Walk down Houston Street on a Saturday afternoon and you will pass Dicey's Pizza Tavern, pouring $2 beers next to a rack of local art, and then, less than a block later, the glass storefront of Hermès. Keep going and you hit Jackalope Brewing Company's taproom, dog-friendly patio and all, directly across from where Brunello Cucinelli hung its sign in March. This is not a neighborhood in transition where the old spots quietly close as the new ones move in. It is a three-block stretch where both versions of Wedgewood-Houston are open at the same time, on the same sidewalk.
That is the part of this story that gets flattened in most write-ups about WeHo's growth. The easy version says the neighborhood is "changing." The specific version, the one you can actually see if you walk it, is that nothing has closed to make room for what is arriving. Dicey's is still slinging tavern pizza. Bastion is still seating 24 people a night for its prix fixe menu, Wednesday through Saturday. Humphreys Street Coffee is still pouring cups that fund scholarships for South Nashville students through Harvest Hands CDC. Corsair Distillery is still running tours. None of that has gone anywhere. What has changed is what sits next to it.
What actually landed this year
The short version of 2026 in Wedgewood-Houston is that a single developer, AJ Capital Partners, has spent the year filling in its Wedgewood Village project with tenants that used to require a drive to find. Pastis, the New York and South Florida brasserie from restaurateurs Keith McNally and Stephen Starr, opened at 512 Houston Street in June 2025, its first location outside the East Coast and South Florida.
That was the preview. The bigger move came this spring, when Memoir May Hosiery, the mixed-use building on Martin Street, opened with 109 residential units and, downstairs, three concepts from Chicago's Boka Restaurant Group: Momotaro, a modern Japanese restaurant from chef Gene Kato, Alla Vita, an Italian spot from chef Lee Wolen, and Middleman, a cocktail lounge tucked between the two. Bell Bird Books, a neighborhood bookstore, opened in the same building. Perenn Grocery, an all-day bakery and market concept from the team behind the popular Perenn Bakery locations in Franklin and Berry Hill, is set to open in the same complex this summer as WeHo's first grocery destination.
Retail followed the same script. Hermès opened in October 2025. Brunello Cucinelli followed in March 2026 at 505 Houston Street, directly across the street from Hermès. Eberjey, the sleepwear brand, opened its sixth US location at 1209 Brown Street this spring. Two more names are still to come before the year is out: ZIMMERMANN at 503 Houston Street, and STAUD and Malbon close behind. Two smaller, locally rooted businesses joined the mix too: Bower, a nail salon co-founded by WeHo residents Andrea Fishkin and Amanda Soeder Gleaton, at 1214 Martin Street, and Culture Club, Nashville's first frozen Greek yogurt café, which opened its WeHo flagship and had already expanded to a second location downtown by August.
The old guard never left
Here is the detail that separates this from a typical gentrification story. The businesses that built WeHo's reputation as an arts and industrial district before any of this started are not background noise being phased out. They are still the anchors most residents actually use day to day.
Jackalope Brewing Company's taproom, The Ranch, sits inside 429 Houston Street, a building that Houston-based developer Hines bought in December 2019 for $7.95 million and has been redeveloping since. Jackalope stayed open through the entire construction process and is still pouring its lineup of beers on a dog-friendly patio with shuffleboard. Bastion, chef Josh Habiger's small dining room inside Houston Station, still runs its multi-course format four nights a week. Corsair Distillery still gives tours of its whiskey, gin, and absinthe production a few blocks over. Dicey's Pizza Tavern still hosts its Monday night 2-for-$20 special. The monthly First Saturday Art Crawl, the event that gave WeHo its identity as a gallery district in the first place, still runs on schedule.
What changed is the radius. A resident who wanted a reservation-worthy dinner, a bakery worth planning a morning around, or a proper cocktail bar used to make the same short drive every time: over to the Gulch, up to Germantown, out to East Nashville. That errand is disappearing, not because the old spots got replaced, but because the new ones filled in the gap next to them.
A Houston Street Saturday, as it actually works now
If you live in or near WeHo and want to see how the two eras fit together on a single day, the route looks something like this:
- Morning coffee at Humphreys Street Coffee, in the converted house on Humphreys Street, or at Soho House's public-facing coffee and cocktail bar if you want the alley seating
- Late morning browsing the First Saturday Art Crawl galleries, then a lap past Hermès and Brunello Cucinelli on Houston Street
- Lunch at Dicey's or Gabby's Burgers & Fries, both still running the same menus they had before any of this started
- Afternoon stop at Bell Bird Books inside Memoir May Hosiery, or Bower around the corner on Martin Street, both new to the neighborhood this year
- Dinner at Alla Vita or Momotaro, with a stop at Middleman for a cocktail beforehand, or Bastion if you booked ahead
- A nightcap at Jackalope's Ranch or Flamingo Cocktail Club to close out the night the way WeHo regulars always have
None of this requires a car. That is the part that would have sounded far-fetched even two years ago in a neighborhood built on industrial lots and warehouse conversions, one that has never had a grocery store in its core until this year.
What is still arriving
The next twelve months add two more pieces. Live Nation's venue, The Truth, is set to open in fall 2026 with a 4,400-person capacity, designed by the company's in-house Blueprint Studio team. It sits near GEODIS Park at the neighborhood's south end, which already brings Nashville SC match days into WeHo's foot traffic several times a season. The Academy of Country Music is also confirmed to bring offices into the district this year, adding a daytime working population to a neighborhood that has mostly filled in around evenings and weekends so far.
The mechanism behind all of it is simple to name even if it took years to build. AJ Capital assembled roughly 18 acres across non-contiguous parcels in WeHo and is delivering the tenants in clusters rather than one at a time, which is why a neighborhood that spent most of the last decade adding one gallery or one distillery at a time is now adding three restaurants, a bookstore, a grocery concept, and a handful of fashion retailers inside a single calendar year. Most Nashville food and retail scenes build up business by business over a long stretch. This one is arriving in a batch, from one landlord, on one stretch of one street, while everything that made WeHo worth visiting before Wedgewood Village existed keeps its doors open on the same block.
If you already live in Wedgewood-Houston, that is worth knowing before you plan your next Saturday. If you are watching the neighborhood from outside it, it is worth knowing before you assume the version of WeHo you remember has been replaced by the version you are reading about now. Both versions are standing on the same sidewalk.
If you would like to talk through what daily life looks like in Wedgewood-Houston or in any other Middle Tennessee neighborhood you are keeping an eye on, Jackie Roth Karr is glad to compare notes. Let's Connect.
