The Late-Night Issue: Night Mayor on Safety and Nashville’s Reputation

Freddie O’Connell isn’t the only mayor in town. Well, technically he is, but Nashville also has a night mayor — Benton McDonough.

McDonough has served as executive director of the Metro Nashville Beer Board since 2017. In 2022, then-Mayor John Cooper appointed him director of the Mayor’s Office of Nightlife. While the position is relatively new to Nashville, many other cities have night mayors — McDonough says they share a huge group chat. Though he wouldn’t name a specific place he prefers to go for a nightcap, he did tell us about some of the work he’s doing to assist the patrons, residents and business owners of downtown Nashville and beyond.

Tell me about your job and what a normal week looks like.

It’s something different on a daily basis. If I were to just kind of break it down generally, though, it’s really to act as a liaison between businesses and residents and visitors to the city and Metro government — and to try and address issues of quality of life, public safety and things of that matter.

What’s the most unique issue you’ve had to address?

The snakes [that handlers would sell photos with] are definitely way up there. That’s always one. I think the sound issue — I’ve never dealt with sound or noise, and so that’s been fascinating to work with people that are actually professionals in that area to figure out how we can deal with this. … One of the things that grew out of that is that we would like to create a fund that helps a lot of these businesses to offset some of the costs that they have to deal with in trying to address the noise issues.

Safety is always a concern for those visiting Lower Broadway. What have you done to help or coordinate to make downtown safer for those who are visiting it?

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[The Sexual Assault Center’s Safe Bar program] is one of them. … Before we got involved, they’d only had about two bars that had gone through [sexual violence prevention] training, and now they’re up to about 30 or 40 that have gone through and done that. And then the same with [distribution of opioid overdose reversal drug] Narcan. [Gibson Guitar’s overdose-prevention program TEMPO] was having issues getting access to the bars, and so they contacted us, and so we’ve been able to get them in the bars and get that distributed. And then the [safety group] Red Frogs have been incredible. They came for CMA Fest and Fourth of July, and now they’re down there on a pretty regular basis. And I actually had a discussion with [a Metro police] officer the other night who mentioned how grateful they are that the Frogs are there, because it makes their job easier because there’s less babysitting.

If you could wave a magic wand over downtown and change one thing in an instant, what would that be?

It would be to help a lot of the individuals in the homeless community — or to be even broader, to create more access to mental health [resources]. Because I think that leads to so many of the issues that we deal with, whether it’s the individuals that are in the homeless community or it’s someone who’s over-participating at one of the bars on a regular basis.

Because downtown is such a big part of Nashville’s identity, and you oversee it, you’re in a position to help shape Nashville’s identity for both locals and tourists. What do you want that to look like?

I think trying to work our hardest to keep that reputation that Nashville is actually a safe place and that’s why people come here, because of the hospitality and because people feel safe. But I think on the flip side of that, it’s also our responsibility to make sure that people are responsible when they come here, and that they are smart about their expectations about the city. Yes, we’re welcoming, it’s hospitable, it’s a fun city — but that doesn’t mean let your guard down. And so people need to remember to stay with their friends, with their groups, because that’s where people start to get in trouble, is when they get separated.

Is there anything else you think is important for people to know?

I think just reiterating that our office is always here to help. And if you have any questions, any ideas, feel free to reach out to us. One of the things that we want to do — we’d like to get residents interested in coming to downtown again. … You see on social media people complaining about downtown, and so we’ve started discussing providing tours of the entertainment district and showing them the work that goes into what the city does to protect those areas, but also what we can offer to other areas outside of downtown.