After nearly 30 years of constructing and designing beautiful pieces from trash, Marathon Village’s creator, Barry Walker knew he wanted to take on his biggest piece of garbage yet.
A clump of gloomy factory buildings tucked beside Interstate 40 can quickly be overlooked. With a closer glance or a drive down Clinton Street, stray dogs block the crumbling street in front of your car, prostitutes and drug dealers flood the streets looking to make end’s meet.
Garbage is piled up and the homeless have made a place of their own from the broken red brick buildings. Gunshots and dead bodies were not an uncommon sight in 1986 in the once thriving American-made car company, Marathon Motor Works of west Nashville.
Today, still a clump of gloomy, overlooked factory buildings tucked behind Interstate 40, is the recreated Marathon Village. Instead of prostitutes, gang members and stray pups, Clinton Street is now filled with Nashville natives, tourists, hipsters urging for coffee, or couples looking for bite to eat and a freshly brewed beer.
The same red brick buildings with industrial sized windows have been restored and occupied by companies living out the American Dream. With tattoo parlors, candy shops, breweries, boutiques and coffee shops showcasing Nashville’s rich history, Marathon Village has something for everyone.
Visiting Marathon Village’s main office you may come across a man smoking a cigar and zooming around in a motorized wheelchair convincing you that he can bring you to the man in charge off the whole place.
After following the man in the wheelchair and trying to keep up he’ll lead you into an office; his office. He’s the man in charge and he’s been messing with you the entire time. This man is Barry Walker; the man who saw potential out of the scraps of Nashville’s industrial past.
He sits like he knows he’s a millionaire with a bright red rugged shirt, his lush grey mustache and a red Alabama hat to support his 19-year-old daughter. He talks so fast and his draw is so heavy you have to pay attention because you might miss a really good Barry Walker original story.
Barry has always had a passion for recreating, reinventing and restoring things that most people would see as waste. He grew up Jackson, Tenn. and claims to have never been good in school.
“One thing about business- you don’t have to be really smart to be successful. You have to have the will and smarts to work around problems. You can do anything you want if you really want to do it,” said Walker.
At only 10 years old, he built a boat made out of scraps found around town, and his first hydroplane at age 12. He attended two years of college, but doesn't consider that his schooling. Instead, he went to school in a ditch.
“My house was in a ditch around 80 feet deep. I learned to build from pulling things out of the ditch. You learn business as you grow up and you don’t realize it,” said Walker.
However, Barry doesn’t talk about his childhood as if it’s in the past. “I never grew up. Never ever grow up. That’s my number one rule,” said Walker.
He moved to Nashville with $300 and high hopes of creating his way to the top. After moving into his small apartment with self-made furniture, he spent all his money and bought a broken motorcycle. He fixed it up and traded it for a broken convertible. After fixing up item after item, he was able to create a name for himself and profits started to pour in.
At age 26, Walker was ready to buy a large space for his projects. He started to renovate the property on Clinton Street and eventually began leasing the property inside to businesses and offices.
“It was the most disgusting, most dangerous part of Nashville. It was just as worse as you can Imagine. I am the first guy in Metro-Davidson country to do urban renewal,” said Walker. He would walk onto the property and start shooting his gun at the ground to scare away stray dogs and drug addicts.
Today, the eerie buildings attract visitors who want a taste of old Nashville. The marked, dark stained floors creek with every slight step, dim lighting and rusted metal pipes on the ceiling make you feel like you were part of the Motor industry nearly 100 years ago.
Walker shows up to work everyday with a smile on his face because he is living out his American dream and feels like he has never worked a day in his life.
“People keep asking me when I’m going to retire. I tell them I retired the day I started working. People have come in offering $40 million for this place and I tell them I’m not for sale. People want too much power and control, but it’s all about being happy,” said Walker.
For him, he didn’t need a degree in business to be successful. He thinks that the businessmen of America are all doing the same thing. All you need to do to make money is be creative and you don’t need a degree to have a creative mind.
“If you don’t have something, you have to create it. I don’t have time for big-shots. The real good people are the ones who make it happen. If everyone is going right, go left. You have to do something different,” said Walker.
Walker hopes that people who come to Marathon Village learn to appreciate the history and potential of places like this. He’s a firm believer in working hard and doing what you love as a career. His life is motivated by nothing other than his own pure happiness.
“Barry is a really awesome person to work under. He makes the rules. He sets where the bar is. It’s cool to see a man who’s a self-starter. It’s really inspiring,” said Walker’s office manager, Kelly Plemmens.
Not just any business or restaurant can set up shop in Marathon Village. With hundreds of people eager to get their start in these spaces, Barry Walker has to be very selective. Walker has created his company with nothing but a little bit of cash and the American Dream, and that’s exactly the type of businesses that get a spot in Marathon Village. He wants to bring in people and ideas that are creative and different than anything he’s seen before. He’s a huge advocate for businesses with driven people that have a passion for working hard and showcasing history.
“It’s a great place because all the tenants are kind of in a Marathon state of mind: laid back and trying to make a living with their businesses,” said John Woods, the heating and cooling director of Marathon Village and good friend of Walker’s.
Marathon Village is proof of the American Dream. If you do what you love and work really hard for it, you can achieve happiness. Barry Walker used his love for machinery and inventing to live out his dream by never working a day in his life. He turned a broken down space into a one of a kind attraction that brings in people from all over, even Taylor Swift who recorded her album, Fearless in Marathon Village. Barry Walker is living breathing proof that if you have a vision and a passion for something, you should run with it. Regardless of being bound to a wheelchair from a disabling motorcycle accident, Barry glides around Marathon Village with a cigar between his teeth picturing what he can transform next.
