MetroCenter is a master-planned office and business park on the west bank of the Cumberland River, a short distance north of downtown Nashville. It occupies roughly 850 acres of former floodplain inside a bend of the river and contains office buildings, state government offices, light-industrial space and, more recently, apartment buildings.
The river encloses the area on its waterfront sides, and a levee runs along the bank. The main landward approach is Rosa L. Parks Boulevard (US 41A). Internal streets include Great Circle Road, Athens Way and Cumberland Bend. MetroCenter is a development name, not an official neighborhood.
Development
MetroCenter was announced in 1971 by developers Victor S. Johnson Jr. and Robert C. Mathews as Nashville’s first master-planned business community. Building it required a levee, which was put up in the early 1970s and has been stabilized and upgraded several times since, including work overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Major occupants have included Tennessee state agencies and the Tennessee Titans, whose headquarters and practice facility at 460 Great Circle Road opened in 1999. Watkins College of Art had a campus on Rosa L. Parks Boulevard, on the site of the 1980s Fountain Square development, until Belmont University absorbed the college in 2020 and sold the property in 2021 for residential redevelopment.
Parks & Recreation
A 3.7-mile section of the Cumberland River Greenway runs along the top of the MetroCenter levee. It has a trailhead on Great Circle Road and links to Ted Rhodes Golf Course and Park and to a connector toward Tennessee State University.
Transit
WeGo route 9 MetroCenter runs between downtown’s Central station, Great Circle Road and the North Nashville Transit Center. I-65 serves the area at Exit 85 (Rosa L. Parks Boulevard) and Exit 87 (Trinity Lane).