When originally imagined, the Interstate system was intended to connect cities. And it did. Small towns that once enjoyed passersby slowly began to die. Cities that had thriving centers were cut in half, with large swaths of city grids developed over a hundred or more years eliminated forever. Unintended consequences. Is the Interstate bad? Of course not. It’s hard to imagine road travel without it. But do we have to accept the unintended consequences as inevitable and permanent?
I recently wrote about Henley Street and the confounding variables there that make it miserable for everyone. Even ten years ago, this space was used by guest writer Just John to reimagine what Henley might be like if we removed some of the Interstate spaghetti surround it and lowered Western back to its original level.
Just on the heels of my most recent article, I heard Whitney Manahan speak on the topic. Whitney is Director of Architecture and Design at BurWil Construction Company. She has a Master of Architecture (M.Arch.) focused on Urban Planning from the University of Tennessee. She also has a background in downtown redevelopment, working for years with Dewhirst Properties. I later met with Whitney to more fully understand her perspective and proposal.
For her, the conversation starts with what we’ve lost. Long involved in her Lost Knox project, Whitney points to all the buildings that once seemed a permanent part of the downtown fabric, which are now lost to history (and mostly parking lots or parking garages). It was the focus of her senior project in architecture school ten years ago and the focus of my article at the time. As a part of her project, she and collaborator Jared Wilkens printed photographs of lost buildings and placed them beside the parking lots which had replaced them, as a graphic reminder of what was lost.
Some of what we’ve lost near downtown includes what used to be major portions of the Mechanicsville neighborhood. The interchange that directs traffic into and off Henley takes up about twenty acres directly but would free up about forty acres for development if it were removed. That is roughly 40 average-sized city blocks added to downtown without knocking down a single building. But how could that happen? How would cars travel to and around downtown and access the Interstate and head to points south of the river? It turns out there are options.
For starters, traffic counts on James White Parkway to and from south Knoxville run about 11,000 a day. The analogous stretch of Henley runs about 32,000. Most of that is through traffic, not originating or ending in downtown. That traffic doesn’t need to be downtown as it is going elsewhere. James White has a third of the traffic, a faster speed limit, and a separated four-lane highway. It can be taken without going into the main part of downtown. Even when the lanes are narrowed on the bridge to make way for a planned greenway, the road will continue to allow for quick flow of traffic.
But how would cars get to it or get in and out of downtown? From the Interstates (40 and 75), perfect connections exist via Hall of Fame. For traffic coming in or out of downtown, those connections serve, as well as direct connections from Western Avenue. There is also a connection to James White and then the Interstage via Main Street. Each of these are within a half mile or less of the heart of downtown. Should that through traffic be diverted, Henley would not need to be a speedway. The Henley Bridge would not need to be jammed in both directions.
For an example of what Henley could become if more traffic were diverted, Whitney drew a comparison to Broad Street in Chattanooga, which used to have some of the same problems. The street is 94 feet wide, whereas Henley is 93 once you move away from the onerous entrance and exit ramps to the Interstate. Where Broad Street has wide sidewalks, parking on each side and a lane of parking in the middle, as well as two lanes of traffic going each way, we have small sidewalks and a raceway. The width of Henley at the entrance and exit ramps? A ridiculous 188 feet.
What would we gain in exchange for removing the long entrance and exit ramps and tunnels from and to Henley? A massive, forty-acre, addition of developable land beside downtown, which would likely grow to be completely interconnected. More housing, more of the city fabric we once had. As a comparison, the entire Gulch in Nashville is sixty acres. This would be two-thirds as large.
But wait . . . it can’t happen. TDOT will never allow it, right? Interstate exchanges don’t get removed, right? It turns out this very interchange has been redesigned multiple times. It can be done again. TDOT isn’t an impassive monolith. Good design, if presented well, could win the day. But who will take up the cause and push the idea? Will city leadership make bold moves and use political capital to attempt a change that could transform the city for the better?
Or do we accept that a speedway through downtown and a spaghetti of Interstate exchanges is simply the best we can do? Do we accept that we simply can’t reclaim forty acres of developable downtown land. Land that could represent as many as forty city blocks on which we could have measured, small parcel development.
Whitney stressed that she doesn’t see this as the idea, but simply one idea to spur thought. If we’re unhappy with Henley or with having so much potential downtown space used by numerous access ramps, we can rethink it and begin to push for better design. Even if we never do these things, perhaps if we have the conversation and understand the unintended costs, we can avoid the next poorly planned and designed development that devastates a portion of our city. Let’s have the conversation.