The Willows in Cookeville: Target, Home Depot and What's Next

This week at The Willows, cashiers were still setting up registers inside the new Home Depot when the opening ceremony ended and everyone was sent out to the parking lot. The Upper Cumberland Business Journal reporter on the scene described "a whisper of fall in the air." Some customers walked over to Target for its soft opening. Others waited in line to enter the first Home Depot in Putnam County.

That parking lot is at 1110 S. Willow Avenue, on the southeast corner of South Willow and Interstate 40. For years, Cookeville's chain shopping and dining stayed on the north side of the interstate along Interstate Drive. With two national anchors open and a group of restaurants permitted or planned behind them, the south side of Willow is turning into the place for a Saturday errand run. The people who built it say that shift was the whole point.

Why the south side of Willow needed two giants

The developer behind The Willows is Mike McGuffin's CHM Construction. The same company built the Shoppes at Eagle Point on Interstate Drive, so it has worked both sides of the interchange. At the Home Depot opening, McGuffin described the problem he had to solve:

"The challenge was that the retailers always wanted to be on the Interstate Drive side of it. So, to convince them to come over (to the south side of Willow), it took big retailers like these two that draw from such a large trade area to make this happen."

The way he tells it, Target and Home Depot are what make the south side work for everyone else. Their trade areas reach far enough that smaller retailers and restaurants will now follow them across the interstate. Both stores also had a long line of local requests behind them. Randy Porter, who was Putnam County Mayor while the project took shape, said the two chains had been "by far, the most requested by our citizens" during his term. At the Home Depot opening, Porter called it "one of the most wanted stores that we didn't have here in Putnam County history."

Cookeville Mayor Chad Gilbert summed up the week this way: "It's a big week for Cookeville with Target yesterday and this today. It probably doesn't get much bigger than that in one week."

What's open this weekend, and what's still a building permit

The Willows was designed to open in phases as each tenant finishes construction. As of Oct. 10, 2026, here's where each piece stands:

The Target is 128,000 square feet and includes a Starbucks Café and a CVS Pharmacy. It offers Drive Up, Order Pickup, and same-day delivery. Between the two stores, the jobs count is large. Home Depot employs 180 associates, and Target was expected to create more than 150 jobs.

Look at the restaurants on that list and you can see McGuffin's point in action. Every restaurant on it has come since the anchors were locked in. The new McDonald's will be owned and operated by Funderburk Family McDonald's, with Venture Construction building it. Culver's sits a little north on the same road at Humble Drive, outside The Willows itself. It's on the same stretch of South Willow, though. The Upper Cumberland Business Journal says it has received its building permits and looks on track. The paper also says opening plans "are often fluid," so Nov. 16 is a target, not a promise.

The main entrance is on Green Gate Lane

More shoppers on South Willow means a new way into the lot. In a May 2025 City of Cookeville video update, Vice Mayor Luke Eldridge said the city required the developer to complete a traffic impact study. Based on that study, the developer was required to build a list of road improvements. Here's the access layout the city described:

1. The main entrance is on Green Gate Lane. The street was to be widened to three lanes: one lane for turning onto Green Gate from Willow, and two for turning left or right from Green Gate onto South Willow.
2. A new traffic signal at South Willow and Green Gate Lane. The plan includes pedestrian signals and marked crosswalks.
3. A secondary customer entrance on South Willow that serves northbound traffic only. When you leave by this exit, you have to turn north toward the interstate. The city said that design was intentional to keep South Willow from backing up.
4. A separate truck entrance for deliveries, which keeps large vehicles away from customer traffic.
5. A new lit, ADA-compliant sidewalk on the north side of Green Gate Lane, running from South Willow to the back of the development. The city's energy department was also moving overhead power lines underground in that area.

In that update, the city said every one of these improvements had to be finished before The Willows opened in October 2026. Our research didn't find a recent city notice confirming that all of the work is done. Treat this list as the layout the city required, and expect to find the details on the ground once you pull in.

In practical terms, if you're heading south or back toward Cookeville's south side neighborhoods, the Green Gate Lane signal is the exit built for that turn. The South Willow exit sends you north toward I-40.

Meanwhile, Interstate Drive is reshuffling

While new stores open south of the interstate, the north side is changing too. The O'Charley's at 1401 Interstate Drive has closed. Down the road, the property and building at 1115 Interstate Drive, home to an IHOP, sold in an all-cash deal to Verlaine Capital, and by late spring employees had been told that restaurant would close in the coming weeks. The next tenant at that address is First Watch, the breakfast, brunch, and lunch chain. In June 2026 it posted a job listing for a restaurant operations manager at its Cookeville location, 1115 Interstate Drive. No opening date has been announced.

So McGuffin's "Interstate Drive side" isn't going quiet. Its buildings are getting new tenants while the big-box anchors settle in on the other side of the interchange. Interstate Drive is changing hands, and South Willow is building from scratch.

The two sides meet at South Willow Avenue and Interstate Drive, and the city is working on that intersection now. In June 2026, Cookeville approved a partnership with TDOT to add a dedicated right-turn lane on South Willow at Interstate Drive. The city committed up to $500,000. TDOT prepared the designs, and the city is responsible for relocating utilities and dedicating right-of-way. No completion date was reported, so for now, the trip between the old restaurant row and the new shopping center runs through that intersection as it is today.

How Cookeville gets here from here

Since the Upper Cumberland Business Journal published its September opening timeline, the two anchors have gone from plans to working stores. Gilbert framed the week as a sign of more to come: "They want to be here. Target wants to be here, and other folks that have seen us and want to be here; it couldn't be more exciting." The September timeline itself admitted one open question: "As for the traffic situation? That's a conversation for another day."

Here's what's on the calendar after this weekend: Target's official opening Sunday, Oct. 11; a McDonald's at 1124 S. Willow projected for this fall; Culver's aiming for Nov. 16 at Humble Drive; and Chuy's, In-N-Out, and First Watch still waiting on dates.

Big openings like The Willows change how a neighborhood gets through its week, from where a weekend project starts to which way you turn out of a parking lot. At Tammy & Lindsey, we follow those changes all over the Upper Cumberland because they shape how daily life works for our neighbors. If you're wondering how the new South Willow corridor fits with your part of Cookeville, Contact Us. We're happy to talk it through.