You may have noticed activity at the empty space behind the Nashville Christian Church’s parking lot, where the Barnyard Shoppes used to be on Jefferson Street.

Construction is underway on the Brown County Barn Burner, the new business venture of young couple Kara and Clint Hammes.

At the Jefferson Street lot, the couple hopes to create a destination that fosters connection and community.

“It’s really about bringing people together,” Kara said — “not just tourists, but people that live here.”

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The two-story building under construction will have four units, set up like apartments, for overnight stays on the upper floor. The ground floor will have two larger commercial spaces: one, an event space for classes and gatherings, complete with a commercial kitchen, and the other, an interactive, kids-and-family space.

The Hammeses believe they will be meeting several needs in this community with this project.

They first looked at the property two years ago. The couple ran through a list of four or five different business uses, but saw that all of them together made a stronger offer.

“We live here, and there are things we wanted here,” Kara said.

“The intention is for the spot to be for kids and families to do stuff in town,” she said. For the kids’ space, they plan on collaborating with the Toy Chest’s Hillary Key, with Kara calling her “an innovative and impressive entrepreneur.”

The event space with the kitchen allows for people in food production and catering to work in a health department-approved space if they’re trying to transition from their home kitchens.

Kara is an educator at the Brown County Purdue Extension office and Clint works as an engineer for BWQOHT, the parent company of Big Woods, Quaff ON! and Hard Truth Hills.

The couple had done a lot of house-flipping and remodeling and thought about doing a more traditional tourist rental with this project. “This is definitely the largest and out-on-our-own limb we’ve ever done before,” Kara said.

They found that what’s currently out there in terms of tourist rentals was a bit limiting. Most properties do not house more than about 10 people. Clint is one of four siblings, and said that if he and his siblings’ families all want to travel and stay together, they have a hard time doing that.

An alternative would be a hotel stay, but Kara said when a family is staying all in one room, if the kids go to bed, that was the end of their night.

With the apartment-like space at the Barn Burner, families will be able to be close together. An apartment space will allow bedtimes to happen and adults to stay up in the living space.

“We see a need for all of those spaces,” Kara said.

They’re not the only ones. Clint said a woman drove by a few days ago while he spoke with the contractor. “She said, ‘Please satisfy my curiosity,’” Clint recalled. After he told her a bit about their project, she said, “We need that!”

When they purchased the property, they had an idea of what they wanted to do, but nothing was really set in stone. They knew they had some good ideas and that the location was ideal, being within walking distance to all that downtown Nashville has to offer.

“We were like, ‘let’s just get the property and figure out the designs later,’” Clint said. “It was a good decision.”

“We’ve seen other projects go fast and not have a great plan,” Kara said. “We were confident we had a plan that could work.”

Kara said the name Brown County Barn Burner has a couple layers of meaning. The buildings that sat on the property were the Barnyard Shoppes, so the name is a sort of tribute. They’ve even salvaged a lot of the wood from the original buildings and will repurpose it for their new space.

“(The name) is meant to be fun and exciting,” she said.

The Hammeses and their contractor started the project in March, right around the time COVID-19 hit Indiana. They plan for it to take nine months to build. They wanted to be open for a little bit of the fall season, but with COVID-19 shifting everyone’s plans in one way or another, Clint said they’re “not holding their breath for that.”

“Something that was already exciting and kind of scary — a big stress for us — you add COVID, and it’s a whole other stress,” Kara said.

“We’ll figure it out. We trust ourselves to deal with whatever might come.”

They’re thankful that construction is considered an “essential” service during the state’s stay-at-home order, because they can continue to make progress on the building, which will be done before the end of the year.

Clint said they look at the surrounding storm with confidence, focusing on the long-term and trusting that things will get back to normal.

“Our patience has been exercised,” he said. “Just take your time, be patient. When this stuff hit, all the stars were aligned to start the project.”

They believe that when social-distancing restrictions end, people will want to gather, and their business will be a place to do just that — where locals and tourists can again enjoy “life’s simple pleasures.”

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Those interested in the Brown County Barn Burner and its progress can visit bcbarnburner.com or @bcbarnburner on Instagram.

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