A fire truck got stuck outside Cheekwood's gate one night during Holiday LIGHTS last winter, unable to push through the backup of cars filling the street. Attorneys for Neighbors for Safety, BMH shared the surveillance video in June, when the group filed its zoning appeal against Metro. That clip is worth remembering now, because the ruling the appeal eventually produced in August did not touch the problem it shows.
If you live in Belle Meade Highlands, you likely saw the headline: Cheekwood won. On August 21, the Board of Zoning Appeals upheld a permit for the estate's new on-site parking pavilion, rejecting a challenge from Neighbors for Safety, BMH, the resident group that has been pushing back on Cheekwood's traffic footprint for years. The vote was 5-0, with two members recusing. Read quickly, it sounds like the end of something. It is not. It settles one permit. It does not settle what happens on Page Road during Cheekwood Harvest weekends this year, and it does not settle what happens on your street when Holiday LIGHTS returns.
A Narrow Ruling, Not a Resolution
The question in front of the board on August 21 was specific: did Metro zoning administrator Joey Hargis err when he decided the parking garage counts as part of Cheekwood's existing cultural-center use rather than a separate accessory use requiring its own BZA approval. The board said no, he did not err. That is the entire ruling.
What it did not decide is whether Cheekwood's actual programming, the weddings, concerts, and seasonal festivals that now draw traffic to a residential street, still fits inside the "non-assembly cultural use" exception the BZA granted back in 1996. Board members said as much during the hearing, noting that question will likely come back to them. Hargis is now working through decades of records, some dating to the 1960s and 1970s, to determine whether Cheekwood's current operations line up with what was actually approved. He has called it labor intensive. Neighbors for Safety says it has had the same trouble tracking down the same paperwork.
Cheekwood sits on land zoned R20, Metro's designation for low- to medium-density residential use built around single- and two-family homes on lots of at least 20,000 square feet. The special exception that lets a cultural institution operate on that residential zoning was granted in 1996 and has not been revisited since. What has changed is what happens on top of it.
What Actually Has to Happen Before Page Road Feels Different
Here is the part that gets lost in the "Cheekwood wins" framing. A won permit means construction can continue. It does not mean the garage is finished, and it does not mean the thing residents actually complain about, cars parked on Metro Parks land and funneling through neighborhood streets, has stopped.
The garage itself will add 674 new spaces for roughly 750 total on Cheekwood's own campus. That is about 60 fewer spaces than Cheekwood has effectively had access to in recent years once its Metro Parks overflow lot is counted. Under the memorandum of understanding Cheekwood signed with Metro Parks, all visitor parking has to move off park land and onto Cheekwood's own campus by the end of December 2027. That is not a date that arrives before this year's Harvest festival. It is not a date that arrives before this winter's Holiday LIGHTS either.
The other half of the fix, a direct access road connecting Cheekwood to Highway 100 so visitor traffic never has to touch Page Road or Forrest Park Drive at all, is further out. The Belle Meade Highlands Design and Mobility Study identified a preferred route for that access along the northern edge of Percy Warner Park, but the study only recommends further technical review by Nashville Department of Transportation. No funding commitment or construction timeline has been set, and the process has reportedly been complicated by unrelated litigation involving the Luke Lea heirs over adjacent land. Cheekwood says it supports the road. Neighbors for Safety says building the garage before that access exists just locks in years of construction traffic on top of the traffic that already exists.
| This fall (2026) | By the MOU deadline (Dec. 2027) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where visitors park | Metro Parks overflow lot, same as recent years | Only Cheekwood's own campus, if construction stays on schedule |
| Highway 100 access | Still a recommended concept, no funding or timeline | Still uncertain, pending NDOT technical review |
| Zoning compliance review | Ongoing, no abatement decision issued | Depends on how quickly Hargis completes the records review |
The Traffic Math Behind the Fight
The mobility study that both sides keep citing found that Cheekwood-generated traffic on Page Road and Forrest Park Drive runs at roughly three times the volume TDOT recommends for streets of that size and residential character. That figure is the backbone of the Neighbors for Safety case, and it is also the reason Cheekwood does not dispute that something has to change, only how and when.
The two sides disagree sharply on how big the underlying problem has actually gotten. Neighbors for Safety points to attendance data showing Cheekwood's average annual visitor count grew from roughly 245,000 between 2013 and 2020 to roughly 400,000 between 2021 and 2023. Cheekwood board chair Matt Kisber has countered that the estate drew 370,000 visitors in 2025 and has cut attendance 15 percent over the past five years through timed ticketing and rideshare incentives. Both figures can be true at once. They are measuring different windows, and neither side's number resolves what traffic looks like on a Saturday in October when Harvest is running and every space on campus and off it is full.
What's Still Open in Chancery Court
The BZA ruling and the lawsuit are two separate fights, and only one of them ended in August. Neighbors for Safety filed suit against Metro in Davidson County Chancery Court in June, arguing the city illegally approved permits for the garage and citing the same traffic study for support. That case has not been resolved by the zoning board's decision. It runs on its own schedule, and either side can still appeal the BZA outcome through a writ of certiorari.
So the honest summary for anyone living near Cheekwood is this: a permit fight ended in a way that lets construction continue. A separate legal fight over whether the underlying use is even valid continues, unresolved, in a different courtroom. Neither outcome has yet changed where cars park or which streets they use to get there.
Planning Around Harvest and the Holidays Anyway
None of this means residents should skip the season, only that the traffic pattern from recent years is the one to plan around, not the one the headlines implied. Cheekwood Harvest runs September 19 through November 1 this year, a six-week run with weekend crowds for the Scarecrow Trail and Pumpkin Village, plus Harvest NIGHTS on Thursday evenings with live music. Weekday and Thursday evening visits have historically drawn noticeably lighter crowds than Friday through Sunday afternoons, which is worth knowing if you are trying to time an errand run past the estate's gate.
Holiday LIGHTS has followed a consistent shape for several years now, opening in late November and running into early January with timed entry between 4:30 and 8:30 in the evening, a $5 parking fee for non-members, and a designated rideshare drop-off at the estate's main lot. If this year follows that pattern, the same evening congestion that produced last winter's fire truck video is the baseline to expect again, since nothing about where those cars physically park or which roads they use has changed yet.
What to Actually Watch For
Skip the next headline that declares a winner. Watch instead for three things that would signal real change on the ground: a construction completion notice for the on-site garage ahead of the December 2027 deadline, any funding or scheduling announcement for the Highway 100 access road, and a decision from Hargis's office on whether Cheekwood's current operations require a formal compliance action. Any one of those would mean something is actually shifting. A zoning board upholding a permit, on its own, means the project can keep building. It does not yet mean your drive down Page Road looks any different this October than it did last one.
Living in a neighborhood this connected to Nashville's cultural landmarks comes with tradeoffs that show up in disputes like this one, and understanding where a story like Cheekwood's actually stands, rather than where a headline says it stands, is part of knowing the place well. If you're thinking about what a home in Belle Meade Highlands or a nearby West Nashville neighborhood might mean for your own daily life, Gaston Group can walk you through it with the same level of detail. Start Your Property Search today.
