Plan to Play update tests how much Nashville wants to spend on parks
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The recently updated Metro Parks Plan to Play document begs the question of just how much residents and local government leaders want to invest in Nashville's parks system.
Why it matters: Nashvillians love the Parthenon, the hiking trails at Warner Park, the nature center at Shelby Bottoms and everything in between.
- But the parks department is competing with education funding, affordable housing and other priorities when it comes time to invest tax dollars.
Zoom in: Plan to Play lays out a menu of options for spending on everything from routine maintenance to future expansion of the city's parks system.
Plan to Play was first released in 2017 following an era of parks expansion and investment in new facilities like community centers, nature centers and new greenways.
- The city's parks budget has not kept up with its population growth. As a result, Metro has built up a large backlog of deferred maintenance, which is a list of necessary projects just to keep the existing facilities operating normally.
Stunning stat: As of 2025, the deferred maintenance backlog reached $127.6 million.
What he's saying: Mayor Freddie O'Connell tells Axios the updated Plan to Play is "a good basis for community discussion to say we can do kid-sized, small, medium or large on a lot of things and we know what the cost is."
- "How do you take the ideas and turn them into a reality?" O'Connell added.
Context: During his first three years in office, O'Connell chipped away at the deferred maintenance backlog and added new parks in under-served areas of town, such as the recently opened Mariposa Park in southeast Nashville.
The latest: The final update to Plan to Play, which was released to the public last month, offers Metro three tiers for parks spending.
Tier 1: Take care of the basics with flat funding
The first option, a meat-and-potatoes approach, focuses on stabilizing the deferred maintenance backlog and fulfilling partially-funded prior commitments.
- It would cost $99.4 million in capital spending over five years.
Tier 2: Grow apace with population
This tier also addresses deferred maintenance and fulfills old commitments, but adds new investments to keep up with the city's population growth.
- It adds services like paved greenways, five new playgrounds, an indoor pool, sports fields, pickleball courts and 507 acres of new parkland.
- This option costs an estimated $260.6 million over five years.
Tier 3: Achieve aspirational goals set in 2017
- The most expensive option, which would cost $704 million over five years, adds 1,391 acres of new parkland, more pools, more community centers, more of everything.
The bottom line: Plan to Play also compares Nashville's parks system to similar cities — a metric O'Connell says he's also been tracking since taking office.
- Nashville has improved on national parks rankings, but is still middle of the pack overall. The city frequently scores well on total acreage of parks, but lower on access ratings, which judge how close residents live to the nearest park.
- "To me, the Plan to Play update gives us a tool that if we as a city choose to follow this, we can level up our parks score, achieve that mission of park within 10 minutes of anybody in the city so all residents can enjoy everything from golf to greenways, community centers to nature centers," O'Connell says.