One of Tennessee's original shopping malls is being remade into a neighborhood. Merus, the Cincinnati-based developer that bought the shuttered Rivergate Mall for $33 million, has released new renderings of its roughly $450 million plan to transform the 57-acre site in Goodlettsville, just north of Nashville, into a walkable mixed-use district. Demolition is already underway along Rivergate Parkway.
Opened in 1971, Rivergate was once the largest mall in Tennessee, a super-regional center with more than a million square feet of retail that anchored the Goodlettsville and Madison communities for half a century before its final interior tenants closed at the end of 2025. In its place, Merus is planning a full neighborhood: roughly 710 multifamily units, 127 townhomes, and 80 independent senior housing units, alongside a 120-key hotel, more than 120,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, and about 20,000 square feet of medical and office space, all organized around new streets, a center green, and public plazas.
The plan has evolved as it moves through approvals, tilting toward more everyday commercial use. Goodlettsville's planning commission signed off on an amendment swapping one of two originally planned hotels for a roughly 51,000-square-foot grocery store and additional retail and restaurant space, a shift the developer framed as responding to what the community actually wants day to day. A second hotel remains in the plan for the site's northeast corner, and Dillard's, the last anchor standing, is expected to stay open throughout construction.
The project leans on public-private cooperation. It is supported by tax-increment financing from both Metro Nashville and the City of Goodlettsville, and Merus is donating a portion of the site to Metro to support future WeGo rapid bus transit improvements. Master planning is led by Smith Gee Studio, with Fulmer Lucas handling civil engineering and Pinnacle Bank as lending partner. An economic analysis approved by Metro Council projects the redevelopment will generate an estimated $4.6 million a year in total county tax revenue at full buildout.
The RiverGate redevelopment is being built in two phases, the first centered on the former Macy's parcel, the second covering the rest of the mall, with early site work and demolition underway now, vertical construction expected by the end of 2026, and phased delivery continuing through the early 2030s. It joins a broader wave of dead and dying American malls being reimagined as mixed-use districts.