Cumberland Avenue, Then & Now — Part II: What’s New

In Part I: The Old Guard earlier this week, we went searching for the businesses of yesteryear that are still standing on Cumberland Avenue. In Part II, we step into the present tense. 

I’m not exaggerating when I say just-off-campus student housing has consumed whole blocks of Cumberland Avenue. Nova Knoxville, TENN Knoxville, Union Knoxville and Hub Knoxville press up against the sidewalks and loom overhead, advertising amenities rooftop pools, hot tubs, study pods, podcast rooms and spas. Ground floors are home to exotic-to-Knoxville chains like Whataburger, Raising Cane’s and Cava as well as a pragmatic CVS and just-opened Covenant Health Urgent Care. 

It’s a college experience far removed from the one I knew. Readers of a certain vintage chimed in after Part I to grieve a place that was, both aesthetically and functionally, deeply lived-in. I sat with your passionate comments for a long while and spent longer on this story than I meant to, because the reality is complicated. Believe me, I feel all the feels, too. But longing for what was doesn’t automatically translate into a clear-eyed critique of what is.

At the end of the day, of course, it doesn’t really matter what you or I think. It matters how it serves the people who use it: the students. I figured I ought to go ask them about it myself. After parking my car in a questionably legal spot, I hit “the Strip.”

My preliminary research identified the belly of the beast as Hub Knoxville, which opened last fall. Singular in name only, this massive four-tower complex by Core Spaces and Schenk+ spans more than four acres on both sides of Cumberland Avenue. It houses nearly 2,000 students, with more to come as the third and fourth buildings open this year and next. It is the largest private student housing project in Knoxville’s history.

Among the ground floor tenants is New Here Coffee, one of two coffee shops remaining in the area (the other is Starbucks) since Golden Roast Coffee Roasters closed last spring after a 31-year run. 

I walk in and am immediately surprised by the amount of actual work being done here. Students are bent down over their laptops with noise-cancelling headphones and Stanley tumblers. Except for one table of three students, who are quietly chatting among themselves.

“Y’all seem more off-task than anyone else in here,” I whisper, intending it as a compliment. “I’m a journalist — do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Annabelle, Malte, and Daniel are the first of many students I talk with about their experiences on Cumberland Avenue. How do they feel about it? What do they like, or not like? Where do they go to hang out? Is there nightlife?

I get the same response to that last question over and over again, no matter who I ask: friends glancing at one another like they’re sharing a secret, then laughing. Oh yeah, they assure the dumb grownup. We have nightlife.

I talk to Ph.D. candidates and sorority girls, Knoxville natives and international students, commuters and kids who live upstairs from the places they frequent. Their answers vary too widely for me to summarize here beyond: everyone is having their own experience. 

They’re still doing what young people have always done at the start of the college chapter of their lives: finding friends, forming new groups, and figuring out how to connect. Much of that bonding happens over food and drink, and several of the students I spoke with praised the variety available on Cumberland. An added convenience is being able to use dining dollars on their Vol Card at participating off-campus merchants.

On the ground floor of another Hub tower sits Cumberland Food Hall, which opened in November in partnership with UT and Aramark. It seats nearly 350 people, houses four dining concepts, and runs on a “ghost kitchen” model: order through Grubhub or a kiosk, then retrieve your meal from a glowing color-coded locker. A freshman in Power T pajama pants proudly shows me how you can complete the entire process, from ordering to pickup, without having to interact with a single human being.

“The future is now!” I joke. “Thanks for the tutorial.” 

“You’re welcome ma’am,” he says, gently reminding me how old I am. 

The erosion of local flavor that longtime Knoxvillians often lament either doesn’t bother them (“most of these are chains, but that’s okay, at least we know what we’re getting” as one girl puts it) or simply isn’t something they register. 

Continuing my march up the sidewalk, I stick my head into nearly every business — including one that, to my great delight, is locally owned.

Plugged In started as a dorm-room sneaker hustle between Maryville College freshman-year roommates Dallas Ogletree and David Deacon. In 2021, they opened a brick-and-mortar at 1715 Cumberland Ave., selling shoes, streetwear and curated vintage. Skate decks line the walls, a welcome flashback to Pluto’s, the old skate shop around the corner that closed in 2012.

I immediately ask something that outs me as old and out of touch: “Why are all the shoes shrink-wrapped?”

He blinks. “To keep the dust off.”

At least he didn’t call me ma’am. Onward!

My most I am my mother moment is still to come. Just off Cumberland on Melrose, next to Gus’s Good Times Deli, I spot a tatty old bookstore sign above a large storefront with mirrored windows. Thank God, I think. I was starting to wonder where kids buy used textbooks these days.

I walk straight in, interrupting what appears to be a staff meeting in a dimly lit room. Then it dawns on me: this is not a bookstore. This is a nightclub.

The owner gives me a tour anyway. There’s a large room for DJ dance parties, and what used to be Golden Roast is now an expanded lounge with extra seating and a big neon sign that reads Feels like ’98. They keep it intentionally low-profile, he explains — no Google Maps listing, no website. And when students run their parents’ credit cards, the charge shows up as “The Bookstore LLC.” 

It must be class change when I exit back into the bright, cold sunshine, because the sidewalks are flooded with bodies heading this way and that. Even with the predominance of online learning, UT’s physical campus feels as busy as ever, if not more so. 

The elephant in the room is UT’s aggressive enrollment push. After hovering in the mid-20,000s for much of the late 20th century, it has spiked dramatically in recent years; spring enrollment is 38,500 with long-term plans to reach 55,000 by 2030.

University leadership frames the growth as a land-grant obligation — meeting workforce demand, expanding access for Tennesseans, shoring up the state’s economic future — and I’m sure much of that is true. But growth at this scale doesn’t land softly. Housing and infrastructure are scrambling to catch up, not just on campus but in the neighborhoods wrapped around it and, increasingly, across the river.

While the enrollment boom may be mission-driven, it is also very good news for developers and harder on local businesses.

Cumberland Avenue is what it is now, and however any of us feel about it, there’s no going back. What it offers now is an example of how easily character can become homogenized when market forces operate without meaningful guardrails.

A street’s identity doesn’t change overnight. It evolves gradually, through a series of small, often unremarkable decisions, until the cumulative effect becomes apparent. Over time, the place people remember no longer quite exists. As Knoxville continues to grow, Cumberland Avenue stands as one version of how that growth can play out, defined as much by what was accommodated as by what was displaced.