Cheekwood, Warner Parks, and the parking fight

Cheekwood has been part of Nashville for decades, but the current dispute is more complicated than the headline version. It combines a park-land covenant fight, Metro’s deadline to end overflow parking on public land, and a separate battle over how Cheekwood replaces lost parking on its own property.

The pitch

The public story often sounds like a simple clash: either Cheekwood is trying to exploit protected park land for its own growth, or a few angry neighbors are trying to shut down a beloved institution. In reality, there are two overlapping fights plus a hard city deadline that get compressed into one dramatic narrative.^{[13][14][16][25][43][53]}

What is actually happening

• Percy Warner Park includes land given to Nashville under a covenant limiting it to “public park purposes,” with a threat that non-park use could trigger reversion to the donor’s heirs.^[13][14]
• Cheekwood sits next to Percy Warner, not inside it, but has long used park land for overflow parking under Metro agreements.^[16][54]
• Metro has now decided that arrangement must end: Cheekwood can keep some park overflow only until the end of 2027, and the key West Lot was already removed, cutting a chunk of spaces.^{[16][25][33][50]}
• Cheekwood itself only has a small on-site lot, which is why it has depended on several hundred overflow spots on park land and golf-course lots.^[16][10][90]
• A Metro mobility study treats the area as a broader traffic problem and identifies a new Highway 100 access road through or along the park as a preferred option to reroute cars away from neighborhood streets.^{[25][34][68][80]}
• Lea’s heirs have sued the city, asking a court to rule that a road through Percy Warner to Cheekwood would break the “park only” covenant.^[13][14][48]
• Separately, Cheekwood is pursuing an on-site Parking Pavilion & Welcome Plaza to replace park-land parking with a few hundred spaces on its own estate.^[47][55][73]
• A neighborhood group has appealed the permit for that pavilion, seeking to pause or stop construction until they are satisfied with zoning compliance and impacts.^[43][53]

What is disputed

Is the road a legitimate “park purpose”?

Lea’s heirs and park advocates say a road created mainly to get more cars to Cheekwood is not a park use and violates the deed.^[13][14][31] Metro’s planning side frames it as shared access for Cheekwood, park users, and the golf course, which is the basis for arguing that it still serves park purposes.^[25][26][34]

Is the garage necessary or just expansion?

Cheekwood argues the pavilion is effectively mandatory because Metro is phasing out its ability to park on park land; without a large on-site solution, its current event and visitor model breaks.^{[16][33][47][55]} The neighborhood group focuses less on “no parking” and more on “not this big, not this visible, not in this form,” arguing that it harms the character of the area and may conflict with older use limits.^[43][53]

Are the road and the garage one fight?

They share the same underlying traffic and parking stress but are legally and politically distinct.^{[13][14][16][25]} The road is a covenant and park-protection fight between Lea’s heirs and Metro; the garage is a zoning and scale fight between Cheekwood and nearby residents.^{[13][14][43][53]}

Where the framing gets slippery

Claim or impression	What the record actually shows	Why it can mislead
“Neighbors are trying to shut down Cheekwood.”	The appeal asks to overturn the garage permit and issue a stop-work order on the pavilion until compliance with prior conditions is shown.[53]	That is not the same as a literal order already closing the gardens, even though Cheekwood argues the downstream effect could threaten operations.[43][53]
“Cheekwood is building a giant garage just to expand.”	Metro has already told Cheekwood to get off park land by 2027 and removed key overflow capacity; the pavilion is designed to replace those spaces on Cheekwood’s property.[16][25][33][50]	The design can still be too aggressive, but it is not purely optional growth.[43][47][55]
“The access road solves the parking issue.”	The road mainly changes routing from Highway 100; the actual stalls come from Cheekwood’s pavilion and any remaining city lots until 2027.[25][60][73]	Road and garage tackle different parts of the problem but get talked about as one project.[16][25][60]
“Cheekwood is in the park.”	Cheekwood is adjacent to Percy Warner, on its own estate; the covenant applies to park land, not Cheekwood’s parcel.[54][63]	That distinction matters because the road dispute is about park land use while the garage dispute is about private land use under zoning limits.[13][14][43]
“The Lea heirs are trying to take the park back.”	They are asking for a declaratory judgment that a specific future road would violate the deed and say they do not want reversion to actually occur.[13][14]	The reversion clause is leverage, but the active move right now is about blocking a road, not reclaiming the park.[13][14]

The other side

From Cheekwood’s perspective, this is not simply a discretionary expansion project. The city has already decided that a private nonprofit using public park land for overflow parking is no longer acceptable and has put that in writing with a deadline.^{[16][25][33][50]} Cheekwood is being told to internalize decades of externalized parking, on a fixed timeline, while still functioning as a regional attraction.^{[16][47][55][73]}

From the neighbors’ and park advocates’ side, this is not simply anti-Cheekwood sentiment. They see a deed that really does constrain what can be done in the park, and they see a large new structure in a sensitive area that feels like the latest in a series of institutional impacts.^{[13][14][43][53]} Their fight is about precedent, character, and cumulative load, not just one garage drawing itself on a plan set.^[31][43]

What remains unknown

• Whether a court will agree with Lea’s heirs that a new access road through Percy Warner would violate the Lea covenant.^[13][14][48]
• Whether Metro will keep pursuing the Highway 100 road if the legal and political cost stays high.^[25][34][60]
• Whether the neighborhood appeal will force a halt, a redesign, or added conditions.^[43][53]
• Whether Cheekwood’s current pavilion design will remain intact or be materially changed.^[43][55]
• How much event volume Cheekwood can support after 2027 under whatever final parking arrangement emerges.^[16][47][55]

Long history, newer surge

Cheekwood has been a public attraction since 1960, and its use of Metro Parks land for overflow parking dates to 1981. That matters because the institution itself is not new, and neither is the basic overflow-parking arrangement.^[127][33]

What appears to be newer is the scale of demand. Metro’s mobility study says Cheekwood’s attendance and related traffic pressures rose sharply after 2010, and reporting says Cheekwood drew about 392,000 visitors in 2023 and has averaged roughly that level since 2020.^[80][16]

That means both things can be true at once: residents moved near a long-established destination, and the traffic burden they experience today may still be much heavier than what the area carried a decade or two ago.^[80]

Thought experiment: switching places

Imagine a public high school next to a city park and a narrow residential street.^[16][25]

• For decades, the school has overflow-parked on the park edge and up the street for Friday-night games.
• A city attorney rediscovers that the park land was supposed to be passive recreation only, so parks tells the school: in three years, no more event parking on the park.^[13][14][16]
• The school proposes a two-level deck on its own property to absorb the cars it will no longer be allowed to send into the park.
• A neighbor group pushes back hard: appeals, petitions, and objections about lights, height, and traffic.^[43][53]

From the neighbors’ side, they are protecting their street and a park promise. From the school’s side, they are hearing: you cannot use the park anymore, and we also do not want you to build the thing you need to replace that loss. That is the perspective shift this story requires.^[13][16][43]

The homework takeaway

This story is more complicated than the headline version because it is not one dispute but several layered together: a covenant fight over a road, a zoning fight over a garage, a city deadline on overflow parking, and a public narrative that tends to flatten all of it into a single moral drama.^{[13][16][25][43][53]}

What do you think after seeing the moving pieces from all sides? Leave a comment below with how this looks to you from where you sit.

Sources

1. [10] Cheekwood parking and access concerns
2. [13] Lea Heirs Ask Court for Ruling on Cheekwood Access Road
3. [14] Lea heirs seek judge's ruling that new road to Cheekwood, Percy Warner would violate deed
4. [16] Metro vote starts countdown for Cheekwood to solve parking woes
5. [25] Here's what to know about plans to improve traffic near Cheekwood, Percy Warner Park
6. [26] Belle Meade newsletter summary of proposed access option
7. [31] Important information from our birder friends at Warner Parks
8. [33] Cheekwood on the clock to build more parking on their own property
9. [34] Belle Meade Highlands Design and Mobility Study
10. [43] Cheekwood warns it faces 'existential threat' from neighbor group
11. [47] Cheekwood unveils $25 million parking overhaul
12. [48] Heirs sue Metro over potential road into Percy Warner Park
13. [50] Parking Update from Cheekwood
14. [53] Cheekwood Seeks to Counter Residents Against Garage Effort
15. [54] Directions & Parking | Cheekwood Estate & Gardens
16. [55] Parking Pavilion & Welcome Plaza
17. [60] Warner Parks Access Road Proposal
18. [63] Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art
19. [68] Findings & Recommendations
20. [73] Cheekwood Parking Pavilion Press Release
21. [80] Metro Planning Commission Meeting of 01/09/2025
22. [90] Cheekwood creating new permanent parking