Drive down Hillsboro Pike between Abbott Martin and Richard Jones this month and you can watch the neighborhood change in real time. Paper covers a storefront that was Whole Foods Whole Body a year ago. Scaffolding wraps the mall's east entrance. A new Italian restaurant is finishing punch-list work inside Vertis.
The updates are easy to catalog. The pattern behind them is the interesting part: Green Hills is quietly repositioning itself from a regional shopping destination anchored by department stores into a curated flagship market, and the shift is showing up on the street as clearly as inside the mall.
Two New Additions on Hillsboro Pike
The most telling opening this summer is not inside the mall. On Inc. is preparing to open its first Nashville store at 4021 Hillsboro Pike, bringing the Swiss sportswear brand to Green Hills, with a Metro permit showing the retailer will occupy the former Whole Foods Whole Body space. Global architecture and design firm Gensler is leading the project.
Two details are worth pausing on. First, the Nashville Business Journal reports the Green Hills location would mark the company's first retail expansion into the Southeastern United States. Second, the site itself. A wellness-adjacent grocery annex becoming a performance apparel flagship is a small story about who Green Hills is being built for now.
A block south, at 2035 Richard Jones Road, the ground floor of Vertis has a new tenant. Nashville-based Southern Land Company announced a summer opening in Green Hills for Lupo Notte, the development company's first affiliate-owned and operated restaurant concept, operating from the company's mixed-use building Vertis. Design work is by Hastings Architecture, and the pasta-and-pizza menu will run out of roughly 3,100 square feet with seating for about 110, including a bar and kitchen counter.
For residents, Lupo Notte matters less as a menu than as a signal. Vertis has struggled to fill its retail footprint with anything other than fitness and services. A destination Italian concept from the building's own developer changes the pedestrian logic of that stretch of Richard Jones.
Inside the Mall: The Tenant Reshuffle
The Mall at Green Hills has always been the neighborhood's retail backbone. What's changed in the last twelve months is the caliber of names moving in, and the speed.
| Retailer | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Christian Louboutin | Open | Upper level near Nordstrom |
| SKIMS | Coming | Lower level next to Nordstrom |
| Swatch | Coming | Lower level next to Nordstrom |
| Coach | Announced | New arrival |
| Vuori | Announced | New arrival |
| Valenti | Announced | New to Nashville market |
| State & Liberty | Relocated | |
| Hollister Co. | Open | |
| Altar'd State | Relocated | Lower level near Macy's |
| Hermès | Announced | |
| Zimmermann | Announced | |
| Brunello Cucinelli | Announced |
Sources: SKIMS is coming soon to the lower level next to Nordstrom, Swatch is coming soon to the lower level next to Nordstrom, and Christian Louboutin is now open on the upper level next to Nordstrom; recent and incoming names include SKIMS, Hollister Co., Altar'd State as a relocated store, Valenti, and State & Liberty as a relocation; Hermès, Zimmermann, and Brunello Cucinelli have also announced Green Hills locations.
Three of those last three names are the story. A Hermès address in Tennessee is not a routine tenant announcement. It is the kind of listing that reshapes how a market gets described in national retail reports, and it tracks with the mall's own framing. General Manager Norah Buikstra said Green Hills continues attracting new retailers, noting the mall has "the strongest luxury collection in Tennessee by far".
The $250 Million Plan Behind the Openings
The tenant activity is not accidental. It sits on top of an ownership change and a spending commitment that residents will feel physically over the next several years.
Simon Property Group acquired The Mall at Green Hills from Taubman Realty Group in November of 2025. In February 2026, Simon announced plans to renovate The Mall at Green Hills and two other centers as part of a $250 million investment.
What that money is supposed to build, in Simon's own description:
- Grand, two-story flagship statement entrances
- Jewel-box spaces for luxury boutiques
- Lush landscaping and elevated arrival moments across the exterior
- Upscale interior finishes and architectural enhancements
The reference project is worth noting. Chief Operating Officer Eli Simon described the plan as applying the same approach used at Southdale Center, which re-established the nation's first enclosed mall as Minneapolis' premier shopping destination with a new luxury wing alongside experiential retail and lifestyle offerings.
Timing is looser than shoppers would like. Mall officials have not yet provided a specific timeline for when major construction will begin or what shoppers should expect during the process. Construction is expected to begin in 2026, with tenant announcements to follow.
The Question Nobody at the Mall Wants to Answer
If you live in Green Hills, you already know the friction point that a $250 million press release cannot paper over.
Months after the $250 million renovation was announced, many shoppers say they're still waiting to learn exactly what is changing and when. The project is expected to include updated entrances, landscaping, exterior improvements, and new retail additions, but during a recent visit to the mall, many shoppers admitted that their biggest concern isn't luxury shopping, it's parking.
The exchange with the general manager was direct. When asked whether construction would affect parking or whether additional parking could be added as part of the project, Buikstra declined to provide details, saying only that there is "more to come."
For residents, that is the update that actually matters. Adding Hermès and Brunello Cucinelli to the tenant roster raises weekend traffic on Abbott Martin and Hillsboro Pike whether or not the parking deck grows to meet it. If you have been treating the mall as a weekday errand and avoiding it on Saturdays, that habit is not going to reverse itself in 2026.
What Isn't Changing
Amid the reshuffle, the anchors that give Green Hills its texture are still doing what they have always done. The Bluebird Cafe continues to program its writer's rounds. Parnassus Books, the store Ann Patchett co-founded, still draws a national author calendar into a neighborhood strip center. Green Hills Grille, reopened in 2015 after the original closed in 2008, holds down the casual-dinner slot with a 175-seat room and a 40-seat patio. Regal Green Hills on Green Hills Village Drive is still the closest recliner theater for most of the neighborhood.
That mix is the point. The luxury flagships arriving at the mall are being layered on top of a neighborhood that already has its own daily life. Nothing announced this year replaces the Bluebird or Parnassus, and nothing in Simon's plan changes the two-lane residential streets a block off Hillsboro Pike.
Reading the Pattern
Three data points, one direction:
The former Whole Foods Whole Body space becomes On Inc.'s Southeastern debut. Southern Land opens its first restaurant on the ground floor of its own residential tower. Simon writes a nine-figure check on a mall it bought nine months earlier and starts announcing Hermès-tier tenants.
Each of those is a private decision made on private information about where the money is going in Nashville. Read together, they say the same thing. Capital is treating Green Hills as a flagship market rather than a regional shopping node, and the storefronts are catching up to that read faster than the infrastructure around them.
For anyone who lives here, the practical takeaway is smaller and more immediate. The pedestrian corridor along Hillsboro Pike between the mall and Richard Jones is becoming a genuine walkable stretch for the first time in years. The parking math at the mall is going to get worse before it gets better. And the answer to "what's new" now changes month to month in a way it did not five years ago.
If you're weighing what all of this means for your own address, whether you're thinking about how the retail shift affects your block, or how presentation and preparation should adapt to a neighborhood in transition, Christopher Simonsen is glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
