Alan Sims, BLANK contributor and newly elected member of the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame, has spent much of the last year chronicling the myriad developments occurring south of the river for his blog, Inside of Knoxville.
Although his posts should be consulted for detailed information regarding the many ongoing and recently completed projects in South Knoxville, we wish to provide you with a comprehensive overview of what is happening in that part of the city. The pace of progress has been torrid; as a result, there is a lot of ground to cover.
While businesses along Henley Street have slowly been recovering from the bridge closure that lasted nearly three years, the thoroughfare south of the Gay Street Bridge is experiencing a quiet but unquestionable revitalization. Sevier Avenue, the majority of which had been blighted for years, now boasts Alliance Brewing Company, the first of several establishments slated for the area. The tasting room, located near the intersection with Island Home Avenue in the building that formerly housed a coin laundromat, had its soft opening in late August with guest taps and continues to do brisk business in the days leading up to when it will offer its own beers.
Occupying another storefront in the same building soon will be Three Bears Coffee. Owner Jeff Sheafnocker had for years been roasting in his home the beans he uses for distribution locally, but the transition to a fixed locale is imminent and will include the addition of a tasting room in which patrons can sample hot and cold coffees and purchase bags of coffee. In a move that will beautify the property and that should prove beneficial to both businesses, the city provided a grant to the building manager to improve the façade and to implement an outdoor seating space.
UPDATE: Across the street from the two businesses sits a house that will soon be converted into a restaurant/bar. Knoxknosh will feature ramen dishes, craft and high-gravity beers and an expansive bourbon selection. Expect the ramen to be reminiscent of the kind served at Suttree’s High Gravity Tavern, as it will contain the same meat; one of the three owners is Daniel Crowder, proprietor of Bull’s BBQ. The trio plan to have the bar up and running by the end of 2015, with the restaurant set to open in the spring.
On the aforementioned Island Home Avenue just a little farther east from these enterprises is a building that has housed several different iterations of a dive bar, most notably Kat’s on the River and most recently Vol-N-Beers. The new establishment, however, has been stripped of any lingering sketchiness and remodeled in the image of a neighborhood gathering place in West Knoxville.
Like Bearden Beer Market, Trailhead Beer Market will sell draft beer by the pint and in refillable growlers. It also will feature a bottle shop that will sell a variety of craft brews. Construction of a new 134-unit apartment complex currently has that portion of the road shut down to through traffic, but do not let the signs fool you: Trailhead recently received its beer license and should be opening presently.
The city broke ground for Suttree Landing Park in early July. The mixed-use space on the waterfront totals more than eight acres and is scheduled to be completed in a year’s time. Knoxville’s first new park in 10 years will contain a river walk, an event lawn, a playground, a water feature and many other interesting inclusions. The eastern edge of the park will link up with the greenway, connecting it with Ijams Nature Center and the Urban Wilderness area.
Although the unfortunate death of a Georgia teenager on the Navitat canopy course at Ijams derailed the park’s new addition soon after its opening, Urban Wilderness continues to expand, even being awarded a $100,000 grant from Bell Helmets to be used for a gravity trail. Competing with two other cities for the prize, Knoxville easily won the vote in June thanks to an aggressive and highly publicized campaign by the Appalachian Mountain Bike Club. And just last week, Legacy Parks Foundation announced that it would be creating a three-mile-long trail extending from downtown to Ijams along a section of active but lightly used railway.
Demolition of the former Baptist Hospital continues to progress slowly but surely. Plans for the site include an amalgamation of residential, commercial and public usages. Finally, not far from there on Henley Street, the historic Kern’s Bakery Building is poised for redevelopment. Already the subject of structural corrections and improvements to its façade, the hope is for it to be ready for mixed use by the spring of 2016.
One thing’s for certain: South Knoxville is on the rise.
