Inglewood Almost Got A Four-Story Building. It Got Lost & Found Instead.

On a Saturday afternoon at 3104 Gallatin Pike, the lawn at Lost & Found fills up before noon. Families spread out on picnic blankets near the hook-and-ring-toss station. Someone is waiting on a pie from Pizza Lolo. Someone else is carrying a cone from Sarabha's Creamery back to a shipping container turned wine bar. None of it looks like a real estate story. That is exactly the point.

A few years earlier and a half mile away, this same stretch of Inglewood was arguing about something that looked nothing like a lawn full of food trucks. It was arguing about a four-story building.

The Corner That Started The Argument

The fight centered on Riverside Village, the small commercial cluster at Riverside Drive and McGavock Pike that anchors the neighborhood's north end. In 2018, a proposal surfaced to rezone the corner where the record store Fond Object had operated since 2013, clearing the way for a building of up to four stories. Neighbors organized fast. A petition to "Protect Riverside Village's Neighborhood Character" gathered close to 1,700 signatures. Longtime resident Patrick Sansone, who had lived in Inglewood for four years at the time, put the stakes plainly.

"Riverside Village is sort of a very special, unique corner of East Nashville."

The Metro Council member representing the area, Anthony Davis, laid out the actual choice on the table. Residents could accept the existing zoning, which allowed a four-story structure by right, or push for a specific plan that would cap the street-facing building at one story, add sidewalk commitments, and prohibit short-term rentals on the site. The debate stretched on for years, resurfacing again in 2021 with the same corner, the same tension between density and the low-slung, walkable feel the neighborhood had built its identity on.

Whatever else came of that specific parcel, the argument itself left a mark. It told developers and small business owners exactly what this neighborhood would fight for and what it wouldn't.

What Grew Instead, A Few Blocks Away

Lost & Found opened in March 2026, and it reads like a direct answer to that fight. It's built from stacked shipping containers, permanently parked food trucks, and a dedicated lawn, not a four-story frame. Co-owner Kelly Boutwell described the intent before the doors even opened, back when the project was still just an announcement in December 2025.

"We want to use the space as a neighborhood gathering place first."

The roster backs that up. Every tenant either lives in Inglewood or already ran a business there before signing on:

• Birdie's, a wine bar
• Fortunate Sun, an outdoor cocktail spot
• Pizza Lolo, the Nashville food truck favorite in its first brick-and-mortar home
• Sarabha's Creamery, an Indian ice cream shop expanding out from its original Vanderbilt-area location
• Best Friends, a curated vintage consignment shop
• A rotating food truck lineup that includes Retrograde Coffee, Chivanada (Colombian empanadas), The Pepper Pott (Guyanese and Caribbean cuisine), QBOP! Korean BBQ, and Katri Taqueria

Nothing here required a rezoning fight. It required a parking lot, some string lights, and people who already lived close enough to walk to work.

The Neighborhood Voted With Its Lunch Break

The clearest sign that Inglewood wanted exactly this showed up two months after opening. When Lost & Found launched in March, most vendors kept afternoon and evening hours, betting on the after-work and weekend crowd. By late May, the whole lineup had shifted. Every food truck plus Pizza Lolo's storefront now opens at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Fortunate Sun starts pouring at 11 a.m. Retrograde Coffee opens at 7 a.m. daily, seven days a week.

That's not a marketing decision made in a boardroom. That's vendors responding to actual lunchtime foot traffic that showed up faster than they'd planned for. A neighborhood that spent years fighting to keep an outside developer from overbuilding one corner turned around and packed a food truck park on a different corner within its first ten weeks.

The Pattern Repeats At Riverside Village

Walk the half mile back to Riverside Village and the same story is still playing out, just with a longer track record. Golden Prawn #3, a Chinese American takeout concept, recently took over the small space that used to be Castrillo's Pizza, joining a run of other new openings at the Riverside and McGavock intersection that has turned the corner into what local coverage called one of the city's more interesting restaurant microneighborhoods. As one business owner in that cluster put it:

"This street is becoming more of a foodie destination."

The businesses that have stuck around longest describe the same small-scale interdependence you'd expect from a place that fought to stay low and local. Staff from the newer restaurants get their regular orders from Mitchell Delicatessen next door and Sabell's across the street. The after-shift hang is Village Pub and Beer Garden. Nobody is describing a four-story anchor tenant. They're describing a strip of storefronts that keep turning over one small business at a time, which is exactly the outcome the 2018 petition was written to protect.

Spend A Saturday Testing The Theory

If you want to see the pattern for yourself rather than take a blog's word for it, the two hubs are close enough to string together into one loop:

1. Start at Retrograde Coffee inside Lost & Found, open daily from 7 a.m., for a bagel and a house-made schmear before the lawn fills in.
2. Circle the food trucks by midday. Chivanada for empanadas, The Pepper Pott for a Guyanese plate, or a slice from Pizza Lolo if you want the original in its new home.
3. Head toward Riverside Village in the afternoon. Grab a sandwich at Mitchell Delicatessen or check what's new at Golden Prawn #3.
4. Close the loop back at Lost & Found for early evening drinks at Fortunate Sun, or stay in Riverside Village for Village Pub and Beer Garden if you want the version locals actually pick after their own shifts end.

None of this requires a car. It barely requires a plan. That's the whole argument the neighborhood has been making since 2018, just served up as a Saturday instead of a zoning hearing.

The Takeaway For Anyone Who Already Calls Inglewood Home

The four-story building never got the last word on this corner of East Nashville. A shipping-container food truck park did, and a strip of independent restaurants a half mile away is proving it wasn't a one-time win. Growth here keeps arriving at street level, run by people who already had a key to the neighborhood before they had a lease.

That's worth knowing whether you've lived on these streets for twenty years or just found out about Lost & Found last month. The businesses filling in around you aren't accidents of the market. They're the direct result of a fight your neighbors already had, and won, on your behalf.

If you're curious how Inglewood's steady, small-scale growth is shaping home values and buyer interest across the rest of Middle Tennessee, the team at The McGiboney Team tracks these shifts neighborhood by neighborhood, not just headline by headline.