Five Points spent last weekend the way it always does in August: costumed, crowded, and smelling like fried green tomatoes. The 23rd annual Tomato Art Fest took over the intersection on August 7 and 8, and organizers expected roughly 75,000 people to move through the neighborhood over those two days for the haiku contest, the tomato cornhole tournament, and the parade. WeGo even made its Route 4 bus free all day Saturday, a line that runs from downtown up toward Inglewood.
That last detail matters more than it sounds like it should. Because while Five Points was busy hosting its biggest weekend of the year, the businesses that actually need more square footage right now aren't fighting for space on Woodland Street. They're heading up that same bus route, into Inglewood, where land is cheaper and buildings don't come with a historic overlay attached.
If you've only been watching Five Points, you're seeing half of what's happening in this neighborhood.
The Weekend Everyone Sees
The Tomato Art Fest started small. In 2004, gallery owners Meg and Bret MacFadyen put together a one-off art show at their Art and Invention Gallery celebrating tomatoes, mostly as a joke. It went over well enough to happen again in 2005, and by 2010 it had outgrown the gallery entirely, at which point the MacFadyens brought in Good Neighbor Festivals to help run it. Twenty-two years later, it's grown into what festival director Jack Davis calls one of the largest festivals in the city, and it still costs nothing to attend.
That growth is the version of East Nashville most people know. It's the version that shows up in every roundup, every visitor's guide, every list of quirky Nashville things to do. And it's real. But a festival weekend, however big, is a snapshot of two days. The more useful question for anyone who actually lives here is what's happening the other 363.
The Businesses That Need Room Are Heading North
Crazy Gnome Brewery opened on Main Street in August 2020, just after a tornado tore through the area and delayed the original opening date. That timing wasn't unusual for East Nashville businesses launching that year. What happened next is more telling. By spring 2025, Crazy Gnome had closed its original Main Street taproom and was relocating a mile or so north to a bigger space in Inglewood, at 1005 W. Kirkland Avenue near El Jaliciense on Gallatin Pike.
The math behind that move explains why. Owner Grayson Miller is part of an investor group that paid $2 million for a multi-building East Nashville property in September 2022, and the build-out permit for the new taproom and event space came in around $510,000. The new location seats about 80 patrons, big enough for Crazy Gnome to start canning its beer for the first time, something the original Main Street building never had room for. Miller described the move as a chance to permanently invest in East Nashville, which is a fair way to put it. It's just not an investment Five Points itself had room to absorb.
That's the pattern worth noticing. When an East Nashville business outgrows its footprint and needs to expand production, seating, or parking, Five Points isn't where it goes. Inglewood is.
The One Building Still Waiting
Compare that to what's happening a few blocks from the festival grounds, inside a building that's been "coming soon" for longer than most East Nashville businesses have existed at all.
The McGavock House at 908 Meridian Street dates to the 1840s and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2007. It was once owned by the family of Randal McGavock, who served as Nashville's mayor in the 1820s. In March 2022, Birmingham-based Good People Brewing Company announced plans to turn the building into a taproom, its first location outside Alabama, with an opening tentatively targeted for late 2023.
That was more than four years ago. As of this summer, local coverage of the project was still describing it in future tense, slated to offer a craft beer bar rather than actually pouring one. The delay isn't a mystery. Renovating a building on the National Register means working inside preservation rules that don't apply to a strip of undeveloped land in Inglewood, and those rules slow everything down, regardless of how much a company wants to open.
Put the two stories side by side and the shape of East Nashville's growth gets a lot clearer. New square footage in Five Points is hard to create because so much of the neighborhood's existing building stock is old and protected. New square footage in Inglewood is comparatively easy, because there's more room to build the thing you actually want. Businesses that need to grow are making that calculation and choosing accordingly.
What's Actually New and Open in Five Points Right Now
None of this means Five Points has gone quiet. It just means the neighborhood's recent openings there tend to be small-footprint concepts that don't require the kind of expansion Crazy Gnome or Good People are chasing.
- Up-Down, a 21-plus arcade bar at 927 Woodland Street, opened with more than 80 vintage arcade games, four skee-ball alleys, and a pet-friendly rooftop patio, and stays open until 3 a.m. daily. Co-owner Josh Ivy has credited the neighborhood's support through the tornado, the pandemic, and a fire for making the opening possible, which is a fairly specific list of disruptions for one small business to have weathered before cutting a ribbon.
- Cone-cept, a blue-and-white-tiled soft-serve shop, opened in East Nashville this summer with a menu built around vanilla, chocolate, and a decor-matching blueberry flavor.
- Black Dynasty Secret Ramen House made the jump from pop-up favorite to a full brick-and-mortar location in East Nashville this year.
- The Hangout Cafe, on Gallatin, opened as a family-friendly spot with homemade chai and coffee, a backyard playground, a chalkboard wall, and a fenced dog area.
Every one of those fits into an existing storefront. None of them needed to buy a building, secure a construction permit worth half a million dollars, or wait out a historic preservation review. That's not a coincidence. It's the same math playing out at a smaller scale.
The Pattern, If You're Paying Attention
None of this is a knock on Five Points. A neighborhood that can pull 75,000 people into a two-day tomato festival without charging admission has more going for it than most. But the Tomato Art Fest is also the reason Five Points gets treated as the whole story, when the more interesting story is happening a bus ride away.
If you live in East Nashville and you've noticed a favorite small brewery quietly become harder to picture reopening in its old spot, or you've wondered why the newest bars and dessert shops all seem to slot into buildings that already existed, this is why. The neighborhood's ceiling for new construction sits in Inglewood right now. Five Points is where the crowds already are.
Keep an eye on Kirkland Avenue and Gallatin Pike over the next year. That's where East Nashville's next chapter is actually being built, even if the festival banners are still hanging on Woodland Street.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for your own address in East Nashville, whether that's a home near Five Points or a lot closer to the Inglewood corridor, the team at C & S Residential knows this neighborhood block by block. Get in touch, and let's talk about what's actually happening on your street.
