For years, the corner of Nolensville Road and Rocky Fork Road was the town's most reliable landmark for nothing happening. Chain-link fencing, graded dirt, a sign promising a Publix that seemed to exist mostly in conversation. Then, in about the time it takes to finish a kitchen renovation, it filled in completely. As of May 2026, Village Green sits at 100 percent leased, and the mix of who moved in tells you something the empty lot never could: Nolensville didn't just get a shopping center. It got a second town center, and the two don't do the same job.
If you've lived here through the wait, you already know the broad strokes. What's less obvious is how fast the finish came once it started, and what that speed says about why this particular corner, and not some other one, got the buildout first.
The corner that took six years to plan and about six months to fill
As CoStar reported, the Village Green story actually starts back in 2018, when Watkins Real Estate Group partnered with the landowner on a neighborhood retail concept anchored by a full-service grocery store. Rezoning wrapped in 2021. Final approvals landed in 2024, and the town's Board of Commissioners and Planning Commission turned out for a groundbreaking ceremony that summer. From there, the pace changed. The project received its certificate of occupancy in October 2025. Publix opened to the public on November 19, 2025, with a 6:45 a.m. ribbon cutting and a line that vice mayor Jessica Salamida later said had people waiting since 6 a.m.
That's the anchor. The rest of the 90,473-square-foot center filled in around it just as quickly. Publix's grocery footprint accounts for roughly 48,385 square feet of that total, which leaves about 42,000 square feet split among the smaller storefronts. By May 2026, every one of those storefronts had a tenant, and Village Green picked up a CoStar Impact Award naming it Nashville's Commercial Development of the Year for how it wove into the town's existing character rather than sitting apart from it.
So the corner sat undeveloped for the better part of six years and then went from grand opening to fully leased in about six months. That gap between the planning timeline and the leasing timeline is the part worth sitting with, because it explains the tenant mix better than "the town is growing" ever could.
Why it filled so fast, and what that tells you about the mix
Grocery-anchored retail has been one of the more sought-after categories in commercial real estate over the past two years. Industry tracking from JLL found that vacancy in grocery-anchored centers hit record lows by the end of 2024, and that these centers made up close to a third of all retail acquisition activity nationally in early 2025. Capital chases certainty, and a Publix lease is about as close to certainty as retail gets. Once Watkins had that anchor signed, filling the smaller bays around it wasn't a hard sell. It was a formality.
That's visible in who actually showed up. This isn't a lineup built for a Friday night out. It's Chase Bank, Verizon, Great Clips, Floyd's 99 Barbershop, Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa, Club Pilates, Heartland Dental, Physicians Urgent Care, Jersey Mike's, Chipotle, First Watch, Abbott's Frozen Custard, Mountain Mike's Pizza, Tropical Smoothie Café, and two of the more recent additions, The Amish House furniture shop and Tipsy Cow wine and spirits. Errand businesses, in other words, not evening-out businesses. That's not a criticism. It's the tenant mix you'd expect when the driving force behind development is a grocery anchor and not a restaurant row, and it means Village Green solves a different problem than the one most people assume a new development solves.
Here's what actually moved for someone running errands on a normal week, before and after:
| Errand | Before Village Green | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Groceries | Drive to Brentwood or south Nashville | Publix, on Nolensville Road |
| Haircut | Out of town | Great Clips or Floyd's 99, same lot |
| Prescription pickup | Out of town pharmacy | Publix Pharmacy drive-thru |
| Dentist / urgent care | Franklin or Brentwood | Heartland Dental / Physicians Urgent Care |
| Wine or spirits | Drive to a package store elsewhere | Tipsy Cow |
| Furniture | Big-box or out-of-county | The Amish House |
None of those individually is a dramatic change. Together, they represent a meaningful chunk of the trips that used to require leaving town. That's the actual story here. Not "Nolensville got a shopping center," but "Nolensville got a place to run the boring half of its errands without getting on the highway."
The other center of gravity
Village Green serves daily needs, while another Nolensville gathering place centers on Mill Creek Brewing Co off Johnson Industrial Boulevard, a few minutes from the Publix lot but functionally a separate destination.
That distinction showed up clearly this month. The Broken Wheel Music & Arts Festival returned to Mill Creek Brewing Co on Saturday, September 12, running from 3 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. with headliners Rubik's Groove alongside CJ Project, Brother Banter, Joe Forte, and Hudson Wetzel, plus the recurring Dreams Do Come True Princess appearances for younger attendees. Summit Sports Center, across the street, ran its usual Parents' Night Out program so adults could stay for the evening set. The festival is organized by Round Up for Nolensville, a 501(c)(3) that uses the proceeds to cover emergency needs for residents in the 37135 zip code, from utility bills to school supplies. It's the kind of event where the fundraising and the socializing aren't separate goals. They're the same act.
That's the split worth understanding if you've moved here recently or are still building your mental map of town. Need something on a Tuesday afternoon? That's Village Green. Want to actually run into your neighbors on a Saturday night? That's Mill Creek Brewing and whatever the Town Events Advisory Committee has on the calendar next, which the town posts through its own events page rather than a single central venue.
Robbie Swan, Watkins' vice president of development, described the goal for Village Green as building a place where daily needs and community life blend together. Months into full occupancy, that broader vision is taking shape across more than one destination.
What's next on the same stretch of road
Village Green isn't the last word on this corridor. A separate, larger project called Nolensville Town Square is planned nearby, a 27-acre mixed-use development that would combine more than 400 homes and multifamily units with additional retail and commercial space. It's still ahead of us, not behind us, so there's not much to report yet beyond the fact that it exists on paper. But it signals that the town expects the errand-center model to keep expanding along this same road, not just at this one intersection.
For now, the practical shift is the one that already happened. If you've been driving to Brentwood for a haircut or a prescription out of habit built over years of there being no other option, that habit is worth breaking. The options are sitting on the corner you've been driving past for six years, finally doing something.
If you're weighing what a neighborhood like this means for your next move, whether that's a first home in town or a step up to more land nearby, the Wood Team has spent years tracking exactly this kind of change across Williamson County. Schedule your free consultation with LeAnn Wood and let's talk about what's actually happening on the ground here, not just what the listings say.
