The U.S. Bank Building Is For Sale & Its Future Could Be Anything

What would you do with a 13-story tower in the heart of downtown?

The U.S. Bank building at 607 Market St. and its 43-space surface lot at 413 Clinch Ave. are for sale. And whoever buys them can do pretty much whatever they want. 

Both parcels are zoned DK-G (Downtown General), one of Knoxville’s most flexible zoning designations. That means the space could be used for office, residential, hospitality or mixed-use development. And there are no building height restrictions so the sky’s the limit.

I spoke with Taylor Thompson, associate advisor with SVN | Wood Properties, with whom the properties are listed. “If you look at a map of downtown Knoxville and you point to the center, your finger is about right on the U.S. Bank building,” she said. “So the opportunity for activating that corridor of Market Street is vast. It’ll be exciting to see who comes in and what they do.” 

The current owner is MAP Holdings LLC, controlled by Patrick Halloran, a high-net-worth Minnesota-based investor. The company bought the 122,859-square-foot building from U.S. Bank in 2021 as part of a larger portfolio and considered several redevelopment strategies. However, it became a little bit of an afterthought and with downtown development continuing its ascent toward the sun, it was a good time to sell. “They are excited for someone else to come in and hopefully reimagine the current status of the building,” Thompson said. 

What’s in there now: not a whole lot. Of the 13 floors, eight are vacant. Two more are shells. Of the remaining three, two are partially vacant. In short: this is a building ready for reinvention.

U.S. Bank, which purchased the properties for $10.74 million in 2012 and sold them to MAP Holdings LLC for $4.15 million nine years later, still occupies part of the first and the full sixth floor under a lease that runs through 2031, though they’re open to a smaller footprint and repositioned branch space. Texas Instruments is moving to First Horizon Plaza. The Lunchbox café closed in December of last year. A law firm on the 11th floor is month-to-month.

The wildcard is beloved The French Market Crêperie, which holds a lease through April 2027. A buyer interested in NOT upsetting a bunch of downtown folks in codependent relationships with the Market’s Nutella crêpes would do well to keep them around.

Could the building stay an office building? Sure. “There’s definitely a market for keeping it as offices,” Thompson said, but points out, “There’s not a lot of vacancy with downtown housing either, so it could be easy for someone to come and convert it to multifamily, whether that’s apartments or condos. Same thing with the hotel surge going on downtown. So it will be cool to see what ends up happening. There’s a lot of opportunity.” 

Built in 1965 for Valley Fidelity Bank, the building was designed by Chicago-based Epstein, a firm that leaned into sleek glass façades for the modernizing midcentury cityscape. The developer was Collins Tuttle & Company (now Collins).

I don’t harbor much sentimental attachment to the building’s architecture though in the ’60s I am sure it was state-of-the-art [edit: the original façade was different, more mod — it was reclad 15 or 20 years ago]. However, floor-to-ceiling windows are a timeless classic, and it is literally covered in them on three sides. Here are some glass-forward renderings of possible conversions as a reimagined office, residential and hospitality space. Note the third floor rooftop looking onto Krutch Park, which seems ripe for a patio or bar.

The building is one thing. But let’s not sleep on the 0.37-acre surface lot. (Insert St. John’s Episcopal parking lot–gate trigger warning here.) Reminder: There are other fish in the sea, as I mentioned: “Just a block north of the St. John’s lot sits an even more vast surface parking lot: privately owned, gated and largely empty outside of 9-to-5 on weekdays. That’s not shared or accessible. That’s dead space.” Well, this surface lot abuts that surface lot (which is also used by a bank, Home Federal). The potential square footage may be an extra-attractive part of the package for someone with vision to build that up, in one form or another, too. 

The bid deadline is Aug. 22 and the properties have no asking price. Here’s hoping whoever scoops them up has big vision, deep pockets and enough whimsy to dream beyond beige cubicles.