Black Business Boom CEO explains challenges facing women entrepreneurs
Danielle McGee Gibson, advocacy chair for NAWBO Nashville chapter and founder/CEO of Black Business Boom, talked about entrepreneurship (Episode 450).
- The new zoning tool, called a “commercial compatibility overlay,” earned final approval from the Metro Nashville Council back in October 2025.
- The overlay outright bans new “alternative financial services,” like payday loan stores and pawnshops, and beer and cigarette markets, and restricts hours for other businesses like nightclubs.
Bright and early on a Saturday morning, the meeting room inside the North Nashville police precinct was filled with people.
They were all there to weigh in on what’s become an existential question for some: Should a new type of zoning overlay, added to the city’s toolbox just a few months ago and intended to limit or outright ban certain types of businesses altogether, be applied along Buchanan Street?
Some say yes, like one resident who said this is a move the neighborhood has been talking about for years. Derrick Moore, a co-owner of Slim & Husky’s, spoke of a sense of community that at one point was lost on Buchanan Street, and the duty of business owners to be good neighbors to residents.
Others aren’t so sure. Jordan Harris, the owner of Alkebu-Lan Images Bookstore, the only Black-owned bookstore in Nashville, worried that saying no to some types of businesses might prevent others from showing up. And Valeria Lopez, the owner of Buchanan Street event space Chandelier, said it’ll affect future generations if the overlay is applied.
“Why Buchanan Street?” Lopez said. “Why does it have to be the guinea pig?”
The overlay could mark the latest chapter in Buchanan Street’s rich history as a hub for Black culture in Nashville, a notion that wasn’t lost in the room on Feb. 21. Film producer William Jenkins noted the position that Black community members are in to guide this process, an opportunity they’ve historically been denied.
“If we can reason together, this is a historic moment,” Jenkins said. “So I would ask all of you to show each other a little patience, to show each other a little grace.”
How the overlay works
The new zoning tool, called a “commercial compatibility overlay,” earned final approval from the Metro Nashville Council back in October.
Spearheaded by District 21 Council member Brandon Taylor, the overlay is the final product of years of attempts to strike a balance between shaping a neighborhood that’s compatible with the people who live in it while still allowing enough freedom for business owners to be a part of the puzzle, too.
Under the overlay, that means no new “alternative financial services,” otherwise known as payday loan stores and pawnshops, or beer and cigarette markets. Other types of businesses, like bars and nightclubs, are subject to restrictions on things like their hours of operation and how far their outdoor service or seating areas must be located from the nearest residential property line.
But those restrictions would apply only to new businesses, not those that currently line the historically vibrant Black commercial district in Nashville.
A few months later, this is the first attempt by a council member to apply the overlay anywhere in the city. Taylor said it’s taken years to finalize, and this version is “the most balanced approach that I have been able to propose.”
“My goal, number one, is to preserve and support Black community, simply put,” Taylor said. “And when I say Black community, the businesses, the neighboring businesses, the neighbors, the residents that live there, those are the people I want to preserve, I want to protect.”
Overlay poised for final approval with one more council vote
About a week and a half after the Saturday community meeting, Taylor’s overlay effort cleared a crucial hurdle.
Council members voted to approve the two bills applying the overlay to properties along two stretches of Buchanan Street at their March 3 meeting.
While council members were nearly entirely unified in those votes, many Nashvillians in the gallery appeared to hold the opposite opinion. Both bills came with an accompanying public hearing, and the majority of people who gave public comment during either hearing said they were opposed to the overlay.
Lopez, the owner of Chandelier, was one of them. Tequila Johnson, the co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Equity Alliance, was another.
“I have learned more about planning and zoning in the past month than I ever thought I would learn in my life,” Johnson said. “And the one thing that keeps ringing in my head is that every time there is something that we have never done before, and that we don’t know what the consequences are, it gets tested in Black neighborhoods.”
The overlay’s now teed up for final approval at the council’s March 17 meeting, when it’ll be heard on its last of three required readings.
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him with questions, tips and story ideas at ahornbostel@tennessean.com.
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