Business

Brassy jazz standards. Busy cash registers. The crinkle of bottles being wrapped in brown paper bags. Walk in the front door of Red Spirits & Wine in Bellevue, and you're immediately hit with the holiday rush.

This is the busy season for liquor retailers. Open houses, Christmas gifts, family visiting from out of town — they're all reasons to stock up on booze.

But the shelves in many Tennessee liquor stores don't just contain alcohol these days.

Officials at the Nashville International Airport say it’s due for some changes: They're planning $240 million worth of upgrades starting next year, including adding more parking and replacing the jet bridges that connect the terminal to airplanes.

The Nashville airport is adding another nonstop flight to the Bay Area. United Airlines announced Tuesday it will start flying daily to San Francisco on May 5, about a year after Southwest Airlines launched a direct flight to Oakland.

Two of Nashville’s largest private employers plan to do away with benefits for domestic partners starting in 2017. Vanderbilt University and hospital chain HCA say they will no longer cover unwed couples. Employers around the nation are changing their policies following the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage.

November was a ho-hum period for the Nashville housing market compared to the pace of sales earlier this year, representing the first monthly dip in closings for 2015. But the median price is still running $15,000 above last year, and potential buyers feel they've reached a tipping point.

Nashville’s new mayor wants downtown developers to consider the growing need for daycare in the central business district. Just two childcare centers exist in the core of the city where 57,000 people now work, up from 46,000 in 2008.

The neighbors have fielded questions for months as the five-story steel and glass structure rose out of the ground.

"What is that?"

"We just reply that it's a car vending machine," says Anje Clay, who works at the import auto shop next door.

It’s early on a Tuesday night at the Tin Angel on West End, well before any dinner rush. The candles are lit, the white linen napkins are folded, and Heather Malm is bringing a bottle of pinot noir to her first table of the night.