NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Nashville’s newest neighborhood is starting to take shape. The Fallon Company broke ground on the Eastpoint Neighborhood, which developers say is the largest affordable housing project and investment in Tennessee right now.

Mayor Freddie O’Connell says the mixed-use development is designed to benefit all families, accommodating incomes from $20,000 to $80,000 a year. In addition to housing, the development will include upgraded parks and green space, on-site childcare, and retail space.

“This is gonna be how we build Nashville’s next great neighborhood,” O’Connell said.

“We’ll have upgraded parks and green space, it will literally have on-site childcare here,” O’Connell said. “Basically all the ingredients that happen in a great neighborhood are going to be here.”

The development comes as many Nashville families struggle to make ends meet.

“They’re working jobs that are $10, $12 an hour jobs and they cannot afford basic living expenses,” Tony Turntine said.

Turntine and his family are success stories of UpRise Nashville’s free career training program. Through that experience, he has seen firsthand how getting to a better life requires studying, working, mentorship — and help with housing.

“The affordable housing that gives them an opportunity to come out of some of the really lower income neighborhoods they’ve been in and have better, quieter, more wholesome places to live,” Turntine said.

“If people can afford a better opportunity, we see everyone blossom from it. It’s a great day,” Al Brady with UpRise said.

Turntine says the tough choices Nashville families face are real.

“Whether I’m gonna pay the car out or whether I’m gonna get food for the kids,” Turntine said.

Now living and thriving in a new opportunity, Turntine has made it his mission to help others get there too.

“We’re living in a better neighborhood now — we actually just moved last weekend to a house twice the house of what we were in before,” Turntine said. “When you make different choices in life, that gives you different opportunities.”

Do you have more information about this story? You can email me at Amanda.Roberts@NewsChannel5.com

This story was reported on-air by Amanda Roberts and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — A new Tennessee law aimed at protecting utility customers from the growing energy demands of data centers will take effect in July.

The legislation comes as more than 60 data centers power artificial intelligence and other cyber operations across the state, with about one-third located in the greater Nashville area. As the race to build and power AI infrastructure accelerates nationwide and globally, Tennessee lawmakers say they’re working to ensure ratepayers are not saddled with the added costs of serving these massive facilities.

“We want to have data centers. But we want to put guardrails around that to protect our ratepayers,” said state Rep. Ed Butler, R-Rickman, during a legislative committee hearing in March.

Under the new law, data centers must pay for any new infrastructure required to support their operations, including substations and other power-related upgrades. Utilities are prohibited from passing those costs on to residential and business customers.

“In the rural areas they’re putting a lot of these. And we have had a lot of increased utility bills,” said state Rep. Dennis Powers, R-Jacksboro, during the same March committee hearing on the legislation.

Powers questioned if data centers could be contributing to ratepayer costs. That question wasn’t clearly answered. Regardless, legislators voted the measure through, and Gov. Bill Lee signed it into law to help prevent that from happening.

“If there was a substation that was needed to be put in to provide power for this data center, then the data center would pay for the substation,” Butler said during the hearing.

As communities across Tennessee consider proposals for new data centers, and new laws to regulate (or contain) them, some local leaders remain opposed to bringing the facilities to their areas.

“I don’t think they fit in Robertson County, and definitely not in my community,” said Cedar Hill Mayor John Edwards, who is proposing a two-year moratorium on data centers in his city.

Electric providers and utilities are also preparing for future demand. The Tennessee Valley Authority reports data centers currently account for about 18% of its industrial power load, a figure that’s predicted to potentially double by 2030.

The new law also allows utilities, including TVA, to establish a separate customer or rate class specifically for data centers, providing an additional safeguard against shifting costs to other customers.

As energy demand continues to surge, state lawmakers say the goal is to ensure Tennessee stays competitive, while families and businesses do not see higher electric bills because of data center expansion.

Data center advocates, meanwhile, say many facilities generate much of their own power on-site and use advanced cooling systems that require little or no water.

If TVA moves forward with creating a separate customer or rate class for data centers, FOX17 will continue to follow those developments.