What’s Next for the Former Public Safety Building Site?

Community input meetings are not generally where I go looking for a good time with a second-grader. And yet! There we were last Saturday at 800 Howard Baker Jr. Ave., having a genuinely excellent time imagining what this big, empty, sulfur cosmos-bespeckled field just east of downtown could become.

A brief history: For much of the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, the site was part of a thriving Black neighborhood of homes, churches, businesses and community institutions, later razed by urban renewal. Then the property housed Knoxville Police Department headquarters for more than 55 years. KPD moved to the new Public Safety Complex in North Knoxville in 2023, and the old building was demolished. The site was slated for a $100 million science museum but that plan was rerouted into an expansion of The Muse.

So, what now? That is the question Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation (KCDC) and the City of Knoxville are asking, and they want to hear from YOU. (Update! The online survey is now live: https://www.kcdc.org/hillavenueinput

They turned the first public input session for the site into a block party, with food from my favorite stone’s-throw-away eatery Tarik’s North African …

… and interactive exercises designed to tease out community priorities and imagine what might someday take shape on site. And, for those who collected stamps at all eight input stations, FREE ICE CREAM from Lolli & Bobo’s. Civic engagement has rarely been so well incentivized.

KCDC Executive Director and CEO Ben Bentley assured me that they’re not just checking the community-input box, and I believe him. He has a track record of it, including nearby First Creek at Austin, where KCDC leaned heavily on resident input to rebuild trust in its redevelopment of the former Austin Homes. I wrote about the award-winning project last year. 

“Any of these processes are much better when we open them up and listen,” Bentley said. “And not just paying lip service to that idea, but actually listening. If community process is done right, it is to amplify voices that might not otherwise be heard and to tamp down the voices that you always hear.”

He credited District 6 City Councilman Denzel Grant, who was likewise on-site throughout the event, with making space for different ideas and perspectives. “This is the first event of many,” Grant said. “This is a process, so we’ve got to be patient, but we also have to stay engaged.”

This particular community input session was just … next level. So creative, interactive and generative. Moving through each station in order really helped me to process and clarify my own thoughts about the site.

One of our city’s best and brightest 7-year-old minds (IMO) was on the job as well. He is a Minecraft whiz and seasoned LEGO architect; imagining a city from scratch is his wheelhouse. Give the kid an empty field and he is already mentally dropping in buildings, parks and probably some wildly impractical water feature. Kids are very good at “What if?”

What surprised me was what he actually prioritized. Safety topped his list. He gravitated toward models wherein people could gather and interact, and he wanted art and creativity woven in, too.

Other attendees shared their priorities: affordable housing (especially mixed-use development), multiple calls for a grocery store, green space, culture and much more … including my pitch (alongside more serious input) for a second Sunsphere. You can see the OG clearly from the site, so obviously the two should have some sort of relationship. Perhaps a rainbow laser beam? A Stonehenge-type alignment at the solstice? I remain available for consultation.

An actual consideration with infinitely more gravitas is what was here before. At the Beck Cultural Exchange Center table, attendees could explore a 270-page documentary atlas created by Chris DeRolph reconstructing the neighborhood that stood on and around this property before urban renewal.

Using Sanborn maps, city directories, Knoxville Housing Authority acquisition and appraisal records and archival photographs, DeRolph mapped 56 homes, churches, businesses and other community places in the immediate area. His research found that every occupied 1953 city-directory listing he mapped within the parcel that later became the Public Safety Building was identified as Black. The neighborhood included Shiloh Presbyterian Church, Ebenezer Baptist Church, apartments and rental homes, Black Diamond Cab Company, Dewey’s Barbecue and numerous residences.

The records also complicate the familiar characterization of neighborhoods targeted for urban renewal as uniformly “blighted.” They document longtime property ownership as well as investments and improvements to homes, including new bathrooms, furnaces, windows, siding, porches and garages. The neighborhood remained occupied into the mid-1960s before acquisition and demolition rapidly erased it from the landscape.

DeRolph’s research: Interactive historical map | Full documentary atlas

This history makes the question bigger than: What would be cool to put here? It is also: What does Knoxville owe the history of this place as it decides what comes next?

DeRolph has suggested ways that history could materially shape redevelopment, including affordable housing or homeownership opportunities tied to families displaced by urban renewal, community stewardship of the land and physical design elements that make the former neighborhood visible again. Related ideas were echoed in feedback from the community input session.

“I think we all know the history and what was once here,” Grant said. “Obviously, you can’t change what happened in the past, but I do think we have the right leadership in place that understands the history and wants to make sure that’s at the forefront as we think about what comes next.”

Bentley continued the thread: “We can understand, reflect and learn from the history of a place. That’s critical. We can also look to the future and think about how a site can better serve near East Knoxville, downtown and even South Knoxville with the James White Parkway connection that’ll be coming in the next couple years. This is really a node that can knit all of those areas back together.”

Bentley said the next step will be to synthesize what KCDC and the city heard Saturday, bring it back to the community and ask for more feedback. An online survey is also planned (available now here), along with another community meeting this fall, with the overall process expected to unfold over roughly the next 12 to 18 months.

Having my son beside me made my experience of the event land a little differently. “The future” can be an awfully abstract planning term. Looking at this site through the eyes of a kid who may still be living in Knoxville when whatever happens here is decades old makes it more concrete. We aren’t only talking about what works for us now. We are talking about the city we are handing to the people coming behind us.

Of course, there is a reason we don’t simply hand a bunch of 7-year-olds some crayons and a development budget. Planning Commissioner Nick Gill delivered a brilliant one-liner during a meeting this summer that has stuck with me: “This isn’t The Sims,” he said, a reference likely to land with the Gen X/Millennial crowd who spent hours building imaginary neighborhoods on a computer. His point: There are real-world considerations. What fits the land? What can be financed? What will the market support? What kinds of public investment make sense? What uses can realistically coexist? 

The final input station was a related but separate table for What’s Next Knoxville?, the collaborative process underway to update Knoxville’s Comprehensive Plan. The plan will help guide land use, transportation and investment decisions for the next 25 years. The City has gone big on outreach, with activities planned throughout the year to meet people where they are and hear from communities across Knoxville, both in person and online.

These days it is way too easy to gripe after the fact. KCDC and the City are making a real effort to make having a say accessible when it still counts. My kiddo spun the wheel at the What’s Next tent, in exchange for a Dum-Dum lollypop, and landed on the question: “What would it look like for Knoxville to LEVEL UP over the next 20 years?” 

He looked at me for guidance. I clarified: “What do YOU want Knoxville to look like when you’re 27 years old?” A pretty hefty question for a 7-year-old, but he thought carefully about it. What he landed on: “A safe, happy place to live.”

If he can show up and weigh in, the rest of us probably can, too. Updates on the planning process will be at KCDC’s website; we’ll let you know when the online survey is ready and posted to the site.