Construction Prepared to Start on the 200 Block of Gay Street

Knoxville Urban Guy·
Development
·23 Comments
200 Block of Gay Street Prepared for Construction of Caledonia Pass
200 Block of Gay Street Prepared for Construction of Caledonia Pass

I’m not usually happy to see a sidewalk closed and I’m not delighted to see that on the 200 block. That said, I’ve never been more excited to see a fence being erected than I was yesterday while walking past that spot.

For a crash course on the 200 block, it was destroyed mostly by the expansion of Summit Hill, a sweeping road through the middle of the city. With its expansion came the removal of the buildings on the east side of the block and in subsequent years, the removal of buildings on the western side gave way to the parking lot we’ve enjoyed on that corner for decades.

In 2,000, the City of Knoxville agreed to a fifty-year contract with Leigh Burch to utilize the parking lot for the new residents of the Sterchi Building. That seemed to preclude any possibility of re-development of the block, until the announcement in early 2019 that Mr. Burch’s lease would end in exchange for the right to purchase a lot just a block to the west on Vine.

Aerial View of Caldonia Pass from the Southeast

Everything with development moves more slowly than we’d all (including developers) wish. And so it was over three years after the lease ended that Hatcher Hill announced their plans for the site. That brings us to April of last year.

In a text last night, Tim Hill confirmed that the new project is online for 57 condos, including four at workforce rates. I had mistaken the total for 53, but that did not include the workforce housing. The commercial space is also larger than I reported at 24,000 square feet, rather than 22,000. This includes plans for anchor restaurants at each corner of the block with retail in between, as well as retail facing a pedestrian thoroughfare between the two planned buildings. The timeline for construction is two years.

There is far more detail in the article, but that is the rough outline. Tim Hill projected at the time that the project would break ground in October 2022. Given the history of development delays, it would have come as no surprise if that ground-breaking had been delayed by a year, two, or more. With the site now fenced and a construction trailer on-site, groundbreaking should happen next week, according to Mr. Hill.

This project is a major step toward making downtown what it can become. It re-connects the 100 and 300 blocks of Gay Street and will be the first construction project to break ground on our most loved street since the Riverview Tower was completed in 1985 at the other end of downtown. It will likely not be the last, as several others are planned.

This is an exciting time to live in Knoxville. I thought downtown had become something pretty special when I moved to the center city in 2009. With this project and others, it is reaching a level I could not have imagined then. Here’s to fences — even if I will be annoyed to cross the street.

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23 Responses

  1. IDK. It’s really hard for me to get excited about more 5-over-1 development that continues to cater to wealthy transplants, while making downtown even more homogenous than it already is.

    Is it better than a parking lot? Depends on who you talk to, I guess.

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    1. It currently is homogenous with half of downtown because it’s a surface lot. If we’re gonna make the downtown homogeneity dense mixed use developments, then count me as one of those excited

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      1. Nice deflection from the inconvenient truth that Alison pointed out.

        According to the previous article, these units will go upwards of $800,000. How does this enrich the quality of life for the average Knoxvillian? The average Knoxville family unit that has an average household income of $41.5k.

        This is just another unaffordable project in a long string of similar development, and I think it’s reasonable to expect it to continue.. and get worse.

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        1. It doesn’t, but center city living in any city in America or on most of the earth is highly desireable and isn’t going to be for the middle class. That’s just the way it is.

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        2. > How does this enrich the quality of life for the average Knoxvillian?

          James, is your theory that high-income residents would simply leave Knoxville if they couldn’t find a downtown apartment? That if we keep the housing supply low enough, all of these rich folks would go elsewhere?

          We know the answer to this, of course. It happens in every city with a housing supply issue: the wealthiest people buy whatever housing stock or land is available, forcing out those with less wealth. The wealthiest will build new houses at the edges of the city, or turn an existing starter home into a mansion, or come to your neighborhood and buy up whatever housing stock comes available with a big stack of cash. Then people will complain (rightly!) that housing is unaffordable and that the character of the neighborhood is gone and so on.

          This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t build affordable housing. Luckily, we can build multiple kinds of housing at the same time! But we should be jumping at the chance to build every kind of housing on every surface lot on the city.

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        3. James, I’d argue that those $250k-800k units will bring in a lot more property tax to the city than a surface parking lot and those tax dollars can go to investments in our city. The residents of the condos bring in money to spend at restaurants, bars, and shops around downtown which in turn brings in job for the community and opportunities for entrepreneurs. All of which makes Downtown Knoxville an attractive destination for visitors and new citizens. A rising tide lifts all boats.

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    2. All the affordable apartments coming to downtown will be east of the stadium. I have no idea why so many people think affordable housing is coming to the most expensive street in town. I lived on Gay St for about five years. I worked my ass off to make that much money to do it as well. Get real.

      The fact is right now the best thing to build downtown is higher end stuff just because of the elevated construction cost, bloated real estate prices and high interest. That kind of makes anything affordable hard if not impossible to do.

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  2. More retail, more restaurants, and more living spaces are all better options than a parking lot. It’ll be nice to see some life on that corner.

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  4. So excited to see this built!

    It is strange that it’s okay to block the sidewalk instead of blocking a lane of car traffic and keeping this walkway open, but that’s neither here nor there.

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  5. Why is basement parking never incorporated into these new buildings? The more people residing downtown, and the more shops, increased parking solutions should be high priority.

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  6. I’m never happy to see a sidewalk closed. I’m even more unhappy when there is no accommodation for pedestrians to have safe access to the west side of Gay Street on the 200 block. One of the ongoing concerns about the parking lot on the west side of the 200 block was that it doesn’t look welcoming and therefore it deters people from walking to the 100 block and beyond. So now there will be a fence and construction site there for the next two years! Real cities do not allow this. They figure out how to accommodate pedestrians – on both sides of the street. This may necessitate some reconfiguration of the traffic lanes, but that can be done if there really is concern for the pedestrians.

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    1. That is because this city and county are controlled by developers. What they want is what they get it seems. I think Knoxville is still operating under the premise that they operated under 15 years ago that they’re so grateful a developer would want to build ANYTHING downtown that they will bend over backwards to accommodate them. At this point, the City need to be demanding alot from the developers. Thir allowing the sidewalks to be completely closed is a great example.

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    2. It would make a lot more sense to turn that section of Gay Street into a single-lane one-way instead, IMO. Or even blocking the whole section off from traffic and giving the whole thing back to pedestrians.

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  7. Two brief thoughts to respond to the two main points raised so far:

    1) I would hope (no actual knowledge of this) that part of the sidewalk be closed right now is due to the needed removal of the existing trees and fence. I would hope once actual construction starts they would make a covered walkway like what was done when the old Pennys building (Babalu) was being renovated. That said, raise cane with the City if need be. As pointed out, you could easily put a pedestrian walkway in a portion of one lane and just close the northbound lane on that block. (Honestly what would be best is for the City to start construction on the art at the park across the street and just shut down the 100 Block to vehicles for the next year or so while construction on both projects happens.

    2) While I agree that we need more affordable housing units downtown, have wealthy people live here is also good because of increased tax revenue, which does help us all. We are too Republican of a state to be able to have a local ordinance forcing developers to add affordable housing, though the City should be doing a much more aggressive approach of offering PILOTs and other incentives for developers to add more housing for lower-middle and lower class folks. Downtown has to be for everyone.

    That being noted, the best way to make sure that more people than just the wealthy can live in walkable, bikable, transit friendly places is this: get rid of single-family exclusive zoning. There is ZERO reason why a neighborhood like Fourth and Gill or Old North should just allow a single family home. It’s absurd, it is *directly* contributing to the housing crisis, and it is insulting to renters like me and morally digusting, because it is saying that to have a ‘better; neighborhood you have to have a single family unit living under their own roof. The frick is this logic? Especially for Millennials like myself (I’m 32) that are staying single longer and staying childless longer once we’re married, we need to get over this outdated mode of thinking that prioritized the ideal nuclear family and says you can only build wealth by owning a detached building. It’s simple supply and demand, but even some of the most liberal people I know get up in arms over sing;e-family zoning. It’s a dumb thing to have still existing in 2023. Removing this type of zoning does not mean a single-family house will have a nine story building next to it; you can still set ordinances against that. But providing things like duplexes, fourplexes, and small two or three floor apartment buildings does not change the ‘character’ of a neighborhood (whatever the living hell that means) and it *does* help restock the need for more living units, which will help to cool down all these insane prices.

    You want a more equal city? Get rid of absurd laws that treat duplexes like meth labs. It’s that simple.

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    1. I’m all for abolishing single family zoning. I think we missed a huge opportunity to do something really bold during the Recode process.

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      1. I’m not. I like a lot of other people would empty our bank accountants to stop that. All you are doing is empowering large corporation to come sweep in and control massive parts of the town. Why on Earth would you want to concentrate such power in so few hands? Do you think mom and pop developers could afford to build unprofitable structures all over town? Nope it’s gonna be massive REITs. Once they have enough developments they could effectively monopolize rent payments all over town.

        These radical changes could have radical responses. You can’t simply force people to do unprofitable things. Forcing it only benefits companies with big money.

        Hell they tried the same thing in China back in the late 90s-early00s. Places like Walmart built apartments next to their factories. Then people effectively became slave labor. They had to pay rent to the business employing them. They inched up rent everytime they gave out raises. The communist government finally start breaking some of that up.

        Hell cities like Gary Indian were built like that. A big steel mill came in and did apartments all through town. They monopolized the town until they pulled out most of the mill and then collapsed it the entire area.

        So no I’m really against anything like that and we have more then enough historic examples to show why it’s a bad idea.

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          1. Again I think the burden of proof is on you a bit. How do you force private business to build unprofitable/lessprofitable housing?

            I think a lot of the problems this address aren’t problems here but rather in California. In California they have people in single family homes stopping urban development. Where is that happening here in Knoxville? The biggest recent dust up we had was when the city government tried to slide that piece of the park under everyone’s nose in Parkridge.

            Not much push back from anyone else. a big reason why is nobody is building stuff like that because they can’t make money off of it. Especially now.

  8. Thank you Christopher. Again, it cannot be stressed enough that ending this zoning type doesn’t end single family housing, nor does it allow the reality that you paint, Jordan. That’s going to an insane conclusion and is quite honestly paranoid. It also locks young people and non-white people (who statistically have less wealth than older and white people) from engaging in the American Dream. It’s very easy to add in zoning ordinances that prevent so many units per acre from being built. You can also add in height restrictions. I know this is easily done because that is how the exist zoning already is. Even if neighborhoods allowed just single family homes and duplexes it would be much much better. There is no logical or moral reason to continue single-family exclusive zoning. It is not a radical idea because it’s how we used to build neighborhoods 100 years ago. I’m all for preventing large non-local developers from taking over town, but we already have our own slum lords in town that refuse to fix their dilapidated properties and provide more housing, so we should be focused on them before we freak out about a world where allowing duplexes in a neighborhood makes us Communist China suddenly.

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    1. So neither one of you know how to force private developers to build unprofitable housing? Cause you are both claiming that’s possible then acting like I’m the one with the far out perception

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