Gulch tenants outraged over NES’ 10-hour planned power outage during CMA Fest weekend

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — Residents and businesses in the Gulch are outraged after getting notice that Nashville Electric Service (NES) plans to cut their power for 10 hours for maintenance the weekend of CMA Fest.

The Terrazzo apartment complex sent an email to tenants saying NES tells them more than 800 homes and businesses will be impacted, and some of those people are disabled or have health concerns.

Will Conway received an email from his property manager saying the outage will take place on Sunday, June 11 from 9 p.m. until 7 a.m. and will affect elevators, air conditioning systems, and more.

“I mean there’s just no way that either of my parents could get up ten flights of stairs,” Conway said.

Conway says this is very dangerous for people who are elderly like his parents and those with special medical needs. He adds that it is happening on one of the busiest weekends of the year in Nashville.

“With the two-week notice and it being CMA Fest, there’s no hotel rooms or anything like that that we can get,” Conway explained.

Conway reached out to his Metro Council representative Freddie O’Connell, and he says he’s waiting for a response from NES. He wants to make sure this won’t be a continuous problem with all the new developments.

“I can’t imagine that we’re at a point where if a new building is being built you have to take all of the adjacent buildings offline to bring that one online, so I just want more details so we can set expectations,” O’Connell said.

FOX 17 News also reached out to NES about this planned outage, and we received an email saying they’re looking into this and will be in touch.

NES’ website says this outage is for maintenance, and the property manager at one of the impacted complexes says this is happening to power the new Society building, but tenants say it’s the little things.

“They’re going to potentially lose all the food in their freezer, all the food in their refrigerator, it’s at night, it’s in the summer. It’s going to be warm,” Gulch tenant, Jay Jackson said.

The property manager says NES explained this maintenance must be done before the end of the fiscal year, which is July 1. Tenants say at the very least, NES should have given them more notice.

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