The building of a park on the west side of Murfreesboro has been on the drawing board since 2021, with the Murfreesboro City Council approving the hiring of Nashville-based Gresham Smith and Partners for the planning and designing of a new Veterans Park along Veterans Parkway at I-840 in July 2023. With a groundbreaking in March 2025, the last year has been spent preparing the land and building roads into the park. In the next few months, the $16.5 million-dollar park will start to take shape.
When completed, the park will offer a destination playground sure to draw families from all over the city, eight much-needed pickleball courts, four pavilions, an event space with a pavilion wired to support a stage and sound equipment for music concerts, an area for food trucks, almost five miles of walking trails with 3.7 miles of those trails being paved, a multi-purpose field, and a natural area with a mile-long unpaved walking trail.
Beyond active recreation, Veterans Park will feature natural areas designed to restore and enhance their own ecological health by reintroducing native plants. It is all part of Murfreesboro’s expanding desire to build a stronger green footprint.
Veterans Park is part of the Murfreesboro Parks and Recreation Department’s plans for the future. The department has always been known for taking a proactive strategy to maintain a high quality of life for the residents of the city by continually expanding the city’s park system, access to athletic activities and opportunities to interact with the arts.
The park was made possible after the City of Murfreesboro approved a land- swap agreement with Middle Tennessee Electric (MTE). Before the deal, MTE owned the acreage where the park is now under construction. The City traded property they owned located northwest of the I-840 and Veterans Parkway interchange, for the 150-acre park location.
In recent years, there has been a lot of development in the area, including residential, commercial, medical offices, and an emergency room hospital location in what is known as Westlawn.
Murfreesboro Parks and Recreation Director Nate Williams told WGNS radio, “This is a great area with development all the way around from residential to commercial…great destination for a park.”
Opening of the park is currently estimated to be in the early months of 2027, although, being an outside project, progress is dependent on the weather.
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