Riley Strain should’ve been home safe. Instead he’s another casualty of Nashville’s party scene.
The weekly "Sunday Passage" segment of the "CBS Sunday Morning" television show features prominent people who have died.
On March 24, the show commemorated eight "notable deaths" including presidential tailor and Holocaust survivor Martin Greenfield, character actor M. Emmett Walsh and civil rights activist Dorie Ladner. There was also an astronaut, the inventor of the karaoke machine and singer Eric Carmen who co-wrote "All by Myself."
The sixth person honored was not famous but became widely known because he went missing for two weeks in downtown Nashville. Riley Strain, the 22-year-old University of Missouri student, came to Music City with his fraternity brothers to enjoy the revelry on Broadway and he was last seen on March 8.
On March 22, authorities found his body in the Cumberland River eight miles from downtown near 61st Avenue in The Nations neighborhood.
Downtown has become repellant to local residents and businesses
Strain deserves dignity in death as in life, but the national attention given the tragic circumstances is another blow to Nashville's downtown tourism ? an economic powerhouse plagued with problems of safety, real and perceived.
Remember in December when the Metro Council approved a rule preventing snake peddlers from throwing the reptile onto a visitor's neck and demanding money to remove it?
Lower Broadway is the lens through which the world views Nashville.
Deaths like Strain's are not commonplace, but arrests, fights, intoxication and obnoxious behavior are. The environment is such that the strip has become repellant to residents who are choosing to go elsewhere on the weekend and businesses that are moving away from downtown because of noise and nuisance behavior.
Even the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce no longer resides in downtown, instead, relocating to the nearby Capitol View neighborhood.
Why can't we have fun, make money and stay safe?
In January 2021, I interviewed Colin Reed, then chairman and CEO of Ryman Hospitality Properties, for the Tennessee Voices video show and he told me that business leaders were very much concerned about ensuring safety for tourists and residents alike. This was right after the downtown Christmas Day bombing and in the time that businesses were working to re-open after COVID pandemic shutdowns.
Nashville – and downtown – are now roaring again and the money is rolling in. In fact, Nashville's downtown recovered better than any other U.S. city center after the pandemic.
In 2023, the Tennessee Department of Tourism Development released a report showing that Nashville-Davidson County visitors spent $27 million a day the previous year, or $9.97 billion for the entire year. That was 35% above 2021.
Nobody wants to kill the golden goose, but we need to do better about safety.
Will we be forced to do what Miami Beach, Florida did this month and enforce a midnight curfew because of violence that broke out in spring break the previous year? That's no fun and would likely harm the freedom Nashville tourists feel to bar hop from spot to spot.
Business, political and community leaders need to find a balance to ensure people can have fun, stay safe and get help if they are in distress.
Riley Strain should have been back home today. Instead, he's now known nationally as a casualty of the chaos on Lower Broadway.
David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee. He is an editorial board member of The Tennessean. He hosts the Tennessee Voices videocast and curates the Tennessee Voices and Latino Tennessee Voices newsletters. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him at [email protected] or tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville should take safety seriously in wake of Riley Strain death
