Nashville Flood Causes Convention Scramble

Cindy Zimmerman

apsThe American Phytopathological Society (APS) is the first meeting I have heard about having to move because of the flooding in Nashville, but I am sure there are lots more, just not many ag-related.

The APS meeting, which I attended last year in Portland, Ore., is still being held August 7-11 but they don’t know where yet. They sent this notice out to potential attendees, “As many of you know, the city of Nashville and the Gaylord Opryland Resort, the site of the 2010 APS Annual Meeting, recently sustained severe flood damage due to unprecedented rain in the area. The Gaylord Opryland Resort is currently closed for repairs and is not expected to reopen for several months. The 2010 APS Annual Meeting is not canceled, but can no longer take place in Nashville. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes and we are doing our best to make a smooth transition to a new location over the original meeting dates.”

Meanwhile, the CMA Country Music Festival is scrambling to find new hotel rooms for people who were planning to stay there for the event June 10-13. The Music Festival is still being held as planned – but it will be interesting to see how well they can get the downtown area cleaned up for that event, since the flood impacted all of the Festival’s downtown venues. CMA has announced that 50 percent of the net proceeds of 2010 CMA Music Festival will be donated to the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee for flood relief. We have attended the festival, formally known as Fan Fair, for the past three years to cover the New Holland-Michael Peterson Celebrity Tractor Race, but that was already not happening this year so we are not planning to attend.

If you haven’t seen it, this YouTube video shows flooding at the Opryland Resort – it’s pretty ugly. Officials are not putting a dollar figure on the damage, but it is likely to exceed the $50 million flood insurance policy they had and the hotel will probably be closed until October.

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