Westhaven, Franklin TN: A Deck Builder's Field Notes from Front Street

What 25 years of working in Williamson County teaches you about a master-planned community built off Boyd Mill Pike on land that used to grow hay for our horses.

The Texaco that used to sit at the bottom of Highway 96 closed before most of Westhaven's residents were born. Back then, when this part of southern Franklin was still mostly hay fields and Tennessee Walking Horse barns, you could ride a bicycle from Old Hillsboro Road up 96 to Gray's Drugs and order a chocolate milkshake at the soda fountain. Gray's is a Starbucks now. The hay fields are a 1,500-acre master-planned community with a championship golf course, a lake, and a town center patterned on Disney's Main Street USA.

We know this because we used to buy hay from the farmer who sold the land that became Westhaven. We've also built a lot of decks here.

This page is a working guide to what makes Westhaven what it is — its history, its Architectural Review Committee, the difference between City of Franklin and Williamson County code jurisdictions, and the small calls we've learned to make on builds inside its borders. If you live in Westhaven and you're thinking about a deck, or you're moving in and trying to figure out who knows the neighborhood from the inside out, this is for you.

Westhaven Wasn't Always Here

The public story of Westhaven begins in the late 1990s, when Tim Downey — who had founded Southern Land Company in 1986 — started talking to Franklin and Williamson County officials about a master-planned community on the southwest edge of town, off Boyd Mill Pike. The idea came from two places. Downey grew up in Farmington, Michigan, a small town east of Detroit where you could walk to the bakery and the hardware store from your house. And he was, like a lot of people who came of age in the 1960s, taken with Walt Disney's Main Street USA at Disneyland and Walt Disney World — the cobblestones, the gas-lamp scale, the front porches close to the sidewalk.

Sales of the first homes started in 2003. The first hundred homeowners are still recognized as Westhaven's "founding residents." Twenty-three years later, the property covers 1,500 acres with roughly half the land preserved as green space. The community includes an 18-hole championship golf course at 4000 Golf Club Lane, the Westhaven Lake with a walking trail wrapping the perimeter, five swimming pools (including the Skube Swim Center with competition lanes), a 15,000-square-foot Residents Club at 401 Cheltenham Avenue, nine miles of nature trails, and a commercial Town Center on Front Street with a Kroger, restaurants, a coffee shop, and a hair salon. Many residents use golf carts for short trips between the residential streets and the Town Center.

The land it sits on used to belong to families who farmed Williamson County for generations. The transformation happened fast. Williamson County's population grew 56.3 percent between 1990 and 2000 — faster than any other county in Tennessee — and most of the new arrivals settled in or around Franklin. By the time Westhaven broke ground, the county had lost a lot of farmland to subdivision plats. Westhaven was, depending on your point of view, either a large piece of that loss or a much better version of what was going to happen anyway. Probably both.

What Westhaven Looks Like in 2026

If you've never walked Front Street in the Town Center, the Westhaven aesthetic is easier to describe by where it borrows than where it invents. The street grid is New Urbanist — narrow streets, alley-loaded garages, sidewalks pulled right up against the front porches. Many lots are zero-lot-line, which means a neighbor's wall sits at the edge of your side yard; in exchange, you get walkable courtyards, pocket parks, and a lifestyle that runs on golf carts and front-porch evenings. The architectural language is brick-fronted traditional, farmhouse-modern, and Southern-influenced custom, with paint-grade trim, fiber cement siding, and stone accents. The cobblestones around the Town Center fountains are the Disney influence wearing the surface.

Front Street is the commercial spine. The Kroger anchors the south end. The walkable storefronts include Coal Town Pizza at 187 Front Street #103 — coal-fired oven, the kind of thin crust that catches a little char on the edges, the place a lot of Westhaven families end up on a Friday after a game. There's FirstBank at 1015 Westhaven Boulevard, ReWind Medical Solutions at 1025 Westhaven Boulevard, a hair salon, a coffee shop, a preschool, a gift shop. Bound Booksellers — the independent bookstore that opened in Westhaven in 2016 and has been a Town Center fixture ever since — is moving to The Factory at Franklin in summer 2026. The Westhaven location at 158 Front Street #106 stays open through June. If you've been meaning to stop in, this is the year.

Westhaven Lake sits east of the Town Center; the perimeter walking trail starts a short distance away and loops the water. If you've never seen it, walk it once at sunset. Beyond the lake, Westhaven is laid out in named sections — the older brick-traditional streets of the founding phases, the newer farmhouse-modern phases, the Active Adult section managed under the Astor Club, and the cottage-scale homes with smaller lots and garage-apartment configurations. Each section has slightly different design covenants. Not all of them are obvious until you've worked on a few of them.

The Westhaven Foundation, Porchfest, and What Lives Here

Most subdivisions don't have their own 501(c)(3). Westhaven does. The Westhaven Foundation was established in 2007 to serve as a leader, catalyst, and resource for philanthropy in Westhaven and the broader Williamson County community. Co-founders include Charlie Grimes, Matt Magallanes, and Mark McCutcheon — McCutcheon being a Westhaven founding homeowner who, after reading an article about the original Porchfest in Ithaca, New York, proposed the idea to the HOA and Southern Land Company. Today Porchfest turns Westhaven's front porches into music stages every June; the daytime music is free. The Foundation also runs Foundation Park, the Memorial Day Block Party, Witchaven (the Halloween version), Hillsboro Tomorrow, Franklin 4 the Cure, and the Whiskey Warmer Annual 5K Fundraiser. The 10th annual Whiskey Warmer was held at Westhaven on April 5, 2026. The inaugural Franklin Cocktail Festival was hosted at Westhaven Lakeside (1001 Westhaven Boulevard) in October 2025.

That community life sets the texture of who lives in Westhaven and how they treat their outdoor space. The decks we build here are decks people actually use — for porch parties during Porchfest, for kids' birthday block parties on Memorial Day, for whiskey-and-bluegrass evenings in early spring, for the coffee on a Saturday morning before walking to the lake. We design with that in mind.

Westhaven's reputation in the rest of Franklin runs hot and cold. The community has its critics — go on r/FranklinTN and you'll find people who've crossed it off the list. The most common complaint isn't the architecture or the cobblestones; it's a perceived insularity, the sense that the community is its own world. The most common defense from the residents who live there is the same answer: it is its own world, and that's the point. Decks built here read accordingly. The kind of homeowner who chooses Westhaven tends to know what they want before the first design meeting. We meet them where they are.

The Architectural Review Committee

Westhaven's design standards are tighter than almost any subdivision in Franklin. That's by design. The ARC enforces the look-and-feel that residents pay an HOA premium to live inside, which means every exterior modification — including new decks, replacement decks, screened porches, pergolas, covered structures, railing changes, and material swaps on existing decks — needs ARC approval before the City of Franklin will issue a building permit.

The Westhaven HOA is managed by Little & Young, Inc. The ARC submission packet typically includes:

• A site plan showing the deck footprint, dimensions, setbacks from neighbors, and existing landscaping
• Elevation drawings showing the deck's height above grade, the railing detail, and any stair locations
• Material specifications listing the decking line, the railing system, the post wraps, and the fastener system
• Color samples or product cut sheets — physical samples are stronger than printed swatches
• Construction timeline and access plan for crew vehicles

Typical review window: Westhaven ARC turnaround in our experience runs about two to three weeks from a complete submission. Incomplete packets restart the clock, which is a real cost on a project where the homeowner is trying to be on a deck before Memorial Day.

HOA fees: Westhaven HOA dues range from roughly $107 to $862 per month depending on property type and section, covering access to the Residents Club, the five pools, the fitness center, the walking trails, the pocket parks, and the community events. The estate-tier sections pay the higher end; the cottage and active-adult sections pay the lower. Higher dues translate into the level of architectural oversight you should expect on your submission.

The ARC pays particular attention to:

• Material continuity with the front of the home. A back deck on a brick-fronted home pairs cleanly with composite or PVC in wood-tone finishes — English Walnut, Weathered Teak, Coastline, Spiced Rum — and aluminum or composite balusters in the trim color. Cable rail systems work in the back-elevation views that don't face the street; they tend to come back red-lined when proposed for street-visible decks.
• Roofline tie-ins on covered porches. Westhaven's homes have specific roof pitches and eave details. A covered porch addition that doesn't honor the existing roof line gets sent back almost every time.
• Side-yard setbacks on zero-lot-line homes. The City of Franklin setbacks apply, plus the ARC's own conventions on shared-wall visibility from the courtyard side. On a zero-lot-line house, the deck's relationship to the neighboring wall matters as much as the rear elevation.
• Color palette. Bright reds, white vinyl railing on brick-traditional homes, anything that breaks the wood-tone-and-trim language — these get reviewed hard.

City of Franklin vs. Williamson County — Which Codes Apply Inside Westhaven

This part trips up out-of-area builders all the time. Westhaven sits inside the incorporated City of Franklin, which means City of Franklin Building & Neighborhood Services issues your permit, not Williamson County. The two jurisdictions are now on different code editions:

• City of Franklin: 2024 International Residential Code, effective January 1, 2026. Plus the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code for residential. Plus the 2023 NEC. Local amendments live in the Franklin Municipal Code Title 12.
• Williamson County (unincorporated): 2021 IRC, effective August 1, 2025. Different inspector, different submission process, different fee schedule.

For a Westhaven deck, the 2024 IRC applies because Westhaven is inside Franklin city limits. The R507 deck section governs footings, ledger attachment, joist span, beam sizing, post connections, and guard heights. The 2024 update brought tighter rules around lateral load anchoring at the ledger and around joist hanger specification — items the City of Franklin inspectors are now actively flagging on plan review.

City of Franklin Building & Neighborhood Services:

• 120 9th Avenue South, Franklin, TN 37064
• (615) 794-7012
• Electronic Plan Review System (PDF submissions)
• Residential permits processed in 7 working days or less

The sequence for a Westhaven deck is straightforward: ARC approval through Westhaven (2-3 weeks), then City of Franklin permit submission (1 week or less to issue once ARC approval is in hand), then inspections during construction — footing, framing, final.

Williamson County Building Codes Department (1320 W. Main Street, (615) 790-5718) handles the unincorporated parts of the county — Leiper's Fork, parts of College Grove, rural lots outside city limits. Westhaven is not in their jurisdiction. If a contractor tells you they pulled a Williamson County permit for a Westhaven deck, something's wrong. Either it's not actually in Westhaven, or it didn't get pulled at all.

How We Build to IRC R507 Inside Westhaven

The 2024 IRC's R507 is the residential deck section. Every deck we build in Westhaven gets engineered to it without exception:

• Footings. IRC R403.1.4 sets a 12-inch minimum below undisturbed grade. On Westhaven's interior lots — particularly the south-end phases where the grading was cut and filled during the 2010s expansion — we routinely pour 24- to 36-inch sonotube footings to clear the fill and seat in undisturbed clay. The fill on some of those lots wasn't compacted to spec for full footing load. We've had to retrofit a few decks that were built to assumed grade.
• Ledger attachment. Half-inch lag screws or through-bolts, Simpson DTT2Z lateral load anchors at the corners of the ledger-to-house connection, and step flashing layered correctly. The most common failure on rebuilds — and we see this on Westhaven homes built between 2003 and 2010 — is a ledger nailed (not bolted) into the rim joist by an early-phase builder. We replace those even when the rest of the structure passes inspection.
• Hardware. Simpson Strong-Tie joist hangers, hurricane ties, and post bases. The 2024 IRC update tightened joist hanger specification standards; we use the higher-grade hangers across every build now.
• Guards. 36-inch minimum height for residential, four-inch sphere rule on balusters. Cable rail systems require specific post-blocking detail to keep the cable taut over a Tennessee summer; we've installed enough Feeney CableRail and AFCO systems in Westhaven to know the right tensioning sequence.

Materials That Hold Up in This Climate, on These Homes

Tennessee runs humid summers, freeze-thaw winters, and enough sun on south-facing Westhaven decks to fade almost any material that wasn't built for it. After 25 years of seeing decks come back for rebuilds in Williamson County, our short list for Westhaven specifically:

TimberTech AZEK Vintage Collection. Capped PVC, lightest weight per square foot of any premium board, and roughly 15 degrees cooler underfoot than dark composites in the August sun on a south-facing deck. The English Walnut and Weathered Teak finishes are the two most-approved colors in our Westhaven submissions. 50-year limited lifetime fade and stain warranty.

Trex Transcend / Trex Signature. Wood-fiber-and-plastic composite with a strong color range. Spiced Rum and Vintage Lantern both work against Westhaven's farmhouse-modern phases. Heavier than AZEK; we steer south-facing exposures toward AZEK instead.

Deckorators Voyage. Mineral-based composite, lighter than wood-fiber composites, runs cooler in direct sun. Best for Westhaven's larger multi-level builds where weight matters and the south-end lots have the steeper grade.

Pressure-treated yellow pine with Cabot's solid stain. Still the right call for budget-conscious rebuilds where the homeowner accepts a 3-year refinish cycle. Less common in Westhaven because the ARC tends to favor lower-maintenance materials, but we'll still build it when it's the right answer for a specific project.

For railing: Feeney or AFCO cable rail on aluminum posts is the most-approved configuration on back-elevation Westhaven decks. Aluminum balusters in black or bronze are the second-most-common path. Composite balusters work in the more traditional brick-fronted phases. White vinyl rarely makes it through the ARC.

Working a Westhaven Site

A few things you only learn by working a Westhaven build:

The alley-loaded garages mean a 28-foot trailer doesn't fit on some of the side streets. Material staging happens at Westhaven Boulevard or by coordinating with neighbors on adjacent driveways. You don't park on Front Street during business hours unless you want to make Coal Town Pizza unhappy.

The cobblestones around the Town Center fountains are pretty. They are also rough on a delivery truck's suspension, and the loading-zone enforcement during peak hours is real.

The zero-lot-line homes mean the side-yard space between your build and the neighbor is sometimes literally zero. Crew access on those lots routes through the front courtyard or alley; no shortcut over the property line. We coordinate the neighbor on every zero-lot-line build.

Some of the south-end phases have post-2010 lot grading where the topsoil was scraped and the fill wasn't compacted to the depth a deck footing needs. On those lots we add a soil test or just go deeper on the sonotubes by default.

The Active Adult section under the Astor Club has slightly different ARC conventions than the general residential phases. Treat it as its own approval pattern.

Lunch on a long day is Coal Town Pizza, the coffee shop near the Kroger end of Front Street, or — through June 2026 — a stop at Bound Booksellers next door before they move to The Factory. Design meetings with a Westhaven client work well on the Town Center patio in the spring or fall, or one of the Front Street coffee places when it's hot.

Builders, Realtors, and the Builders You Don't Know

The active home builders in Westhaven include Ford Classic Homes, Legend Homes, SLC Homes (the Southern Land Company in-house builder), Stonegate Homes, Zurich Homes, and Reserve SLC Homes. Most homeowners can tell you which builder built their house. The earliest phases (2003-2010) include some homes built by builders who are no longer active in the community, and the deck attachments on those homes — particularly the ledger details — are the ones that most often need to be retrofit when we're doing a rebuild or addition.

If you've bought a Westhaven home built in the first wave and you're thinking about adding or replacing the deck, we typically open the ledger detail first to confirm what we're attaching to. It takes thirty minutes and it's how we keep a small project from turning into a structural surprise.

A Note on the Old Texaco

Old Hillsboro Road is a Heritage Road, designated by the Heritage Foundation of Williamson County. It runs from Hillsboro Road south to Highway 96 W and on to Leiper's Fork, and connects with the Old Natchez Trace, which dates back to the early 1800s. Most of it used to be gravel.

Forty years ago you could ride a bicycle from a barn off Old Hillsboro up 96, past hay fields where Westhaven now sits, and end up at Gray's Drugs ordering a milkshake at a soda fountain. Forty years from now, the kids who learned to walk on Front Street will tell their own kids about the Coal Town Pizza coal-fired oven, the cobblestones, and the year Bound Booksellers moved over to the Factory.

The transformation from one to the other happened in our lifetimes, and a lot of it happened on land we used to know by a different name. We've been building decks across Williamson County the entire time. We've built a lot of them in Westhaven. We know the streets, the inspectors, the ARC, the lumber yards, the south-end phases that need the deeper footings, and the back-elevation runs that work best with cable rail.

When you're ready to build, that knowledge is yours.

Deck Craft A Tennessee Licensed General Contractor (TN GC #78722). Member of the Williamson County Chamber of Commerce. Building custom decks across Franklin and Williamson County since 1999. (615) 845-9300. 231 Public Square, Franklin, TN 37064.