08/04/2025
OUR STORY IS ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE TENNESEEAN.
The air inside Mount Lebanon Missionary Baptist Church in South Nashville was thick from the summer heat — and with frustration.
Seated in the church pews on July 30, several dozen neighbors wanted answers about a proposed 200,000-square-foot industrial warehouse at 3187 Franklin Limestone Road that, for some of them, would just about sit in their backyards. It wouldn't be far from an existing quarry, tucked about a quarter-mile off the roadway. Mill Creek runs nearby.
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South Nashville neighbors speak out against proposed warehouse 8/4/25, 9:58 AM
They say they’re concerned about noise, about environmental impacts and, above all, about additional traffic through a neighborhood that’s already inundated with vehicles — industrial or not — traveling from nearby Murfreesboro Pike.
It’s the 11th hour for the proposal, sponsored by District 28 Metro Nashville Council member David Benton. The rezoning that would allow it to move forward is slated for its third and final reading at the council’s Aug. 5 meeting. The bill has already been deferred once to give time for the July 30 community meeting.
Some neighbors say they feel like they’ve been brought into the conversation far too late — and it appeared that most of the group in attendance was adamantly opposed to the development. At times, the meeting grew contentious. One neighbor was met with applause when she said Benton wasn't fighting for his constituents.
“We have to feel personal — this is our home,” another neighbor said.
Opinion: Nashville doesn't care about working-class families. Antioch is proof. What else can neighbors expect from the proposal?
Michael Augustine with Distribution Realty Group, part of the development team behind the proposal, told neighbors the private real estate company aims to purchase 23 acres of land across the street from an existing asphalt plant, which it’ll then lease to companies who wish to be tenants in the warehouse space.
Augustine said the warehouse building would likely have multiple tenants, but who they’d be remains an open question. If the rezoning is granted final approval, the developers will have anywhere from four to six months of permitting ahead,
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followed by another year or so of construction. Augustine said that at the earliest, construction could be completed by late 2026 or early 2027.
Benton, for his part, told residents he sees the development as a generator of both additional tax income and jobs.
But at the same time, he said some issues surrounding the proposal give him pause, like existing problems with enforcing posted limits on truck traffic through the neighborhood’s residential roads.
Benton also said there were “behind the curtain” issues he was waiting to see addressed ahead of the council’s final vote. But Benton was cagey beyond that — he didn’t go into detail about exactly what those issues are, or who he meant when he said there were people working on them.
“This is the part that I’m not saying out loud because it’s not finished, for the respect of those people who are working behind the scenes to try and correct and fix the thing — I’m not saying it,” Benton said. “But I get to go behind the curtain, where you don’t get to go, and I get to see things that you don’t get to see. I get to see how everything really operates, and I have a lot of experience dealing with this infrastructure that we’re all worried about. It is important to me, contrary to the way you’ve treated me.”
‘Don’t come out here — please’
The estimated traffic volume the new warehouse could add varies widely, depending on who you ask.
Neighbors have seized upon 850 as the number of additional daily trips through the neighborhood a warehouse of this size would add. They’re basing that
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number, it appears, on a staff report from a February Metro Planning Commission meeting.
That report shows that the maximum number of additional daily vehicle trips allowed under the new zoning would be 879 for a given weekday. But that number doesn't appear to be an estimate of how many additional truck or car trips would definitively be added under the new zoning category.
Developers say their estimate is much lower. At the July community meeting, Augustine said a new traffic study found the warehouse facility would generate an additional 120 truck trips and 250 car trips per day.
Neighbors say that’d still be too many. They call part of Franklin Limestone Road — the roadway most directly involved with the proposal — a “hairpin.” Some attendees at the community meeting asked why plans for the project don’t call for widening the road to include more lanes.
“It will be constant traffic,” one resident said. “We have got more traffic out here now than we can say grace over, and too many people out here that really cannot drive. We don’t need any more accidents — we need our people together. ... Don’t come out here — please. That’s what we’re saying to you.”
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him [email protected].
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