The Small Building With a Plane Painted on Its Side, and What Else Is Growing In Around It

Drive the north end of Old Smyrna Road near Jones Parkway this fall and you will pass a stretch of open field that used to just be open field. Now there is a paved lot, a loop track visible from the road, and near the center of the property a small building with a single-engine Cessna painted across one wall. Nothing at the entrance explains why. You have to walk up to it.

That building sits inside Windy Hill Park, which opened to the public on December 13, 2025 as Brentwood's fifteenth city park. The address is 9133 Old Smyrna Road, on the east side of I-65 where Jones Parkway meets Old Smyrna. It has been open through a full spring and summer now, long enough that the newest-park label is starting to feel earned rather than just announced. What makes it worth a special trip is not the playground or the track. It is the reason that plane is painted on that wall, and what the family who put it there chose to do with the land next to it.

What You Will Actually Find There

Windy Hill Park was designed as a passive park, which means there are no ball fields and no scheduled leagues here. What it does have:

• A 400-meter loop track, similar to a running track, near the park's center
• More than a mile of additional trails that wind through the rest of the 52-acre property
• A playground
• Workout stations along the trail
• Picnic shelters
• Restrooms and two parking lots, one at each of the park's north and south entrances
• A paved trail connection into Brentwood's larger greenway system, wide enough for both walkers and cyclists

None of this competes with Crockett Park's ballfields or Smith Park's nine miles of wooded hiking trails. It is built for a slower use: a loop before work, a picnic that does not require reserving a shelter months out, a stroller lap on pavement instead of gravel. The city's own parks page notes the property will serve more than 1,900 homes in the northern section of Brentwood, a part of the city that had gone without its own dedicated green space until now.

Why There Is a Plane Painted on a Building

The land was once part of a working farm belonging to Wilbur and Lucy Sensing. Wilbur used to fly a single-engine Cessna and land it right in that field, storing the plane afterward in a small building on the property and later in a hangar. When the city purchased the 52 acres from the Sensing family in 2020 for $5.2 million, that small building stayed. Rather than tear it down, the park kept it and painted the Cessna mural on its side, so the building itself is now a small, permanent marker of what this land was before it was a park.

What the family did next is the part that does not show up in a typical grand-opening writeup. The Sensings did not just sell the 52 acres that became the park. They placed a conservation easement on the 40 acres they kept next door, meaning that remaining land, part of the original 92-acre farm, cannot be developed by them or by any future owner. Wilbur's son Ben Sensing, speaking at the ribbon cutting, thanked the city and expressed the family's gratitude for helping make it possible. It is a quiet decision with a long tail. In a stretch of Brentwood where land near an interstate interchange tends to get built on eventually, one family chose to take a piece of it permanently off that path, on top of the part they had already sold for parkland.

The Willow Oak Near the Playground

A few steps from the playground stands a Willow Oak with a memorial plaque at its base. It was planted in honor of Dr. Katherine Koonce, a Brentwood resident and the former head of Nashville's Covenant School, who was killed along with two other adults and three children in the March 2023 shooting there. Her family, including Anna Irion, Richard Koonce, Alex Irion, and David Koonce, was present when the tree was dedicated. It sits close enough to the playground that anyone letting kids run the loop or climb the equipment will pass it without necessarily knowing what it marks, which feels intentional. It is not a memorial that asks for attention. It is simply there, part of the park now, the way the mural is.

How It Fits Into the Rest of the City

Brentwood's trail system runs more than 25 miles across the city limits, connecting parks like Crockett, Smith, and Tower to neighborhoods and to each other. Windy Hill's paved trail ties into that broader network, which means a longer loop is possible for anyone willing to string segments together rather than treating the park as a stand-alone stop. The park is open daily from sunup to sunset, there is no admission fee, and both entrances have parking, so there is no single correct way in.

Park Board Chair Vicki Sanford, who was on hand for the opening, put it simply when she said green space is important for every community. Windy Hill touches several neighborhoods on the northeast side of the city, filling a gap that had been on Brentwood's parks plan for years before the Sensing family's land made it possible.

Worth the Detour This Fall

If your usual routine is the same loop at Crockett Park or the same stretch of the Smith Park trail, Windy Hill gives you a genuine change of scenery without leaving the city. The loop track is a good option for interval work if you are training for something. The mile-plus of connecting trail is enough for a real walk without needing to drive to Leiper's Fork or the Harpeth River Greenway for mileage. And if you have out-of-town family in this fall, the mural building is a five-minute story that turns a walk into something with actual local texture behind it, not just scenery.

Windy Hill is not a park that announces its own history. You have to already be curious about a painted plane on an otherwise plain building, or notice a young oak tree with a plaque you were not expecting. That is part of what makes it worth the stop. It rewards the kind of attention you only pay to a place you already call home.

If you are the kind of person who likes knowing the story behind the corner you drive past every day, that curiosity tends to serve you well in bigger decisions too, including when the time comes to think about your own address in Brentwood. The Suzy Mills Team works this market year round and is always glad to talk through what a neighborhood is actually like to live in, not just what the listing photos show. Schedule a Free Home Consultation whenever you are ready to talk.