If you have driven Lebanon Road or North Mt. Juliet Road at all in the past two years, you have watched the same handful of storefronts sit behind construction fencing so long they stopped registering as news. A sign would go up. A local news brief would run. Then nothing, for months, until the next sign. That slow drip made it easy to assume the whole stretch was still mid-transformation, still a place where half the promised restaurants were vaporware.
They are not. Most of what got announced in 2025 has quietly opened. The corridor that residents have been reading "coming soon" headlines about for two years is, as of this month, mostly just open. What is left unresolved is a much shorter list than the one you have been tracking in your head, and the next real milestone is not another vague lease signing. It has an address, a square footage, and a season attached to it.
Citi Station Is Not a Construction Site Anymore
The commercial building across from Mt. Juliet's train station, at the southeast corner of North Mt. Juliet Road and East Division, spent most of last year as a rendering. Club Pilates was the first tenant to actually open its doors there. Timberloft's Spud & Butter, the fast-casual spinoff of the Jones family's longtime Gordonsville restaurant, followed with a grand opening built around loaded Texas-sized baked potatoes and slow-smoked meats, and it has settled into regular Tuesday-through-Sunday hours since. Starbucks finished its buildout and opened in late June, giving the train station side of town its own coffee stop for the first time. A Jimmy John's lease is signed for the same building, but as of now there is still no opening date attached to it, and roughly 3,000 square feet of space remains unclaimed.
That is the honest state of Citi Station: three tenants running, one signed but undated, and a little room left over. Not a construction zone. A functioning corner with one blank still to fill.
The Quieter Stretch Further Out on Lebanon Road
The louder story has always been Citi Station, because it sits across from the depot and gets photographed. The stretch of Lebanon Road further from downtown filled in with less fanfare and, arguably, more character. Casa Mezcal Mexican Grill moved into the former Psychic Readings by Ms. Miller building on Lebanon Road, an address odd enough that regulars still call it "the old psychic place" as a landmark, and opened as a sit-down restaurant with a 95-to-99-seat dining room and patio. The Emeraude Bakery took over a shuttered shooting range near the Benders Ferry and Golden Bear Gateway intersection, expanding into a full storefront after its home-based sourdough operation was already moving something like 140 loaves a week on its own. Grace and Mercy Kitchen opened nearby as a to-go and catering counter. Salvo's Family Pizza went up at Green Hill Landing, across from Green Hill High School. Even the Burger King on Lebanon Road, a fixture for decades, closed for a summer, came back with interior and exterior work and a new double drive-thru, and has been running that way for more than a year now.
None of that required a grand narrative. It required time, and the time has already passed.
What Was Announced vs. What Actually Happened
Because so much of this rolled out in overlapping waves of local reporting, it is easy to lose track of which projects are done and which are still just plans. Here is where things actually stand.
| Project | What was announced | Status as of now |
|---|---|---|
| Spud & Butter (Citi Station) | Fast-casual concept from the Jones family, targeting late 2025/early 2026 | Open, regular Tue–Sun hours |
| Starbucks (Citi Station) | 90-day buildout starting spring 2026 | Open since late June 2026 |
| Club Pilates (Citi Station) | First confirmed Citi Station tenant | Open |
| Jimmy John's (Citi Station) | Lease signed | No opening date set |
| Casa Mezcal (Lebanon Rd.) | Sit-down Mexican concept, 95-99 seats | Open |
| Emeraude Bakery (Lebanon Rd.) | Home operation expanding to storefront | Open |
| Sprouts Farmers Market (Everette Downs) | Targeted Oct. 17 opening | Opened on or near schedule last fall |
| Texas Roadhouse (Legacy Pointe @ Golden Bear) | Spring 2026 opening estimate | Should be open if construction held to schedule |
| Rock N' Roll Sushi (1913 N Mt. Juliet Rd.) | First Wilson County location for a local franchisee | Listed as "TBD, check back soon" as of its most recent posted update |
| Tholos (Charlie's Place) | Greek and Mediterranean concept | No timeline announced |
| Nicoletto's Italian Kitchen (11324 Lebanon Rd.) | 3,000-sq-ft flagship, largest of three locations | Under construction, targeting fall 2026 |
Laid out this way, the pattern is obvious. Everything that had a real construction timeline attached to it has landed or is close enough to assume it has. What is still genuinely open-ended, Jimmy John's, Rock N' Roll Sushi, Tholos, are the projects that were never given a date in the first place.
The One Thing Actually Still Coming
Nicoletto's Italian Kitchen is the exception worth watching, because it is the rare project on this list that is both confirmed under construction and not yet open. The Nashville pasta company, which started out selling dried pasta and sauces at farmers markets before opening locations in East Nashville and Donelson, is building its third and largest restaurant at 11324 Lebanon Road, a 3,000-square-foot space that will add an Italian specialty market, a coffee and espresso bar, and beer and wine service to the fast-casual pasta bowl format its other two locations run. Construction is underway with Lineberry Developments and KSR Group, and the company is targeting a fall 2026 opening, which puts the real window at some point in the next several weeks. No grand opening date has been set yet, so this is the one item on the list actually worth checking back on before you plan around it.
What This Means If You Live Here
None of this changes anything about buying or selling in Mt. Juliet. It changes what a Tuesday night looks like. A year ago, north Mt. Juliet was a place you drove past construction fencing to get somewhere else. Now it is a corridor where you can get coffee at the new Starbucks across from the train station, eat lunch at Spud & Butter, pick up a loaf from Emeraude, and end the week at Casa Mezcal, all without leaving Lebanon Road. The gaps that remain, a sushi spot still marked "check back soon," a Greek restaurant with no timeline, one more sandwich shop, are small enough now that they read as loose ends rather than as evidence the growth stalled.
If you want a reason to actually go check on all this in person, the city's fall calendar gives you a few. The Apple Celebration runs Saturday, September 19, at 631 Beckwith Road, followed by a Cider Celebration on September 26 at the same address. Mt. Juliet's Fall Fest takes over Main Street on Saturday, October 3. Halloween in the Park follows at Charlie Daniels Park on October 24. Any one of them is a decent excuse to route yourself past the new stretch of Lebanon Road on the way there.
For newcomers weighing what daily life actually looks like in Mt. Juliet beyond the headlines, our Mt. Juliet neighborhood guide and our earlier look at what it's like to live here go deeper on the parts of town that do not show up in a restaurant roundup.
If you are watching this corridor because you are thinking further ahead, whether that means relocating a team member to the area or simply want a local read on what a specific street or subdivision is actually like day to day, Misty Maynor and the ReLo Nash team know this side of Wilson County block by block. Book a relocation consultation and get the version of Mt. Juliet that does not fit in a construction update.
