The Northwest Corner of the Square Is a Park Now: Lebanon Cut the Ribbon Friday Evening
For most of its long life, the northwest corner of Lebanon's public square did what corners of squares do — it held buildings, then it held whatever was left after the buildings, and eventually it held very little worth looking at. On Friday evening it became a park.
The city cut the ribbon on Downtown Square Park at 5:45 p.m. on July 31, in the middle of a celebration that ran from 5:30 to 8. Sweet N 3 played. Mayor Rick Bell handed out free single scoops from Main Street Mercantile until they ran out, which is a mayoral move that earns more goodwill per dollar than almost anything else a city can do on a July evening in Tennessee.
What is actually there
The project, formally the Lebanon Square Northwest Quadrant Park, is not elaborate, and that is the point. It is green space, seating built for families rather than for looks, and a staging area for concerts. Three ingredients, arranged so that a few hundred people can stand comfortably in the middle of a historic square and listen to a band.
That last piece connects to something the city has already been doing. Lebanon has been running Rock the Block downtown for years, and anyone who has been to one knows the recurring problem with square concerts: the square was never designed to be a venue. Bands set up wherever they could. Now there is somewhere to set up.
The site itself needed the work. The property had fallen into disrepair, and the city's stated intent from the beginning was straightforward — turn it into usable green space rather than leave a gap in the most visible block in Wilson County. The northwest quadrant then spent months as a construction site, which is its own small act of civic faith in a downtown.
Why a square is worth this much trouble
Lebanon was laid out in 1802, and like most Middle Tennessee county seats of that generation it was built around a courthouse square — the courthouse in the center, commerce facing it on all four sides, and everything else radiating outward. The town took its name from the stands of red cedar that covered this part of the county, which nineteenth-century settlers thought resembled the cedars of Lebanon in scripture. Those groves are still there, protected a few miles south in the state park that carries the same name.
The square is the oldest continuously used public space in the county, and squares like it have had a rough seventy years. Shopping moved to the highway, then to the interstate exit, and county seats across the South spent decades watching their centers hollow out. A great many of them responded by paving the square for parking, which solved a problem and created a bigger one.
Lebanon has gone the other direction, and Friday's ribbon is the visible marker of it. Handing a quarter of the square back to grass and benches is a bet that people will come downtown for reasons other than errands — that a place to sit, a place to hear music, and a place to let kids run is worth more to the surrounding businesses than another row of parking spaces.
It is a bet a lot of Middle Tennessee towns are making right now, as Wilson County's growth pushes outward from the interstate and every community has to decide what its center is for. Lebanon's answer, as of Friday, is a lawn and a stage.
The park is free and open to the public. If you have not been to the square lately, the next Rock the Block is the obvious excuse.
More free things to do nearby: Mt. Juliet's free Movie in the Park series still has three nights left at Charlie Daniels Park, and the Wilson County — Tennessee State Fair returns to Lebanon August 13.
