Summer in Donelson, Hermitage, and Old Hickory: The East-Side Weekend Has Grown Up

For years, the shorthand for this stretch of Davidson County was airport, Opry Mills, and the lake. If you wanted a chef-driven dinner or a Saturday that felt like it belonged to a neighborhood rather than a highway exit, you drove west. That trip is getting shorter every summer, and 2026 is the year it stops being necessary at all.

The Donelson-Hermitage Chamber has been calling the area the "new food mecca" for a couple of years now, which is the kind of claim that usually deserves an eye roll. What's changed is that the roster now backs the phrase up. Between Donelson Plaza, Old Lebanon Pike, and the marinas on the north shore of Old Hickory Lake, there are enough specific, named, chef-owned rooms and reservable Saturday activities that you can plan a full weekend without leaving the 37076 and 37138 zip codes. That's the thesis of this guide: the east-side circuit is now a destination in its own right, and if you already live here, your job this summer is to actually use it.

What Opened, What's Building, What's Next

The anchor of the current wave is Donelson Plaza, the mid-century shopping center that Holladay Properties has been reworking around the new Donelson Branch Library. The library itself is the tell. It's a two-story, 25,000-square-foot building designed by HASTINGS Architecture and built to LEED Gold guidelines, with rooftop solar, geothermal heating and cooling, EV charging, and stormwater management. Inside, there's a mobile kitchen sponsored by the Stones River Woman's Club for cooking classes, a Metro Arts Lending Library collection, and signage in English, Spanish, and Arabic. Outside, the artist duo Wowhaus installed Reverie, a series of Tennessee marble sculptures selected by a citizen panel of Donelson residents. Cities don't build libraries like this in neighborhoods they've written off.

Around the plaza, the food story is filling in:

• Fryce Cream at 2720 Old Lebanon Pike, Chef Jeremy Barlow's soft-serve and hand-cut fry counter. Barlow, a Food Network Chopped winner and the chef behind the original Tayst, has been shaping Nashville dining for two decades, and Donelson is his second location.
• Homegrown Taproom & Kitchen, 2720 Old Lebanon Road, next door.
• Bagelshop at 2708 Old Lebanon Road.
• Elevate Coffee Donelson inside 555 Marriott Drive.
• Hattie Jane's Creamery at 2418 Lebanon Pike.
• BODHI Asian Street Eats at 14801 Lebanon Rd in Old Hickory proper.
• Nectar Urban Cantina, the Donelson classic that predates the current run and still gets name-checked by the chamber.
• Flour Your Dreams Bakery, run by Hermitage resident Danny Greenberg, who wants to extend hours and bring "a night concept" to the neighborhood in 2026.

The next round is already staked out. East Nashville's Red Door Saloon is building its Donelson spot on Old Lebanon Pike. Across from the library, a mixed-use plan will put restaurants on the ground floor with housing above. Metro Council Member Jordan Huffman has confirmed roughly 14 acres of affordable housing and retail coming along Stewarts Ferry Pike, and a grocery store is in conversation for the abandoned hospital site along Lebanon Pike. Huffman's own read on what constituents told him during his campaign was blunt: "we want less car washes and more restaurants."

If you moved here five years ago, the practical implication is that the empty end of Old Lebanon Road is not going to be empty by next summer. If you're a longer-tenured resident, it means the "drive to East Nashville for dinner" habit has an expiration date.

The Cedar Creek Question: How to Actually Use the Lake

Old Hickory Lake gets described in tourism copy as a 22,500-acre reservoir with 440 miles of shoreline, which is accurate and useless. Here's the local version.

The lake has three official swim beaches: Old Hickory Beach, Cedar Creek, and Laguardo. Entry is $5 per vehicle, cash-friendly, roped-off swim areas, no lifeguard. Old Hickory Beach is the closest to Hermitage neighborhoods and is best for weaker swimmers and small kids because the water shallows out gradually and there's a small playground and picnic pavilion attached.

Cedar Creek is where the summer social calendar actually lives. The marina is running a food-truck rotation this season with BBQ, pizza, and sweet treats through the summer. Follow the marina's Facebook for the weekly lineup rather than trusting a static list, because it changes. Anchor High Marina and Moby Dicky's up in Hendersonville round out the north-shore rotation, but Cedar Creek is the one you can reach without crossing a bridge if you live in Old Hickory Village.

For on-water rentals you don't have to own, the ecosystem is deeper than most residents realize. Nashville SUP & Yoga rents paddleboards and runs yoga-on-the-water sessions, JBeez WaterCraft Rentals handles jet skis and waverunners, and Nashville Wake Lab teaches surfing lessons. The Landlocked Surf Club meets twice a month for anyone who wants a standing group. If you want to move rather than float, Shutes Branch Mountain Bike Trail is on the same drive as the swim beach.

The trade you're making by going to Cedar Creek instead of, say, Percy Priest: fewer wake-boat crowds, no reservation stress, and a ten-minute drive from most Hermitage subdivisions. The cost: no lifeguard, and the sand at Old Hickory Beach is honest lake sand, not resort sand. Locals who've been swimming here for a decade think that's a fair trade. Newcomers sometimes need a season to agree.

A Saturday You Can Actually Plan

The reason this circuit works is that the pieces are within a fifteen-minute drive of each other. A workable Saturday in July or August, tested against the current calendars:

The Lakewood Theatre piece is easy to miss. It's a working community theater at Old Hickory Village that programs new plays alongside classics, and the 2026 Playwright Festival gives you a legitimate reason to spend a Friday or Saturday evening on the north side of the neighborhood rather than driving to TPAC.

What August Actually Looks Like

Two things anchor the calendar. First, the 2026 Taste of Donelson Hermitage in August, featuring appetizers, entrées, and desserts from local restaurants. It's the one night a year when the food-scene narrative gets stress-tested against actual plates, and it's the fastest way for a newer resident to figure out which of the newer openings deserve regular-rotation status.

Second, the shoulder of summer is when the lake gets quieter. The pattern most families settle into: heavy lake usage from Memorial Day through late July, then a gradual shift back toward the greenways, the library programming schedule, and the theater once school starts. If you're new to the neighborhood, the useful piece of local knowledge is that August weekday evenings at Cedar Creek Marina are the sweet spot. Locals-only feeling, food trucks still running, sunsets over the Cumberland arm of the lake.

Why This Matters If You Already Live Here

The five-year residents already know most of this. The two-year residents know half of it. The people who bought during the pandemic and haven't looked up since are still driving to Germantown for dinner and paying twice for the privilege of sitting in Broadway traffic on the way home.

The east-side circuit isn't finished. The Stewarts Ferry Pike project is dirt right now. Red Door hasn't opened. The hospital site is still a hypothetical grocery. But the pieces that are open are enough to build a summer around, and the pieces coming next mean the neighborhood you live in this August is going to look different by next August. Terri Williams Nutter, the chamber's executive director, has been telling reporters for a year that "things have blown up around here" and that the pipeline keeps replenishing itself.

That's the useful frame. Donelson, Hermitage, and Old Hickory are not the next East Nashville, whatever the chamber wants to say in a soundbite. They're something more specific: an east-side neighborhood with a real lake, a real theater, a serious new library, and a food scene that finally has enough named operators to sustain itself. Use it this summer. Somebody at your next block party is going to ask what you did last weekend, and "we drove to 12 South" is not going to be the right answer for much longer.

When you or someone you know is ready to talk about what a home in Donelson, Hermitage, or Old Hickory looks like in this next chapter of the neighborhood, Robert Werkheiser at Zeitlin Sotheby's International Realty knows this side of the county in detail. Let's talk about your next move.