The sale closed last week which will begin the transformation of the lot at the northwest corner of Summit Hill Avenue and Central Street. Formerly a diner, then Enterprise Car Rental, and most recently Merchants of Beer, the majority of the space has remained a parking lot or outdoor amenity. Leaving a gaping hole at the entrance to the Old City, this corner space sits overdue for something more suiting as an entry to a major part of downtown.
In a $5,150,000 sale brokered by Sheev Patel with SVN Wood Properties and Will Sims with Oliver Smith Realty late last week, ownership of the property has been transferred from Thomas Boyd to Aman Patel with Vector Hospitality, Inc. The same group has plans underway, as detailed here in early 2024, for a downtown Tempo Hotel and an AC by Marriott. Each of those hotels are set to begin construction in early 2025 and on completion will ad a total of 338 rooms to downtown.
Thomas said he had always felt the spot needed something prominent that welcomed people to the Old City and while he originally thought he might develop it himself, he said this project “checks a lot of the boxes,” and when it came along, it felt like the right time and idea. “Looking at this spot and a lot of downtown, there are a lot of parking lots and under-utilized spaces. That one has a two-thousand square foot single-story building on a half-acre, which isn’t a great use. Going vertical on many of these sites, he said, is “a natural next step for downtown.”
The new hotel will be a Moxy Hotel by Marriot which is planned to be eight stories and more than 170 rooms. The site is sloped so, while it will be eight stories facing Central Street, it will be seven stories at the corner of State and Summit.
I asked what about Knoxville had prompted the company to simultaneously have three large-scale hotel projects in downtown Knoxville. Aman said, “I’m a Tennessee native, grew up in Chattanooga, and attended Vanderbilt. I’ve been a big UT Vols fan for many years and have been to Knoxville every year for the last thirty-five to forty years.” He said he’s watched it become “an emerging market with a lot of growth.” He mentioned UT’s growth and the development that has spurred, along with the coming multi-use stadium, along with the mixed-use development along the river behind UT.
He said the hospitality market is doing very well in the city and has been growing. “There has been a need for upscale hotels: Upscale, limited service. There’s been a need for that. Tourism is up. I have all the data on the market. It’s like the early stages of growth in Nashville: We have a Fairfield Inn in the gulch and we had the first roof-top bar in downtown Nashville. Since we built our Fairfield in the gulch probably thirty hotels have come into downtown and our numbers have stayed the same or slightly increased in the past twelve years. That’s because demand grows.” He said demand is growing in downtown Knoxville and new hotel rooms have not kept pace.
He said Moxy is a unique brand that seems perfect for the Old City. “It’s an eclectic hotel. You check in at the bar. The rooms are very small, like a New York City Hotel, but the public spaces are elevated with billiard tables, foosball, and other games, as well as an Instagram wall. It’s a unique clientele and is an upcoming brand in the Marriot system. They only put them in entertainment districts with heavy foot traffic. The entrance to the Old City is an ideal location.”
The hotel will also have a public face, which will include two bars, one at the ground level and one at the roof top. The ground-floor bar will be open to the public every day, but the roof top may be a mix, with some private events and other public hours. Parking will be valet parking off-site in downtown garages.
The construction of the AC Hotel should be underway any time now with a tentative opening date of fall 2026. The Tempo should break ground in Summer 2025 and the build-out is expected to last two years, with an opening of summer 2027. Groundbreaking for the Moxy is planned for the first quarter of 2026 with a plan to open in the summer 2027, roughly at the same time as the Tempo.
He said they are excited to get started and feel they are up to the challenge of multiple projects going at once. He and his brother worked together to build “forty hotels in the last twenty-five years.” He said they’ve had as many as six-to-ten projects going at one time.
There are no renderings currently available, but the architects are at work and will be the same group as designed the other two hotels. Watch here for updates as renderings or changes come along.