Ninety-Eight Years of Guitars, and a Grant Program That Doesn’t Quite Fit: Nashville’s Small-Business Plan Heads to a Final Vote Oct. 6
On Gallatin Avenue in East Nashville there is a shop where the smell of spruce and lacquer has outlasted three generations of the family that makes it. Delgado Guitars traces its craft to 1928, when two brothers in Torreón, Mexico, began building instruments in their home. The family carried the trade to Juárez and then to Los Angeles, and in 2005 third-generation luthier Manuel Delgado opened his own shop in Nashville. It is now regarded as the oldest music store in East Nashville.
That is exactly the kind of business Nashville says it wants to protect. And that is why it is worth listening when its owner says the city's new plan to protect it doesn't fit.
What the city is proposing
Mayor Freddie O'Connell announced the package on Aug. 21. It has three parts, and Metro Council is expected to take its final vote on it on Tuesday, Oct. 6.
- Legacy Business Program. This is a new grant for Nashville businesses that have been open 15 years or longer. The money can go toward modernizing operations, planning for resilience, cutting operating costs and marketing. The first-year pilot carries a little more than $300,000.
- Workforce Advancement Incentive. Grants of up to $10,000 would help small businesses pay for employee training that leads to a certification. The goal is to help them hire and keep good people.
- An expanded Property Investment Incentive. The existing building-improvement program would open to properties valued up to $2 million. It would cover interior work as well as exterior work, and it would reimburse half of construction or rehab costs, up to $50,000.
When he unveiled the plan, the mayor called small and legacy businesses the backbone of Nashville's neighborhoods. He described them as both a cultural asset and an economic one.
Why a 98-year-old shop is skeptical
Delgado has become one of the plan's most pointed critics. In his view, reimbursing construction costs and subsidizing new payroll does little for a family shop that isn't planning a remodel or a hiring spree. He argues the design favors well-capitalized newcomers over the businesses the program is named for. Other opponents have gone further and said the city would do more good by lowering property taxes than by handing out grants. They point to rising tax and rent bills as a driver of the closures that have thinned Nashville's older commercial streets.
That tension isn't new. The legacy fund grew out of a spring of anxious headlines about beloved local spots closing or nearly closing. Germantown's 312 Pizza Company was one of them, and its owners were among the loudest voices asking City Hall for help. A $300,000 pilot spread across a city of Nashville's size will not rescue many storefronts on its own. Supporters describe it as a first step and a template to build on. Critics describe it as a gesture.
What happens next
The legislation still has to clear Metro Council. If it passes on Oct. 6, the harder work begins: setting application rules, deciding who qualifies and getting the money out the door in time to matter. Small-business owners who want a say can still contact their district council member before the vote. The legislation is on the Council's regular meeting agenda at the Historic Metro Courthouse.
For shops like Delgado's, the question is not whether Nashville values a business that has made guitars for almost a century. It clearly does. The question is whether the help the city is offering matches the problem those businesses actually have.
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