After years of neglect, conversation and argument, pleas and hopeful moments, along with darker turns, the Pryor Brown Garage will finally be demolished. The press release at the end of last week from the city, short, simple, focused on sidewalk and street closures:
Beginning Monday, Jan. 6, anticipate the start of several temporary downtown street and sidewalk closures to accommodate the property owners’ planned demolition of the Pryor Brown Garage. Crews with E. Luke Greene Co. have been granted a permit to demolish the century-old four-story brick structure, which is vacant, deteriorating and has been missing a roof for several years.
The garage sits on a downtown city block bounded by Gay Street, Cumberland Avenue, Market Street and Church Avenue. Most of the block is now used as a surface parking lot, with the vacant garage fronting Church Avenue.
To accommodate the demolition, one-way Market Street will be closed between Cumberland Avenue and Church Avenue while work is underway, and the south-side (eastbound) lane on Church Avenue will later be closed. The east-side sidewalk on Market Street and the south-side sidewalk on Church Avenue beside the garage also will be closed. But sidewalks on the other side of both streets will remain open.
E. Luke Greene Co. crews plan to begin cleaning out the garage structure starting Monday, Jan. 6. A complete closure of Market Street between Cumberland and Church will begin then. Once the preparation work has been completed, demolition will start. The Church Avenue lane and sidewalk closure are anticipated to begin around Jan. 13.
I tuned into the garage eleven years ago when I first wrote about its saga. The LLC which owns it, headed by true owner Mike Conley, requested money from CBID in 2013 for preservation of the 100+ year old garage based on its historic nature and importance. Conley had owned the garage since the 1990s and the contention of the of the CBID board was that, with proper maintenance, the building would not have been in such bad shape. The owners then requested demolition, of which there was no basis in city codes to deny the request.
Eventually a deal was struck between Rick Dover and the family and, in 2016, a redevelopment plan, calling for condos and retail, was announced with great fanfare. Mayor Rogero and Knox Heritage helped broker the agreement. More specific plans, released in 2017, called for retail on the ground floor, balconies extending from condos, and another floor to provide rooftop access. The deal later soured resulting in litigation between the parties. From that point, demolition has seemed almost certain, though it has taken several years for it to be officially scheduled.
I’m aware that many of the current readers of this website did not follow events in downtown Knoxville more than a decade ago. Without the background of the events and benefit of the discussion along the way, you might wonder, “What is the big deal about knocking down a parking garage?” It’s a fair question. Few people love parking garages for their own sake. In 2016, Jack Neely wrote a column about the garage, including the fascinating history of both the building and its owner.
Beyond that, several concerns about the demolition present themselves.
From an environmental perspective, we’ll now have tons of debris taking up space in the earth. The energy used to produce those materials will be lost. To replace the building, an entirely new set of environmental costs will be incurred with the manufacture of new materials, transportation of those materials, and the building process. It is simply more environmentally friendly to re-use buildings.
From a downtown residential and retail perspective, where businesses once thrived and could have again, they will be no more. The garage was designed in the 1920s with better usage of street frontage than any other garage we’ve built since. Retail faced both streets it fronted, and this isn’t ancient history. When I moved downtown in 2009, two businesses occupied the spaces, including a travel agency and a cleaner. Think downtown has progressed? Of course it has but take me to a downtown travel agency and cleaners today.
From a residential perspective, we need homes of course, but this building was uniquely suited to residential redevelopment because each of the floors were flat. Ramps between floor conveyed vehicles. The windows offered great views of the city and would have been highly prized as a residential address.
Of course, we’ve lost history (please read the Neely article above), but we’ve also lost another piece of the fabric of downtown. A walk along the 700 block of Market Street will no longer feel the same with an empty block to the east and no buildings forming a corridor. Does a vibrant city have a full empty block in its core?
So, it will be. What comes next? Multiple groups have attempted to determine a development plan that will work on that city block. Unfortunately, parking lots are lucrative, so replacing them requires enough financial incentive to make it work. Thanks to a Rogero-era restriction, the newly exposed surface may not be used as a parking lot. I would love to see the city tax parking lots based on their potential value, making the lots much less profitable and making development more attractive. We don’t do that.
I’m hoping for a big announcement in a short amount of time that provides for development of the block. I’m hoping that the contours of Market Street will be as respected as the streetscape of Gay Street. But then, I’ve been writing about this block for over a decade. It’s hard to believe that anything other than an empty city block is eminent. I hope I’m proven wrong. I hope something spectacular is built on the location. Until then, this feels like a loss for the city.