A sprawling estate known as “The Hollar” on more than five acres in East Nashville could soon become a Montessori school serving up to 137 children, but neighbors along the narrow residential streets nearby say the plan raises serious concerns about traffic, safety and water runoff. The proposal would convert the existing home at 2616 Tiffany Drive, which borders the Shelby Bottoms Greenway, into a childcare and education campus large enough to serve students from infancy through elementary age.
The plan comes from Katherine Reichert, who started Nashvegas Baby as a nanny share in East Nashville in 2022 before growing it into a licensed childcare home, according to WKRN News 2. Reichert now plans to expand Nashvegas Baby onto the Tiffany Drive property, aiming to open the renovated mansion in time for the start of the 2027 school year. Her current operation can serve about 15 families, but nearly 40 families sit on its waitlist, and the business reportedly receives weekly inquiries without any advertising.
Neighbors Weigh Need Against Size and Location
Justin Plemons, who lives on Beth Drive behind the proposed school, says he supports the broader push for more childcare in Nashville — his own family has two young children and is currently searching for care. But he considers the Tiffany Drive site a terrible location for a facility of this scale, citing concerns about the sheer size of a 137-child school going up behind his home and about water runoff from the proposed parking lot, which would include 43 spaces.
Plemons's neighborhood has around 20 children living in it, and he and other residents worry about pickup and drop-off traffic clogging narrow residential roads that were never designed for that kind of volume. Reichert has proposed staggered arrival and departure times rather than a traditional school car line, and she plans to prioritize admission for families who live close enough to walk or bike to the school — a strategy that could reduce the number of cars entering the neighborhood altogether.
A Citywide Shortage Behind the Local Fight
The dispute over one Tiffany Drive property sits atop a much larger problem. Nashville faces a shortage of thousands of childcare spots, and Davidson County alone is short roughly 2,750 slots, according to a 2025 Nashville Chamber study cited by WKRN News 2. Families applying for care commonly must join a waiting list about a year ahead of time just to secure a spot.
The gap is especially stark for infants. Davidson County sees roughly 20,000 births a year, but licensed facilities countywide offer only about 2,100 dedicated infant slots, per data reported by WSMV 4. The Nashville Early Education Coalition has found that Metro Nashville's existing childcare infrastructure meets only 56% of total community demand. Cost compounds the shortage: average annual daycare tuition in Metro Nashville runs about $14,000 per child, according to tennbeat, which is more than the average annual cost of in-state public college tuition in Tennessee. Separately, a landscape study from Raising Readers Nashville and Vanderbilt University's Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center found that 41% of Davidson County households fell below basic-needs income thresholds while average monthly infant tuition reached $1,484.
City Hall Has Already Moved to Ease the Way
Metro Nashville officials have been trying to clear regulatory hurdles for new childcare centers well before the Tiffany Drive proposal surfaced. In May, Mayor Freddie O'Connell and the Metro Council passed zoning legislation aimed at removing decades-old barriers and speeding up approval for new daycare facilities across Davidson County. That effort followed legislation introduced earlier in the spring by East Nashville Councilmember Clay Capp and Councilmember Rollin Horton that sought to eliminate requirements for daycare operators to obtain Board of Zoning Appeals special exceptions in select residential zoning districts, as reported by Axios.
Hoodline previously reported on that push in a piece on scrapping spacing rules. Under the city's older code, large daycares proposed in residential zones typically required a public hearing before the Board of Zoning Appeals, which is the process now facing the Tiffany Drive plan. Metro Planning Commission records show the parcels making up that address were consolidated back in October 2016 into a single R10 single-family residential lot, a designation that limits non-residential uses without a specific exemption.
What the State Requires — and What's Next
Any center that wins city approval will still have to operate within Tennessee's licensing framework. State Department of Human Services regulations set firm staff-to-child ratios: 1 to 4 for infants under 15 months, 1 to 6 for toddlers up to 30 months, and 1 to 9 for 3-year-olds, according to state regulatory language on file with Cornell Law School. Those ratios will shape how many staff and how much space Reichert's operation needs if the 137-child capacity is approved.
Reichert's business track record includes prior county business licensing and Metro Health Department inspection approval for her McFerrin Avenue childcare operation in East Nashville, per public records reported by The Tennessean. Both neighbors and Reichert will get the chance to make their case when the proposal goes before the city hearing scheduled for September 17. Until then, the plan remains stuck between two competing realities in Nashville: a citywide childcare crunch that officials are racing to fix, and a residential pocket where families like the Plemonses say a five-acre estate behind their homes is simply the wrong place to fix it.
