Bennie and Arnita Lee's house on Second Avenue South
Bennie and Arnita Lee have a new yard sign coming up — their third in the past year. They want to keep drivers on Second Avenue South updated about an eight-year property-line dispute involving their single-family lot (1059 Second Ave. S.) and that of their neighbor, Glen Dukes (1061 Second Ave. S.).
A two-foot discrepancy has cost the Lees and Dukes hours of hearings, court dates and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. The Lees are among the last remaining Black families on the block, at the center of one of the city’s historically African American neighborhoods that was redlined and segregated in the 1950s. The Robert Lillard House, recently named to the Nashville Nine list of endangered historic buildings, is across the street at 1026.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Bennie Lee tells the Scene. “I want to have something to leave behind for my family, my kids.” Arnita and Bennie bought the house 20 years ago. Now both in their late 70s, Bennie and Arnita live there with their 11-year-old great-grandson.
A chain-link fence used to be the boundary between the two properties. Lee and his former neighbor quibbled a little but respected the line. Dukes bought the property in 2014 for $30,000 from Jackie Cox, an elderly across-the-street neighbor who passed away a few months ago. Before she died, Cox confided in Arnita that she’d “given it away.” Today, the lot itself is worth at least 10 times that. Dukes cleared the site, demolishing a small yellow house where a longtime tenant lived, and started moving plans for a new build. He needed a zoning variance and got a survey to clarify his boundaries — 30 feet of road frontage for Dukes, 43 feet for the Lees.
“We have always had 45 feet,” Arnita tells the Scene; she often picks up Bennie’s advocacy when he needs to rest or has trouble with his hearing aids. “We bought 45 feet, and we paid taxes on 45 feet. At some point, that changed.” She produces a printed screenshot where it appears the Lees’ property details changed in early 2016, shifting their acreage from 0.15 to 0.13 per a mapping correction. The Scene asked multiple sources, including a former zoning administrator, about editing parcel boundaries and could not determine the origin of this correction.
Dukes sued the Lees in 2016 for trespassing and $150,000 in damages. His contractors had damaged the chain-link fence between the parcels and tried to put a wrought-iron replacement in its place. Lee replaced that with his own fenceline, which, Dukes alleged, crossed the property line and inhibited construction.
Paul Housch represented the Lees and got them a settlement that, according to Housch, would have avoided a litigation nightmare — if they’d accepted it. “I had them a great settlement and they refused to take it,” he tells the Scene by phone. Bennie and Arnita thought the deal wasn’t fair and decided to represent themselves at trial. Since Dukes first sued, they’ve spent more than $80,000 on five different lawyers. In 2019, Dukes won at trial and won again on appeal, saddling the Lees with more attorney fees and damages.
Bennie’s wordy homemade billboard that went up in 2021 attempted to consolidate the entire saga into a few sentences. It disappeared sometime this year. Arnita says the neighbor, Dukes’ renter and business partner, admitted to stealing it. A successor is up now and gets straight to the point: “FRAUD,” in big red letters, followed by, “HELL NO WE WON’T GO/STANDING MY GROUND.” The fraud refers to the Lees’ property line changing. Arnita hopes the message gets through to hopeful buyers who contact her nearly every day asking if they’re selling. She also thinks both pronouns should be plural, but didn’t get the edit to Bennie in time.
“Everyday someone asks me if we want to sell,” says Arnita, arms crossed on the sidewalk. “I tell them, there’s a sign in the yard. And it’s not a ‘for sale’ sign.”
The third sign targets Anne Martin, who sits on Tennessee’s Chancery Court. Martin is enforcing the court ruling against the Lees that sticks them with $22,000 in damages. The new sign ends with a frustrated, “EXPLAIN!!!”
Dukes doesn’t have a publicly listed phone number or contact information. He is the sole owner of Cumberland Advisory Group, the entity that owns 1061 Second Ave S. Its mailing address is a shuttered one-story office on Eighth Avenue.
The Lees’ other neighbors sold their single-story white house in November. The property had been in the Green family for more than 70 years. That purchase consolidated a four-parcel holding for “1055 Second Ave Partners, LLC,” registered to 429 Chestnut St., Suite 200 — the Wedgewood-Houston offices of real estate power player AJ Capital. The other three parcels on the block sold in March for $915,000 — a $515,000 profit for transplant restaurateur Steve Kovach, who bought all three over an 18-month stretch in 2017 and 2018. A loopy purchaser’s signature on the deed looks a lot like “Eliot Silverman,” AJ Capital’s Nashville-based vice president of acquisitions. The Lees feel stuck in a game of monopoly. Zoning, capital and legal expertise determine winners and losers.
“We’re broke now, and ain’t nothing changed,” says Arnita. “We haven’t bothered anybody. He just wants our land.”
Editor's Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly included biographic details of Glenn Dukes, a Nashville lawyer who is not affiliated with 1061 Second Ave S.
