The Capital View neighborhood was envisioned as a 32-acre mixed-use urban district north of downtown Nashville. This private-public partnership project was developed, by Northwestern Mutual and Boyle Real Estate, and includes office space, restaurants, retail shops, a hotel, approximately 400 apartments, and a park. The multi-use park, which is located in Nashville, Tennessee, and was named after Frankie Pierce. She was an early 20th-century suffragette, women's rights activist, and African American educator.
As a development partner, Boyle contacted Hawkins Partners of Nashville to design the park. Hawkins Partners had recently designed many public parks in Nashville and had been part of the early planning of Capital View. The firm had also master-planned the Gulch Greenway, which runs through the park, and Boyle knew that Hawkins Partners had dealt with brownfield sites, such as Riverfront Park. Additionally, because Boyle had done much of their work outside of Davidson County, they were eager to work with a practice that had significant experience in the city and could work with Metro Parks.

 
Frankie Pierce Park is an excellent example of a successful privately-owned public space in Nashville. Boyle and Northwestern Mutual took responsibility for developing and maintaining this park even though it is public and open to everyone yet was very much to the benefit of the surrounding neighborhood.
Hawkins Partners designed the 2.15-acre park to balance the restoration of the landscape with the design of a high-service, multi-functional space that includes a playground, dog run, volleyball court, seating areas, and walking paths.
The designers immediately reference the city's history at the park entrance, where the team used steel beams from Ingram Bargeside to form a welcome gateway arch. Nearby stanchions are crafted from old railroad tracks and relate to the still-active train tracks on either side of the property, while limestone boulders, that originally, found in the downtown's Gulch, are placed on the lawns. Another gesture melding creativity and authenticity was the shape of the playground hill with granite cobblestones that were originally brought to Nashville as ships' ballast.
Next to the playground, which is universally accessible, is a shallow hillside that was planted as a meadow with native species. Around the site are a mix of shade trees, understory shrubs, and evergreens to provide structure that is also durable, resilient, non-invasive plants. Rubber play surfaces provide safe landing areas for the children and incorporate bright colors that were inspired by the Tennessee state flag. Beyond the playground, a large dog run is a popular destination throughout all hours of the day, bringing people together. Central seating is a logical gathering place for picnics, and a sand volleyball court nearby tends to be busy on weekend afternoons.
It is appropriate that the park honors Frankie Pierce. She was a prominent suffragist, and advocate of women's rights during her long life, which spanned the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. An active educator and political activist, she promoted racial and gender equality, especially training young Black women; she founded the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls in 1923, where she was the superintendent until 1939. The daughter of a slave, Pierce addressed white women at the inaugural convention of the Tennessee League of Women Voters in the Tennessee Capitol in May 1920. Frankie Pierce lived in the Capitol View neighborhood which now features three murals of her. The murals were added to the park's train overpasses to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.
"A big idea behind the design of this park is that it appeals to a very broad spectrum of people in the neighborhood: adults, children, teenagers and, of course, their dogs," Kim Hawkins, founding principal of Hawkins Partners stated.