Walk past the courtyard side of Vertis Green Hills this month and you will see glasswork going up around a new entrance, angled to catch the evening light from Richard Jones Road. It looks like construction. It is actually the last piece of something Southern Land Company has never done before in this neighborhood: open a restaurant it runs itself.
On Wednesday, September 16, Lupo Notte opens at 2035 Richard Jones Road, the ground floor of the 18-story residential tower that anchors Vertis Green Hills. On paper it reads like just another restaurant opening in a neighborhood that has had a lot of them this year. It is not. Lupo Notte is the developer's first full-service restaurant, meaning Southern Land Company is not leasing this space to an outside operator the way it has with the four restaurants already open at Vertis. It is the operator. That distinction matters more than the menu does, and it tells you something about what this address is trying to become.
What Vertis Already Had
Before Lupo Notte, Vertis's ground floor held four restaurants, each leased to a separate independent group: Char, a Southern-style modern steakhouse run by 4 Top Hospitality; Brixx Wood Fire Pizza, a casual pizza chain; True Food Kitchen, the national health-forward concept known for produce-driven menus; and Santo. Add Lupo Notte and you get five restaurants inside one building, and what stands out once you line them up is how little they overlap. There is no second steakhouse competing with Char, no second pizza spot competing with Brixx. Southern Land built out one restaurant per occasion rather than stacking similar concepts and letting foot traffic sort out the winner, which is closer to how a food hall usually works.
That pattern was already true before Lupo Notte arrived. What changes now is who is behind the counter. Char, Brixx, True Food Kitchen and Santo are leased tenants, meaning the developer collects rent and the restaurant group runs its own kitchen, staffing and brand. Lupo Notte is different. Southern Land Company designed it, is opening it, and will operate it going forward, which is a meaningfully different level of commitment than signing a lease.
Who Is Actually Running the Kitchen
The people behind Lupo Notte have real Nashville restaurant history, not just corporate résumés. General Manager David Rehrmann spent time at A Voce in New York before moving to Nashville, where he worked at Modern Italian and Zuzu. Executive Chef Owen Lane grew up on a family farm in Leipers Fork and has nearly three decades in restaurants, most recently as Executive Sous Chef at Pastis, with earlier stops at Audrey and June in East Nashville and The Boardroom in Franklin, itself another Southern Land property inside the Westhaven community.
That last detail is worth sitting with. Chef Lane has already worked inside a Southern Land development before landing here, which suggests the company is building a bench of talent it trusts across its own properties rather than treating each restaurant as a one-off lease deal. Rehrmann put it simply when the opening was announced, saying Lupo Notte will bring "a fresh, elevated dining experience to Green Hills and Nashville."
The menu leans upscale Italian: house-made pasta, wood-fired pizzas, daily specials, entrees built around locally sourced ingredients, plus seafood and shareable plates with a full bar. The design work came from Southern Land's in-house team paired with HASTINGS Architecture, the same Nashville firm that shaped the rest of Vertis, and the courtyard expansion is meant to read as what HASTINGS principal David Bailey called a "glowing lantern" once the lights come on at night.
Why the Ownership Structure Is the Real Story
If you live near Vertis, the practical question is not whether Lupo Notte's pasta is good. It is whether the restaurant will still be there in three years. Leased restaurants come and go based on the tenant's own business, not the building's. A developer-operated restaurant is a different bet. Southern Land has more riding on Lupo Notte's success than it does on any of its four leased neighbors, because the company's own name and design reputation are attached to the outcome, not just its rent roll.
That is also likely why this is the restaurant getting the architectural attention: the new courtyard-facing entrance, the in-house design collaboration, the framing of it as a flagship rather than a tenant. Southern Land CEO Tim Downey described the goal as building "an everlasting upscale dining destination," which is the kind of language a company uses when it is trying to establish an identity for itself, not just fill a vacant storefront.
Where This Fits Among Green Hills' Other Dining Clusters
Green Hills residents already sort restaurants into a rough mental map. The Mall at Green Hills is in the middle of a $250 million redevelopment that Simon Property Group announced in February 2026, one of only three malls nationally chosen for that investment, with construction underway this year and more tenant announcements still to come. Hill Center, the open-air center that Nashville Scene readers voted the city's best shopping center back in 2023, runs on a similar leasing model, with tenants like Taco Bamba, chef Victor Albisu's D.C.-based taqueria, occupying space the way Char or Santo does at Vertis.
Further out, Bedford Commons is home to etc., chef Deb Paquette's second restaurant after Etch. Both etc. and Char are operated by 4 Top Hospitality, the independent Nashville restaurant group that also runs Amerigo, which means the same company already has a footprint at both Vertis and Bedford Commons without owning either building. That is the model Southern Land is now stepping outside of. The mall leases to national retailers, Hill Center leases to independent brands, and until this month Vertis leased to groups like 4 Top Hospitality too. Lupo Notte is Southern Land choosing, for the first time, to be the operator instead of the landlord.
What to Actually Expect Walking In
If you are planning a visit once Lupo Notte opens on September 16, expect a dinner-forward concept with daily specials rather than a fixed rotating menu, a full bar, and a design meant to feel warm at night given the emphasis on natural light and the new courtyard entrance. Given the level of design investment and the fact that this is Southern Land's own restaurant rather than a leased brand, it is reasonable to expect the company to keep close attention on execution in the early months, since its own name is now attached to how the food and service actually land with the people eating there.
For anyone who already treats Vertis as part of their regular rotation for coffee, a workout at Corepower Yoga, or a haircut at Spoke & Weal, Lupo Notte adds an option that didn't exist there before: an upscale Italian dinner from a developer that, for the first time in this neighborhood, has more than rent riding on whether people come back.
Christopher Simonsen keeps an eye on changes like this because they shape daily life in Green Hills long before they show up in any market report. If you have questions about how a specific pocket of the neighborhood is evolving, or you're weighing what a particular block or building means for your own plans in Middle Tennessee, reach out to Christopher Simonsen. Let's Connect.
