As Nashvillians mourned last week's announced closing of Houston's, the West End restaurant that has been one of the most popular eateries in the city for more than 25 years, one person was smiling.
"The more of these old-time favorites that go away, the more people are going to be ready for what we're doing," says Barry Coleman, a developer and entrepreneur who has bought 119 acres of Cheatham County farmland to create an attraction built around the nostalgia of longtime Nashvillians.
"Old Nashvilleland will be like a trip back in time," Coleman says. "We're going to have three sections when we open: Opryland, Past Eats and Church Street '58."
The Opryland portion of Old Nashvilleland will have several rides, such as the Wabash Cannonball and Timbertopper roller coasters, that were dismantled when Opryland closed several years ago. "I got a real good deal on these, and with a little paint, they'll be fine," he says.
"Our Past Eats section will feature original menus and architecture from classic Nashville restaurants. We're having replicas built of the original Shoney's Big Boy restaurant in Madison, the old cool Ruby Tuesday's that was at the corner of West End and Murphy Road, and maybe now we'll do up a Houston's too," he says.
"And we're going to have a replica of Church Street built that looks like it looked in 1958. We're going to have drugstores, Woolworths, Castner Knott and Harvey's, along with several old city buses and vintage cars. It will be fun."
Whether Coleman will have enough of a market in aging nostalgic Nashvillians to justify his project concerns some in the local business community.
"So he wants people to drive to Cheatham County and pretend they're in 1958?" says one skeptical observer. "Hell, in Cheatham County, it still is 1958."
One African American and lifelong Nashvillian was also leery about the project's success.
"So I guess they'll have separate drinking fountains and they'll club me if I try to order a Coke at a soda fountain," he said. "Yeah, there's some quality nostalgia."
(The Fabricator is satire. Don't believe everything you read.)
