space, hosting anything there that might need power (A/V? Music City?) was not reasonably possible while also rotating the space (its key gimmick) because all outlets were in the core by the elevators, bathrooms and kitchen. You'd basically be making a giant power-cord yo-yo. We never found a good purpose for it while considering the building for fandom events like MTAC or GMX. The events were not big enough to warrant the amount of space for the only viable purpose (board gaming) yet once they were large enough to need it, the other event spaces were too small. Would have be a phenomenal space for it.

The new version is indeed quite nice and still interesting but not nearly as cool as before. Like so many once-great Nashville tourism elements, this is another example of an attraction squandered into irrelevance by a lack of imagination in the hospitality business. Never putting power in the floor, the city in general weathering the slumps inevitable after over-inflated booms, the damage to our destination status rendered by the Opry Mills purchase of once-proud and lucrative Opryland... all fed into this gathering dust, mostly empty, to later be repurposed to lesser grandeur.

The Polaris at Hyatt Regency Atlanta never ceased to be a "thing" as far as I know and it is very very nice.

Nostalgia aside, I see much of this story as an important lesson for the "hotel boom" we now see (COVID notwithstanding) in Nashville - and a cautionary tale of the future to come when the bottom falls out of our "cool factor" in "in city" once again. It will happen. Hopefully not because of the COVID impact and neglect we see from government aid that is desperately needed in hospitality and live events and being continuously ignored by the powers that be.

All the baggage aside, this was a nice story to dive into for sure.