Bellevue, Tennessee
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Bellevue is a neighborhood of Nashville, located roughly 13 miles southwest of the downtown area via I-40. It is one of the least populated areas of Davidson County, Tennessee due to the limited concentration of condominiums and apartments due to topography of the area. It is incorporated as part of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.
It is hard to set a population figure for a place such as Bellevue due to the absence of any set, definable boundaries, but it is realistic to think of it as probably being Nashville's second largest neighborhood after Antioch, with nearly all of the growth coming since the later 1960s and early 1970s. This is partially due to the widening of U.S. Highway 70S to four lanes shortly before this, and the advent of regular bus service to downtown Nashville. Bellevue can probably be considered as being coextensive or roughly so with the United States Postal Service ZIP Code 37221.
Four decades ago, Bellevue was a small community which existed primarily to service the needs of nearby farms. It was located mostly along the railroad tracks near the Harpeth River, and had only a few buildings such as a hardware store, a post office, and a Masonic lodge hall. The suburbanization was made official when the United States Postal Service changed the designation of the office there from "Bellview, Tennessee" to a branch of the Nashville office in the late 1970s.
Harpeth Valley Elementary School, located on the outskirts of Bellevue along State Route 100, was the inspiration for the title of the hit country song "Harper Valley PTA".
Since the year 2000, Bellevue has grown in population and development not only in the already established areas along Old Hickory Boulevard and Hwy 70S, but also in the more affluent and rural developments off Tennessee State Highway 100. The three commercial retail "hotspots" in the Bellevue area are located near the Highway 70/I-40 interchange; at the intersection of Highway 70 and Old Hickory Boulevard; and near the intersection of Old Harding Pike and Highway 100.
Bellevue is the home of a failed regional shopping center, the Bellevue Center Mall. Purchased by Bellevue Development, LLC on 12/10/2007, mortgage financing was secured to redevelop the site into a "lifestyle center (retail)." However, the main structure of the Bellevue Center Mall is now completely vacant except for one anchor store, Sears, and that store is seeing only marginal sales activity. Though plans to redevelop the mall were approved by local government, the old mall building still stands and there are currently no signs of future construction. In early 2003, Publix Tennessee, LLC took over, and is now successfully operating from the vacated Albertson's grocery store on the "Bellevue Mall" site near the northwest corner of Sawyer Brown Road and Highway 70.
While the Bellevue Center area (70S at I-40) of Bellevue continues to languish, the newly developed shopping centers at the intersections of Tennessee State Highway 100, Temple Road, and Old Harding Pike are growing and thriving. Two new strip malls centered around a new Publix grocery store opened in late 2008, and are proving very successful.
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