Forty-Two Years on Woodland Street, and the Thing That Finally Got Them Was Parking
Cumberland Hardware, the family-owned store on Woodland Street that has been selling East Nashville its washers, wall anchors and porch paint for four decades, will close on Dec. 31, 2026. John and Sheila Varallo announced it on social media this week, after 42 years in business.
They were careful to say the decision was not made lightly, and that they had watched the neighborhood grow and change around them. In their note to customers they made a point that is easy to miss if you have only ever bought a hinge there: the store, they said, had been allowed to be more than a hardware store — to become part of people's lives, their homes and their stories. They mentioned Tomato Art Fest. They mentioned the times neighbors turned up for each other after storms.
They told us what was killing them, five months ago
This was not a surprise ending, and that is the part worth sitting with. Back in April the Varallos said publicly that the parking situation in Five Points was killing the business — that the lack of free parking was, in plain terms, stopping people from shopping local. Rising costs did the rest.
A hardware store is uniquely exposed to that math. Nobody plans a trip to buy a $3 furnace filter. You stop because you are passing, and because stopping is easy. Put a paid space and an app between the driver and the door, and the errand that took four minutes becomes an errand that goes to a big box with a parking lot, or to a website. The store does not lose a customer in one dramatic stroke. It loses the small, frequent, unglamorous visits that were the whole business model, and it loses them quietly, for years, until the lease math stops working.
Five Points keeps changing hands
Cumberland is not leaving an intersection that stood still. Margot Cafe and Bar closed this summer. The 5 Points Diner and Bar closed earlier and the space became a Party Fowl. 3 Crow Bar closed back in 2023. A few blocks away, Audrey served its last Appalachian supper in August after five years.
Some of that is ordinary churn; restaurants have always opened and closed on that corner. But a hardware store is a different kind of loss, because it is not competing for anyone's night out. It is infrastructure. It is the place a renter goes when the toilet runs at 8 p.m. and the place a contractor goes when they are two screws short of finished. When a neighborhood loses its bar, it loses somewhere to go. When it loses its hardware store, it loses a service, and the nearest replacement is usually a fifteen-minute drive that begins with getting in a car — which is, with some irony, the exact problem the Varallos said they were up against.
It is also worth remembering what Five Points is. This is the neighborhood that turned a joke about a tomato into a street festival that shuts down the intersection every August and still costs nothing to attend. The character everyone drives across town for was built by exactly the sort of business that is now announcing its last day.
Before Dec. 31
The store is open until the end of the year. The Varallos have asked anyone carrying an account with them to settle it in full by Dec. 1, so the books can be closed out cleanly before the doors shut for good. If you have been meaning to return a rented tool or use up a credit, that is your deadline, not the 31st.
And if you are working out what is still standing over there, our Nashville neighborhood guide lays out what to eat and where to go in East Nashville and every other district in town.
