Ten Years Ago It Was an Empty Basement. Now More Than Fifty Makers Work Out of It.
Every town has a building people drive past ten thousand times without once wondering what is underneath it. On Lebanon Road, the answer turned out to be about fifty small businesses.
The Basement Marketplace is marking ten years this year — a milestone that a great many independent retail ideas never reach, and one that started with nothing more ambitious than an empty room and a practical question.
It began as a problem to solve
The building on Lebanon Road already had a purpose; the family's insurance business worked upstairs. The basement, though, sat there being a basement. In 2016 it was renovated and reopened as a marketplace, and the idea was simple enough: rather than lease one big space to one big tenant, carve it into booths and let a lot of small sellers each take a piece.
It opened with roughly 30 vendors. A decade on, it houses more than 50.
Owner Julie Ruesewald came to it the long way around — nearly two decades in corporate roles before the family went into business for itself, opening an insurance agency in 2002. The marketplace was the second act, and arguably the more unusual one.
What is actually down there
The inventory is the sort that rewards wandering: handcrafted goods from Middle Tennessee artisans, antiques, clothing, home décor, and a healthy corner of gifts aimed squarely at the man of the house. Because every booth belongs to a different seller, the stock turns over constantly and no two visits look quite the same — which is the whole appeal of the format and the reason people come back on a rainy Saturday with no particular shopping list.
It is also not purely a place to buy things. The marketplace runs hands-on classes — quilting, art, decorating wine bottles, and a well-liked “garden in a cup” session — the kind of low-stakes evening out that a town of commuters tends to be short on.
Why a booth marketplace matters in a fast-growing town
Mt. Juliet has changed enormously in the ten years this place has been open. Rooftops have gone up, traffic counts have climbed, and the retail that follows growth is usually national retail — the chains that can absorb a commercial lease and a build-out.
A booth is a different proposition entirely. It is the cheapest honest way for a person who quilts, refinishes furniture, pours candles or hunts estate sales to find out whether strangers will pay for what they make. Some of those sellers stay hobbyists. Some of them turn into real businesses. Very few of them could have afforded a storefront on their own, and that is precisely the point: fifty-odd small ventures are operating on Lebanon Road because someone decided a basement was worth finishing.
If you go
The Basement Marketplace is at 14625 Lebanon Road, Suite F, and is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
If browsing local makers is your speed, it pairs well with the city's outdoor markets — see our rundown of Mt. Juliet's fall lineup of movies, a yard sale, Market Night and Halloween in the Park, and the event page for Mt. Juliet Market Night.
