"You can usually walk on and team up with other guys; it's reasonably priced and typically in pretty good shape." That's how a longtime player once described McCabe Golf Course, the 27-hole municipal track that sits at the center of the Richland Creek Greenway loop, the same loop most of Sylvan Park already uses for a morning walk, a run with the dog, or a lap before the Richland Park Farmers Market opens its Saturday tables. This year the course has had more going on than a walk-on round: storm damage, a clubhouse renovation, and a public survey asking golfers and neighbors which improvements they would like to see.
The three overlap in time and in place, and together they frame what could come next at McCabe. One of them, the survey, invited the people who use the loop to weigh in.
What the January Storm Actually Left Behind
A winter storm hit McCabe hard enough that Metro Parks closed the course to let crews handle downed and damaged trees. By February 25, 2026, that cleanup was only halfway finished. Course management told WSMV that tree cutting and removal was 50 percent complete, and asked golfers and walkers to stay off the course while the work continued. The same update included a detail that mattered more than the tree count: "While they work on the course, we are renovating the clubhouse interior." The storm cleanup and the clubhouse work were running at the same time on the same site.
That meant crews were working on two fronts at once. Management asked people to keep off the course so the tree workers could finish in a timely manner, and said it would notify the public of the reopening date.
The Survey That Followed
By June 1, 2026, a volunteer group called Friends of McCabe launched a public survey asking players and neighbors to weigh in on cart path repair, clubhouse aesthetics, and the sand bunkers. The group said it wanted to hear from the public before any potential work begins, and described the effort as coming at an important time for the course after its recovery from the January storm. The survey was open to players and residents alike.
The coverage available does not yet say what the group will do with the responses, so cart paths, bunkers, and clubhouse aesthetics remain open questions for the seasons ahead.
Where McCabe Sits in Metro's Golf Program
A 2023 breakdown Metro Parks shared with the Nashville Scene described a citywide golf program covering 984 acres across six public courses, much of it on the West Side. Within that program, the Scene reported that McCabe was both the most expensive course to run and the one that brought in the most money.
That 2023 snapshot gives the storm cleanup and clubhouse work some context. McCabe is a heavily visited course inside a larger public program, and the attention it has received this year comes as Friends of McCabe gathers input on further improvements.
Volunteer Work Around the Loop
The Sylvan Park Neighborhood Association runs its own fall calendar of volunteer events near the same greenway corridor.
SPNA held its September meeting on the 14th at the McCabe Park Community Center, the same building that anchors the north end of the loop. Next up: on October 17, SPNA and the Harpeth River Conservancy are running a cleanup day along Richland Creek, the waterway that crosses three of McCabe's fairways before it continues through the rest of the neighborhood. And on November 7, the group is holding a volunteer planting day to keep expanding Sylvan Park's street tree canopy, at a time when McCabe itself has been removing storm-damaged trees.
Earlier projects follow the same logic. The SPNA finished a mural on the Murphy Road underpass, worked with Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Nashville to refresh the string lights around the Sylvan Park roundabout, and put up a new neighborhood welcome sign at the corner of Park Avenue and 46th Avenue North. Each of those projects came out of the neighborhood association's own work.
What Doesn't Change While All of This Does
The Richland Park Farmers Market continues on Saturdays at 4711 Charlotte Avenue, with more than 80 vendors during peak season. Around it, a golf course is recovering from storm damage and collecting input on improvements, a creek has a volunteer cleanup day on the calendar, and street trees are being planted on a set Saturday.
Between the Friends of McCabe survey and the SPNA's October and November volunteer days, neighbors have concrete ways to take part in how the loop looks next year.
If you're curious about how the McCabe rebuild, the creek work, or anything else moving through Sylvan Park this fall might touch your own corner of the loop, Eddie Ferrell is always glad to talk through what's actually changing on the ground here. Let's Connect.
