WEHO ROAD CLOSURES 4th Avenue Closes Sunday for a Television Shoot
ABC's 9-1-1 Nashville films driving scenes from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, August 23. Here is every street affected, where you can't park, where the bus goes instead — and the question the closure raises about a neighborhood that keeps getting cast as a backdrop.
If you drove down 4th Avenue South this week, you may have seen a pale green sheet taped to a door: NOTICE OF FILMING — REVISED BUS DETOUR. It is dated Tuesday, August 18, and it is signed by Sydney Lunn, key assistant location manager for the second season of 9-1-1 Nashville, the ABC procedural that has been shooting around the county since last year.
The short version: on Sunday, August 23, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., the production will film a series of driving scenes on 4th Avenue South. Getting those scenes requires closing a good portion of the street grid between 3rd and 4th, and it requires clearing the curb along the detour route. Emergency vehicles keep right-of-way throughout. Third Avenue stays open the entire day.
That is nine hours, on a Sunday, on the spine of the neighborhood. Below is the full accounting, taken directly from the notice.
What Closes, and When
ROAD CLOSURES · Sunday, Aug. 23, 9AM–6PM
4th Avenue South — Oak Street to Hart Street
Chestnut Street — 3rd Avenue South to the railroad crossing (local traffic only from Martin St. to the tracks)
Mildred Shute Avenue — 3rd Avenue to 4th Avenue (one scene; reopens as soon as possible)
Oak Street (northbound) — Rep. John Lewis Way to 4th Avenue South (local traffic only)
Cameron Street — 3rd Avenue to 4th Avenue (local traffic only)
Detours: 3rd Avenue through to Nolensville Pike, or Oak Street to Bass Street to Fort Negley Boulevard, returning to Chestnut and WeHo.
The notice describes the closure of 4th Avenue South as running "from McCann St./Oak St. to Hart St." in its narrative paragraph, and as "Oak St. to Hart St." in its own summary list. Read them together and the practical effect is the same stretch of 4th, but if your driveway sits near McCann it is worth a phone call rather than an assumption.
The Oak Street and Cameron Street closures are not about filming. They exist to stop drivers from hitting the barricade on 4th and swinging a U-turn in front of somebody's house. Businesses and residences on both keep access.
The Parking, Which Is the Real Problem
NO PARKING · Sunday, Aug. 23, 9AM–6PM
3rd Avenue South — McCann Street to Hart Street
McCann Street — 4th Avenue to 3rd Avenue
Here is the mechanism worth understanding, because it is the part that will actually affect the most people. Closing 4th Avenue pushes its traffic onto 3rd Avenue. NDOT, according to the notice, asked the production to post No Parking signs along that detour route so the diverted traffic has room to move. So the curb gets cleared on 3rd — a street that is not being filmed at all — to absorb the overflow from the street that is.
Readers who followed our reporting on the neighborhood's parking inventory will recognize the arithmetic. WeHo's curb supply is already thin, the off-street supply is unevenly distributed, and a great many households here have neither a driveway nor a garage. For those households, nine hours of posted No Parking on a Sunday is not an inconvenience. It is a scavenger hunt.
To the production's credit, the notice anticipates this and makes a specific offer: "If you don't have a driveway or garage to park off-street, please contact me personally so that I can help arrange parking for you." That is a real offer with a real phone number attached, and if you need it, use it — before Sunday, not on Sunday morning.
The Bus — This Is the Revision
The word REVISED in the headline of the notice refers to the transit detour, which means an earlier version of this plan circulated with different bus routing. Under the current plan, WeGo will move the route to Oak Street to Humphreys, returning to 4th Avenue just south of the train tracks.
The notice does not name which route or which stops go out of service, and a temporarily rerouted bus is exactly the kind of change that strands the riders least able to absorb it. If you or a neighbor depends on that line Sunday, check WeGo directly rather than trusting a flyer taped to a door.
Then Again on Wednesday
Production returns Wednesday, August 26, to film at 1201 4th Avenue South. That day is a far lighter footprint: lane closures on 4th Avenue and Chestnut Street, with no other interruption to traffic promised. No parking restrictions are listed for Wednesday and no hours are given.
A crew that clears the curb on a street it isn't even filming has, by definition, effects that run past the frame.
The Part Worth Talking About
Let's give the production its due first, because it earned some. The notice went out five days ahead. It was coordinated with the Mayor's office, NDOT and MNPD. It preserves local access on nearly every closed segment, promises to reopen Mildred Shute the moment the scene wraps, keeps 3rd Avenue open all day, and puts a named human being's cell number at the bottom with an offer to personally sort out your parking. Measured against how development notices, utility cuts and street work typically arrive in this neighborhood — which is to say, as a cone and a shrug — this is a courteous document.
And it is still worth naming what is happening. Wedgewood-Houston is being cast, with increasing regularity, as a location. Not a place with an errand to run and a shift to get to, but a look: brick, rail, garage doors, the particular light off 4th Avenue at the end of an afternoon. Film crews, brand shoots and lifestyle campaigns want that texture precisely because it was made by people doing actual work here, over years, without a permit application. The texture is the product of the place. Then the place gets closed for nine hours so the texture can be photographed.
That is not villainy, and film work in Nashville is real work for real crews, a fair share of them local. But there is a cost, and it does not land evenly. It lands on the Sunday-trade businesses along the closed stretch, on the household with no driveway on 3rd, on the bus rider whose stop moved. Those are the people who absorb the inconvenience, and they are not the people cutting the check.
The reasonable ask is simply that the ledger be kept honestly — that the neighborhood know what it is trading and get something back for it. Which is a question the Dispatch would like answered before 9-1-1 Nashville books its third season here.
What We Haven't Confirmed
This account is drawn entirely from the posted notice. The following are open and being pursued:
WeGo: Route number(s) and specific stops out of service Sunday. Not named in the notice.
Revision: What the original bus detour was, and why it changed.
1201 4th Ave S: Wednesday's location and hours; whether the tenant was notified separately.
Permitting: Whether a location fee, impact payment or business-disruption compensation was paid, and to whom.
Businesses: How many storefronts on the closed segment lose Sunday trade, and whether any were consulted before the plan was set.
Who to Call
Sydney Lunn Key Assistant Location Manager 9-1-1 Nashville — Season 2 615-714-4304 sydlunn@yahoo.com
Contact information as printed on the public notice, which explicitly invites questions and concerns. If you have no off-street parking, call before Sunday.
