Five Points Used to Be the Whole Story in East Nashville. Not This Year.

If you went to Tomato Art Fest the weekend of August 7 and 8, you already know the drill. Five Points gets loud, the vendor lines wrap around the block, and by Saturday afternoon half the neighborhood is wearing a costume built around a fruit that is technically a vegetable in most kitchens. It was the 23rd year of the festival, it ran cashless again, and the organizers were blunt about leaving dogs at home given the August heat and the size of the crowd. That crowd has been substantial for years now. Back in 2022, an estimated 65,000 people showed up over the two days, and the footprint has only gotten tighter since.

For a long time, that was the whole story of East Nashville in summer. Five Points was where things happened, and everywhere else was where you lived while you waited for a reason to drive over.

That is not what 2026 looks like anymore. The interesting news this year is not at Five Points at all. It is happening in four other places at once, and none of them are accidents.

The North End Is Finally Getting Its Anchor

Drive up Meridian Street toward Cleveland Park and you will pass the McGavock House, a brick structure built in the 1840s that has been sitting on the National Register of Historic Places since 2007. It once belonged to the McGavock family, whose name is all over Nashville history, including Randal McGavock, who served as the city's mayor in the 1820s. For the last several years, it has also been the future home of a taproom from Good People Brewing Company, the Birmingham-based brewer that has never had an outpost outside Alabama.

This has been a long wait. A rezoning request for the property first referenced a brewery and outdoor seating in 2021, Good People was named as the specific tenant the following year, and a permit application valued at $445,000 later outlined the actual renovation: facade repair, a covered rear porch, a basement built out for private seating. An opening date has never been locked down. But a building on a preservation registry does not move fast by design, and the fact that a regional brewer with real distribution has stayed committed to this address for this long is itself the story. When it does open, it anchors the quiet north end of the neighborhood, the part most people driving straight to Five Points never think to slow down for.

Inglewood Over Germantown

A few miles over, East Nashville's own Crazy Gnome Brewery is doing something worth noticing for what it is not doing. Brewer Grayson Miller is preparing a second location beyond the brand's current Main Street space, and he picked an Inglewood-area property to do it. Not Germantown. Not the Gulch. Inglewood.

That choice matters more than it looks like on paper. A homegrown brand with the option to chase foot traffic in a flashier district instead chose to double down on its own side of town. That is a bet on Inglewood as a destination in its own right, not just a residential pass-through between Gallatin Avenue and the interstate.

A Church Built Before the Civil War Becomes a Retail District

The most physically dramatic change is happening at Eastwood Village, where a 26,332-square-foot property that traces back to Hobson United Methodist Church's first building in 1853 is being converted into retail, dining, residential, and office space. The property has a genuinely long history. The federal army occupied Nashville in 1862 and used the church as a hospital and horse stable. The congregation added the chapel in 1868, the main sanctuary in 1929, and a two-story education building in 1953 to connect it all. Developer Vintage South, led by founder Nathan Lyons, is handling the restoration in partnership with Greg Powell of Legacy Partners.

Inside that footprint, two new businesses give a sense of what the finished space will feel like. The Yellow Table Café is a French crêperie from chef Anna Watson Carl, who studied and taught in France before bringing the idea home, serving crêpes, savory galettes, and pastries in a space built around a table from her own childhood. Next to it, a shop called cone•cept has become one of the neighborhood's newer soft-serve and milkshake stops. Between the two, Eastwood Village is turning a piece of 19th-century church architecture into a walkable retail block that did not exist five years ago.

Riverside Drive Gets Two New Anchors, Two Blocks Apart

Riverside Drive is quietly becoming its own corridor. Open Invite, a collaborative retail house at 2215 Riverside Drive, opened in February, founded by Allison Holley of Apple & Oak and Anna Schowe of Whiskey Water. The two had run separate storefronts before deciding to merge their aesthetics, vintage rugs and home goods alongside contemporary women's clothing, under one roof, with a rotating calendar of pop-ups and community events. Holley put it plainly when the shop opened: East Nashville is home, and building something in her own neighborhood was the point.

A couple blocks down, Hattie Jane's Creamery has been working on a build-out at 2300 Riverside Avenue. The brand, founded in 2016 and named after founder Claire Crowell's daughter, already has locations in Columbia, Murfreesboro, and Donelson, plus a spot inside Assembly Food Hall. Crowell was specific about why East Nashville made sense: the area is full of families, and that is the brand's core customer. Two independent businesses, both choosing the same short stretch of Riverside within months of each other, is not a coincidence. It is a signal about where foot traffic is heading.

Gallatin Avenue's New Neighbor Wants You to Stay a While

Then there is Hattie B's, which opened its sixth Nashville location on Gallatin Avenue on June 24. Co-founder Nick Bishop Jr. said the brand had passed on East Nashville opportunities before because they wanted to do it differently this time, and the site backs that up. Beyond the dining room and patio, the building comes with a Quonset hut out back that the team is turning into a hangout space with a putting green, bocce, pinball, and pool. Bishop described wanting families and neighbors to treat it as a gathering spot, not just a drive-through for hot chicken. It is a bet that a fast-casual brand can still function as a slow-afternoon neighborhood fixture if the space is built for lingering.

What the Map Actually Looks Like Now

Line these up and a pattern shows itself. Good People is planting itself at the north edge near Cleveland Park. Crazy Gnome is choosing Inglewood over the obvious alternatives. Eastwood Village is converting church architecture into a full retail block. Riverside Drive is picking up two new businesses within a couple blocks of each other. Gallatin Avenue just landed a restaurant built for staying, not just eating and leaving.

None of that erases Five Points. The Tomato Art Fest crowd this month proves the original center still pulls hard once a year. But the day-to-day life of the neighborhood, the errands, the after-work stop, the Saturday morning coffee, is no longer routed through one intersection. If you have lived here long enough to remember when East Nashville meant Five Points and not much else, this is the year that stopped being true.

I have spent more than three decades working across Middle Tennessee, and the neighborhoods that hold their value tend to be the ones that keep finding new reasons for people to stay put rather than drive somewhere else for a good afternoon. East Nashville is doing exactly that right now, in four different directions at once. If you are watching this corner of the city and want to talk through what it might mean for your own plans, whether that is buying, selling, or just understanding where things are headed, Jimmy Kitchen is always glad to talk shop. Let's Connect.