Centennial Park has been public ground since 1902, and in all that time Nashville has been remarkably reluctant to build anything on it. The last new structure went up in 1963 — a low, flat-roofed clubhouse on the park’s north side, put there for croquet.
This morning, both ends of that long pause close at once. At 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 29, Metro Parks and the Centennial Park Conservancy cut the ribbon on a new event pavilion overlooking Lake Watauga — the first building constructed in the park in 63 years — and a few hundred feet away, that 1963 croquet clubhouse reopens as Croquet Cafe, the first permanent sit-down food service the park has ever had.
A cafe that works for the park
Croquet Cafe sits at 2530 Park Plaza with indoor seating, covered tables outside, and a lawn beside it made for spreading a blanket. The menu leans deliberately light and portable: salads, paninis, wraps, picnic boxes, locally roasted coffee, baked goods, handcrafted smoothies, soft-serve and grab-and-go items, with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options throughout. Joseph Bogan and Crystal De Luna-Bogan, the couple behind the Grilled Cheeserie, advised on the concept and the menu.
The genuinely unusual part is who owns it. The cafe is run by the Conservancy in partnership with Metro Parks as a nonprofit, which means the margin on a sandwich goes back into the park — grounds work, the ongoing revitalization, and the permanent, never-finished job of maintaining the Parthenon. More than $1.7 million in philanthropic support built it, from the Frist Foundation, the Dettwiller Foundation, the Sandra Schatten Foundation, the Joe C. Davis Foundation, the Marlene and Spencer Hays Foundation, and the Tennessee Historical Commission.
The bigger building is the one on the water
The event pavilion at 2545 Park Plaza is the larger gesture: 6,465 square feet on the north bank of Lake Watauga, replacing the open shelter that stood there for decades. It holds more than 400 people seated for a banquet and up to 1,250 standing, and it was designed to absorb the programming the park already does and could never properly house — Big Band Dances, festivals, concerts, lectures, children’s programs, nonprofit fundraisers and private events. Ground broke in 2025. Lead gifts came from the Dettwiller Foundation, the HCA Healthcare Foundation, the Hays Foundation, the Sandra Schatten Foundation and Vanderbilt University…