Walk down Depot Street past Jamie's Eats and Sweets on a Saturday morning and you'll circle the block at least once looking for a spot. That has been true for a few years now, ever since the WestSide filled back in with people. Keep walking toward the old Train Depot and you'll pass a stretch of gravel and chain-link that has sat mostly empty for longer than most of us can remember why. If you've ever driven through the intersection of Cedar and Broad and muttered something about "malfunction junction," you already know the corner this story is about.
That empty lot is no longer just an empty lot. In July, the Cookeville City Council approved a Master Plan for what the city is calling the 39 Depot project, a $20 million effort to remake roughly ten acres around the historic Train Depot into parking, green space, and a public gathering area. If you live near downtown, this is the project that will change how you park, where you walk, and what that corner looks like for the next several years. But the plan that got approved is not the plan most people think they saw. Here's what's actually locked in, what's still a sketch, and why the number of parking spaces has already changed twice since the idea started.
How an empty lot became a $20 million plan
The origin story here matters, because it explains why the plan looks the way it does. Mayor Laurin Wheaton has described the whole project as something that came together almost by accident. The city had been using that lot at the southwest corner of Depot Street and South Cedar Avenue for informal parking for years, without owning it. When the property came up for sale, the city bought it rather than lose the parking it had come to depend on.
That practical starting point, buy the lot before someone else does, grew into something bigger once the city brought in a design team. After interviewing four consulting firms, the council hired a pairing of ASA Engineering & Consulting, led by Cookeville resident Kevin Tucker, and Tinker Ma, a Chattanooga architecture and planning firm with hospitality and placemaking experience. That team is credited with expanding a parking fix into a full concept for the block, one built around the Depot itself as a centerpiece rather than just a place to leave your car.
City Manager James Mills has put the investment in context that's easy to miss if you only see the headline number. The city has spent close to $10 million on downtown improvements over the last five years already. This project, once finished, is expected to roughly double that total.
What's actually funded, and what's still a sketch
This is the part that gets lost in the renderings. The Master Plan the council approved is a framework, not a blueprint with a firm construction date on every feature. Some pieces are scheduled and paid for. Others are, in the city's own language, "potential ideas as of now."
What's actually moving forward:
- A new parking lot on the purchased site, designed so it can later convert into a parking garage if demand grows
- Road improvement work, which the city targeted to begin before the end of the third quarter of 2026
- Traffic changes aimed at the Cedar and Broad intersection, the one locals already complain about
What's still conceptual, meaning it appears in the plan but has no committed timeline or funding attached yet:
- A potential farmers market space
- A museum
- A stage and entertainment plaza
- A gazebo area
- A historical marker
If you've seen renderings online with a stage, a gazebo, and a museum all rendered in the same warm afternoon light, know that only a fraction of that image has a construction schedule behind it right now. The rest is a direction the city says it wants to grow toward, contingent on future funding and future council decisions.
The parking number that kept moving
One detail tells you more about how this project actually works than any press release does. When the design team first outlined the plan back in the fall of 2025, phase one called for a parking lot with a minimum of 150 spaces. By the time the Master Plan was approved in July 2026, officials were describing the full ten-acre concept as supporting more than 350 spaces. Then, in statements made roughly three weeks before this writing, the number attached to the near-term parking lot itself had settled around 270 new spaces, with officials saying that portion should be complete about a year from now.
None of those numbers contradict each other exactly. They reflect a plan that grew in scope as the city moved from "we need parking" to "we have ten acres and a design team." If you're trying to guess what downtown parking looks like next summer, the 270-space figure tied to a roughly one-year timeline is the one worth watching. The 350-plus figure describes the site once it's fully built out, a process Mills has said could take four to five years from here.
Who's already building around it
The WestSide didn't wait for a master plan to start changing. Jamie Lankford opened her cafe, Jamie's Eats and Sweets, about four years ago, and she's watched the block fill in around her since. She's described downtown as having become the heartbeat of Cookeville over that stretch, crediting the mix of local business owners who've chosen to open there rather than out on the highway corridors. She's also been direct about what she wants most from the 39 Depot project: more parking, which she's called the single biggest complaint she hears from customers.
A few blocks over, Fire & Vine has built its rooftop dining concept around the same downtown foot traffic, betting that the district's pull is durable enough to support a stone-fired, farm-to-table menu above the street rather than at ground level. Neither business needed the city's master plan to succeed. Both stand to benefit if the parking crunch that currently sends people circling the block gets fixed.
That's worth sitting with if you live nearby. The WestSide's momentum predates this project by years. The 39 Depot plan is less a spark than an attempt to catch up to demand that local business owners created first.
What to actually expect this year and next
If you're walking or driving through the WestSide over the next twelve months, here's the realistic sequence. Road improvement construction was targeted to start before this fall is out. The parking lot itself, sized around 270 spaces, is the piece officials have said should be done about a year from now, putting completion somewhere in the second half of 2027. Green space and a public gathering area come after that, based on how the city has sequenced the project publicly. The stage, gazebo, museum, and farmers market space are the pieces that remain furthest out, dependent on future funding decisions the council hasn't made yet.
If you've been picturing a finished plaza with a farmers market and a stage by next summer, adjust that expectation. What you'll actually notice first is a bigger parking lot, some new pavement, and eventually a fixed intersection at Cedar and Broad. The rest of it, the parts that made the renderings exciting, will take longer and depend on decisions still ahead of the council.
That's not a criticism of the plan. A parking lot that quietly becomes a ten-acre district over four or five years is a pretty normal way for a small city to grow its downtown without overreaching. It just means the timeline in your head should match the one the city is actually working from, not the one in the rendering.
If you're curious how this kind of local change tends to ripple into the neighborhoods around it, or if you just want to talk through what's happening in your corner of Cookeville, Leslie Scott is always glad to have that conversation. Let's Connect.
