AJ Capital Partners describes its plan for the old Kroger corner as "an iconic design-driven residential and retail village within one of Nashville's best-known legacy communities." That's the company's own language, pulled straight from its release. What you actually see driving past Harding Pike and White Bridge Road right now is graded dirt, a chain-link perimeter, and a small sign for something with a much smaller name than that: 1 Iris Lane.
If you've followed the plaza story the way most of the neighborhood has, in fragments, over three years, you probably know the broad shape. Kroger's gone. Something big is coming. What that fragmented coverage tends to skip is the part that actually matters if you live within walking distance of that corner: the site quietly grew by five acres through a land sale nobody made noise about, the building plan has already changed once since the first renderings, and the two- and three-story buildings now on file look nothing like the 150-foot towers the neighborhood was originally shown.
Two Landlords, One Deal
The project started in July 2023, when AJ Capital Partners paid $87 million for the 10.57-acre parcel that held the two-level, 1961-built Belle Meade Plaza building and the freestanding Kroger next door. Metro Council had already approved the rezoning two months earlier, in May 2023, so the entitlement was locked in before AJ Capital's money changed hands.
The site didn't stay at 10.57 acres. In February 2025, AJ Capital paid H.G. Hill Realty Company $1 million for 5.04 acres of raw land next to the original parcel, land that's now slated to become part of a park on the site. The price difference is worth sitting with for a second: roughly $8.2 million an acre for the developed retail property with an operating grocery store on it, against under $200,000 an acre for the raw ground beside it. That gap is why buying the extra acreage for green space made obvious sense once the anchor tenant was already gone.
The seller in that deal is a name Belle Meade residents already know from the other end of Harding Pike. H.G. Hill Realty is the same family company that owns Hill Center Belle Meade, the Publix-anchored shopping center a short drive up the road. Both projects, as it happens, trace back to the same planning document: the Harding Town Center Urban Design Overlay, adopted by Metro's planning department in May 2005. Two decades of zoning groundwork are now playing out on the same half-mile of pavement, through two different developers who also do business with each other.
The Plan Has Already Changed Once
Renderings released in February 2024 showed four buildings between 100 and 150 feet tall, with one structure alone carrying 78 hotel rooms and 388 residential units. That's the version most of the early news coverage described, and it's probably the version still in a lot of people's heads when they picture what's coming.
That's not the version on file now. By December 2025, Nashville Post was reporting a different plan: seven two- and three-story retail buildings holding about 40 retail spaces, a boutique hotel still in the mix, and a residential component scaled down to two buildings designed in a traditional style rather than a single 150-foot tower. The massing came down, not up, from what the neighborhood first saw. The residential buildings now have an address, 1 Iris Lane, and a formal name: The Residences at Belle Meade Village.
1 Iris Lane, As Filed So Far
Here's what's actually been confirmed for the residential piece, as of the most recent reporting:
- Two boutique buildings, each with 46 for-sale units, designed by Meyer Davis, a New York firm led by Nashville resident Will Meyer. This is Meyer Davis's first condo building in the city.
- Presales are being handled by Fridrich & Clark Realty, a Nashville firm.
- Shared amenities across more than 16,000 square feet include a pool with private cabanas, a library, a piano room, screening and listening rooms, a golf simulator, whiskey and cigar rooms, and a private mahjong room.
- Wellness spaces include a gym, a pilates studio, a sauna, a spa, a cold plunge, a salon, and a private treatment room.
- A five-acre park with gardens, built partly on that newly purchased H.G. Hill parcel, is planned alongside the residences.
- AJ Capital anticipates completion of the residential buildings in late 2027, with the broader retail and hotel components following after that.
That timeline matters more than the amenity list. Late 2027 for the residences means this corner still has more than a year of active construction ahead of it from where we sit today, and the retail buildings and hotel aren't expected to follow immediately behind.
The Corner That Already Finished Its Disruption
While the old Kroger site remains an active construction zone, the other big Harding Pike project already came out the other side. Hill Center Belle Meade opened a new main entrance at Harding Pike and Ridgefield Way in July 2025, with the new traffic signal activated on July 24. The old signal at Harding and Kenner Avenue was deactivated the same day, and Kenner and North Kenner now function as right-in, right-out only.
Jimmy Granbery, chair and CEO of H.G. Hill Realty, called the change "over 20 years in the making" when it opened, which lines up with that same 2005 planning document underneath the Belle Meade Village project across the street. H.G. Hill Realty was also seeking zoning approval as of last September for two more one-story buildings on the same property, so that corner isn't finished evolving either. But the part that disrupted daily traffic patterns, the new entrance and the new signal, is done.
That's the practical takeaway if you're doing your own grocery math right now. The Kroger that used to anchor Belle Meade Plaza is not coming back in any form. The Publix at Hill Center, a short stretch up Harding Pike, is the steady option while the much larger project across the street spends at least another year, likely more, as a construction zone.
What This Actually Looks Like Week to Week
None of this changes what Belle Meade is today. It changes what one specific corner looks like for a while, and it explains why that corner keeps showing up in different forms every time a new rendering circulates. The acreage grew through a deal between the two biggest landowners on that stretch of road. The building heights came down from the original concept, not up. And the finish line, at least for the part of the project you'd actually live in, is still on paper as late 2027, more than a year out from today, not something wrapping up this year.
If you've been curious about how a project like this gets built out in phases, what it might mean for a future move in or around this corridor, or you just want someone who tracks these filings as they change to walk you through what's confirmed versus what's still a rendering, Oak Leaf Real Estate is always glad to grab coffee and talk through it.
