Downtown Knoxville Year in Review: 2024

Hill and Locust Development, Design Review Board, Knoxville, June 2024

Let’s take a minute before we look ahead into next year and consider the year that was. January gave us a powerful winter storm and several major stories. Downtown business and development news hardly slowed over the next twelve months. Along the way we also enjoyed some quieter moments and met some amazing residents of our little city. Just in case you missed some of it, we’ll look back at the articles that garnered the most views and those that generated the most conversation. The two are often not the same.

Post-2020 consistently hits over a million page views and this year the website was hit well over 1.2 million times. My co-writers and I churned out over 300 articles for your amusement, and you seem to have enjoyed them. We had several writers along the way who made contributions, and I appreciate them all. As the year ends, we have three writers, Heather Ryerson, Leslie Bateman, and K.W. Leonard, who are turning out excellent work and, I feel, make InsideofKnoxville.com as strong as it has ever been. I look forward to what they produce in 2025.

Great thanks, as always, goes to Scott McNutt who dwells in the details each week so you and I can easily make our plans. No individual weekly planner will rank among the most read articles, but make no mistake, the 10 Day Planner Page gets hammered (over 45,000 times this year) along with each of his weekly installments. I could not do this without him.

The greatest thanks go to each of you for reading, commenting and, in many cases, contributing to the support of the site. Thank you to those who told me you wait until midnight each night to see the daily post. I cannot possibly thank every individual who made donations but know that I see and appreciate you. I also appreciate greatly the advertisers who keep this website funded. InsideofKnoxville.com celebrated its fourteenth anniversary in June of 2024 and that would never have happened without your support.

Let’s start with what you talked about. In short, it was mostly, though not all, development news. We have opinions!

Most Comments

8(T). Plans Announced for Two New Hotels in Downtown Knoxville (Urban Guy, February, 24 comments)

8(T). New Residential Project, City Summit, Presented to Design Review Board (Urban Guy, April, 24 comments)

8(T). Interlopers, Scalawags, and Carpetbaggers (Urban Guy, October, 24 comments)

7. Tower Design Approved for Hill and Locust (Urban Guy, June, 25 comments)

6. Proposed Hill and Locust Development Gets Approval From City Council (Urban Guy, September, 28 comments)

5. Competing Downtown Parking Survey and Report Released (Urban Guy, May, 29 comments)

3(T). Downtown Knoxville is Safe: Should We Be Worried? (Urban Guy, January, 34 comments)

3(T). Why I Left Austin for Knoxville (Robert Farago, September, 34 comments)

2. Land Sold at the Corner of Summit and Central (Former Merchants of Beer); Plans Announced (Urban Guy, December, 36 comments)

1. Large Riverfront Project is Back (The Design Review Board Reacts) (Urban Guy, April, 41 comments)

So, what were the most read articles? Do any of them surprise you? Did you miss some along the way? (Now’s a good time to catch up!) A lot of them are development articles, but business ruled the year in readership. Here is #25-#11. Tomorrow I’ll hit you up with a look at the top ten most read stories from 2024.