• The sponsor of the city’s mask mandate bill has deferred a vote on it again, saying that pressure from a threatened state legislature special session has several council members rethinking their support of the bill. Case counts in Nashville and the surrounding areas have fallen in recent weeks.
• The Nashville Rescue Mission is adding 25 COVID-19 isolation pods to limit the spread of the virus among the city’s homeless population staying at the facility. The pods replace the area at Fairgrounds Nashville that had previously been used for that purpose.
• Folks riding the Music City (WeGo?) Star will have a bit of a detour after a massive sinkhole opened up underneath the tracks near Omohundro Drive. The train is unable to reach the downtown station until the tracks are repaired.
• A suspect has died and an Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) agent is in critical condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center following a deadly shootout on Murfreesboro Pike near the police precinct. Video shows the suspect and two agents exchanging gunfire through car windshields.
• The leader of the Small Business Administration was in Nashville to meet with music venue operators hoping to lobby the federal government for additional grant funding.
• Late-night diner Hermitage Cafe is said to be closing after a developer purchased the property they lease near downtown. The cafe opened in 1990.
• A local grocery store says they are calling applicants back within hours, not weeks, as well as offering incentives and referral bonuses to try and address staff shortages.
• The Downtown YMCA shared renderings of its a new look for their building with a partnership with developer Tony Giarratana that would add a 60 story residential tower adjoining the space. If completed, it would be the tallest building in Nashville, passing the 505 building that opened in 2018.
• The state will begin issuing new license plates next year featuring a design that received 42 percent of the vote in an online poll. Motorists will be able to choose whether to include “In God We Trust” on their plate.
• Local nursing schools are working to recruit new students into the profession that was already facing a shortage prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, made worse by veteran caregivers burning out of the profession entirely because of it. Many area hospitals are offering sizable signing bonuses for staff.
• The newly created Nashville Department of Transportation (NDOT) is already under fire by some members of council for taking way too long to complete approved projects in their districts. NDOT says they have been up front with communicating about the challenges and delays for those projects.
• The Fisk University Jubilee Singers are celebrating 150 years as a performing group, with many historians crediting the words of the late British Queen Victoria as creating the “Music City” moniker for Nashville. The group was originally formed to raise money for the struggling historically Black university in North Nashville.
• The Pancake Pantry will be opening its second location in November inside the Hyatt Centric Hotel downtown, branching out from the popular (in that there’s always a ridiculously long line out front) Hillsboro Village restaurant.
• The Nashville Business Journal has an interesting look at what areas of Middle Tennessee folks are moving in and out of, based on their change of address forms.
• New party bus regulations will be in effect for the new year if the Metro Council passes a series of ordinances on their third reading October 19. The move comes after a summer of complaints about operators disturbing classes at a downtown high school and receiving harsh words from the city’s tourism chief.
• The Metro Council again deferred a zoning change that would have led to the eviction of about 20 families from an East Nashville mobile home park.
• In other council news, they confirmed several appointments and elected folks to offices to shore up vacancies in city government.
• Nashville SC broke ground on a new $9 million training facility in Antioch that features three full-size soccer fields and 30,000 square feet of training and office space.
• The Nashville Predators picked up a 3-2 win in overtime on the road to the Carolina Hurricanes in their second-to-last game of the preseason. The team closes out the preseason this Saturday against the Hurricanes at 3 p.m.
• A Vanderbilt University alumnus has pledged $10 million to its law school, saying that he owes his success running a private equity firm to his time there.
• The new owner of the Red Bicycle location in Woodbine shared his story with WSMV of getting his start as a dishwasher at Chipotle in 2009 before climbing the corporate ladder to become a director of operations. He is also one of the so-called “Dreamers,” arriving in the United States as a DACA-eligible immigrant from Mexico when he was seven.
• PSA: Adoption fees are half off through this Sunday at Metro Animal Care & Control.

Photo by Phillip Riggins. Want to see your photo featured here?