After weathering three floods over the last five years, the owner of Creekside Retreat has decided to shut the hotel down permanently.
On March 20, flood waters surrounded Creekside Retreat after heavy rain the night before. The hotel was already closed due to pandemic stay-at-home orders, so no guests were there at the time.
The retreat buildings used to be apartments. They were heavily damaged by the 2008 flood. In 2014, the buildings were renovated and changed over to short-term lodging.
Within the first year of opening, in the summer of 2015, Creekside Retreat flooded. It went through another round of renovations. Then, it flooded again in February 2019.
“Things that people probably don’t realize is the expense that goes into totally redoing the whole first floor of the buildings. That includes replacing furniture, carpeting and drywall,” said General Manager Vicki Blake.
“Our owner made a decision that a third time was too much, and that he had invested so much money into it, he wasn’t wanting to do it a third time.”
The property is owned by Jim Hammond. Blake said he has not decided what to do with the property yet. “It just will not reopen as Creekside Retreat, under his ownership, anyways,” she said.
“I’ve heard all kinds of rumors, like tearing the buildings down, selling it and they are doing this or that, but nothing has been decided.”
In 2015, around 36 inches of flood water came into the first floor of the buildings. In 2019, it was about 30 inches of water.
This year’s flood brought the lowest amount of water, with 18 inches, but Blake said the same renovations have to happen no matter the level.
“Once the furniture is contaminated, the EPA says we can’t keep it for use. All of the furniture on the first floor, our main office and our conference center, the carpeting and everything has to come out. Depending on the depth of water is how much of the drywall they take out, but usually they’ll take four feet up to keep from having mold,” Blake said.
“We had been rated a five-star property, so we, of course, each time tried to replace it at the same standard we had. It’s costly. We do have flood insurance, but it does not cover everything. … It’s very costly even with flood insurance.”
Creekside Retreat never fully recovered from the flood in 2019, Blake said. The hotel reopened that June and built its regular overnight business back up, but it had struggled to attract some groups back to the hotel since Blake had to cancel their reservations when the flood happened. “Quite a large amount of them — I think I had around 20 groups, in that range. I did everything I could to keep them in Brown County. I transferred the meetings to other hotels then when 2020 came around, and I pursued them.
“They didn’t come back,” she said.
“A lot of them didn’t even come back to Brown County. It was understandable. You’re afraid of a flood and didn’t want to make your plans.”
Blake was looking at 2020 as her time to rebuild, and then recoup losses starting in 2021. Then the pandemic hit, followed by the flash flood.
“The one bright spot was the new music center, and we were definitely starting to see business come in from that. We looked at that as kind of our salvation for 2020,” she said.
Ultimately, the future of the property rests with Hammond.
“Mr. Hammond is investigating all avenues for use of the property. … He has quite a financial investment there,” Blake said.
“People always ask me, ‘Why did he do it?’ He was from Brown County and he said he always hated to see that property just sit and go away, so he made the decision to make a hotel out of it. The floods kind of put a stop to that.”
Acquisition talks?
The Brown County Redevelopment Commission briefly discussed this property during the group’s April 23 Zoom meeting. Maddison Miller, CEO of the Brown County Community Foundation, said she was asked to approach the RDC to see if the group would be interested in talking with the owner about possibilities. The owner is interested in seeing the property be developed, and in what kinds of incentives are available if he were to donate it or sell it, she said.
About half of the portion of the property that fronts State Road 46 is out of the floodway; the other half of that approximately 9.3-acre chunk is permitted to be raised out of the floodway, said RDC member Jim Schultz. It also has natural gas, water, sewer and electricity, and a driveway connecting to 46 — all of which are valuable, he said.
The part where the Creekside buildings are is in the floodway, and therefore not buildable, but it could be used for wetland mitigation, he said.
RDC members said they were interested in talking with the owner, but they were not sure about the specifics of possibly acquiring the property. The current members of the commission have not been involved in any property acquisition or redevelopment yet on behalf of the county.
After the meeting, RDC members learned that the property appears to be within the town boundaries, not out in the county, so they might not be the entity to take the lead on this. Schultz said he planned to “continue to engage.” He is the county RDC member who normally attends Nashville Redevelopment Commission meetings.
‘Double trouble’
Blake and her husband, Cal, are the only two employees working for Creekside Retreat as they wrap up the business and close it down.
“We’ll be there until a final decision is made (about the property) and everything is closed up,” she said.
Hammond did pay all other employees until the end of April because he did not want them going without paychecks, Blake said.
Hammond owns other businesses, so Blake said it’s up to her if she wishes to go work for another one of his after Creekside Retreat officially closes. “I don’t have a date for that. It’s a slow process,” Blake said about the closure timeline.
In February, the Blakes bought the Nashville General Store shuttle buses from Brian Yeatman. They changed the name to Brown County Shuttle Service. Vicki said the shuttles were also going to be an asset for Creekside Retreat, since they could take guests to and from weddings in the county who may be staying at the hotel.
Unfortunately, one of the buses was parked at Creekside Retreat when the flood hit last month.
“We’re having double trouble. … We’re trying to recover from that. We’ll be back,” she said.
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Brown County Tire
Ray and Debbie Guffey have waded through floodwaters for nearly 30 years at Brown County Tire.
But the flood on March 20 was the worst so far, Debbie said.
This time, the water stayed in the building longer than it has in the past. They couldn’t get back in the building until that Sunday, March 22.
They had about four feet of water in the building, which they saw on video cameras. “Once it came, it came pretty quick,” Guffey said.
The building has flooded a number of times, and each time it happens, they know it’s coming. “When there’s a forecast of rain, we start to put stuff up,” Guffey said. “But heavy stuff, you can’t. It’s a lot of work. You get so heartbroken.”
Brown County Tire did reopen.
When asked if they were going to move, Guffey said that their plans were up in the air at this point.
“We’ve gotta do something,” she said. “We can’t keep going through this. It’s too devastating.”
They’ve talked about closing, but their customers keep them going. Guffey said a lot of people depend on them. “We’ve made a lot of friends,” she said. “We’re here to help.”
For right now, they’re closing an hour earlier, but business has not slowed down. Even with floodwaters and worldwide illness, they’re staying strong. “Work is pretty steady,” she said. “That’s all we can ask for.”
NAPA
NAPA, next door to Brown County Tire, has been affected by the numerous floods over the years. Since 2013, Manager Tommy Arthur said this was the third flood he has seen.
The March 20 flood closed NAPA for two days and damaged merchandise, Arthur said. There was a foot of water inside the building.
Arthur said the owners are looking for a new location, but in the meantime, the store is open.
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