Berry Hill is less than one square mile of land south of downtown Nashville, technically its own incorporated city within Metro Nashville, and home to the highest concentration of recording studios in the city. It is also, as of 2023, the site of a planned $250 million music and entertainment campus that could reshape what Berry Hill means for the next generation of Nashville’s music industry.
The neighborhood is small in population, commercially dense in music infrastructure, and largely invisible to tourists. That invisibility is part of what makes it work.
The music industry core
Berry Hill has roughly 40 recording studios and music publishers operating within its boundaries, according to the city’s own website. That density is not an accident. The neighborhood developed as a satellite to Music Row over decades, attracting studios that wanted proximity to the industry without paying downtown prices. The sound stage footprints are larger, the parking is easier, and the commercial streets have the kind of anonymity that allows working musicians and producers to move through without attracting attention.
Universal Music Group operates East Iris Studios in Berry Hill on a campus of eight buildings and five recording studios on East Iris Drive, which it acquired for $4.3 million in 2018. Before UMG took ownership, the facility was the Nashville House of Blues recording complex. Artists including Kesha and Alison Krauss have recorded there.
The UMG campus development
In December 2023, plans were filed for a $250 million entertainment industry production and education campus anchored by Universal Music Group. The development spans 4.14 acres across properties on Columbine Place and East Iris Drive, near Columbine Park. The proposed project includes a 34,000-square-foot recording studio zone, a 59,500-square-foot music studio complex with a restaurant, an expanded public park with a performance stage, and an education and office building exceeding 115,000 square feet. Most significantly, it would contain the first scoring stage, a room designed for recording orchestral film scores, in the central United States. Over 400 parking spaces are included in the plans.
Berry Hill City Manager Joe Baker called it “a transformational development for both Berry Hill and Nashville.” The Berry Hill commissioners approved the concept plan. Full buildout is expected in phases.
What Berry Hill looks like on the ground
The streets are a mix of converted houses operating as studios and publishers, small commercial buildings, and a handful of independent restaurants and coffee shops including Sunflower Bakehouse and Sunflower Cafe, which has been a neighborhood fixture. It is not a walkable destination in the way East Nashville or 12 South are. You come here for a specific reason, not to browse. The aesthetic is working rather than curated.
The neighborhood also functions as Nashville’s answer to Los Angeles’s music production zones: less glamorous than its reputation, more productive than it looks.
Sources
- Nashville Post, Berry Hill $250M campus announcement, December 2023
- Billboard, UMG Nashville music studio education complex, December 2023
- WKRN, Universal Music Group $250M entertainment campus, December 2023
- Digital Music News, UMG $250M campus plans, December 2023
- Grammy.com, Nashville House of Blues Studios acquired by Universal
- City Now Next, Universal-anchored production campus advances in Berry Hill, January 2024