Businesses

Virtually every historic building along Knoxville's downtown Gay Street now is occupied, under renovation or has a plan to be soon.

And good luck finding a quick table at a restaurant on a weekend.

Most of the projects that market observers would base the area's growing sense of resurgence on actually are plans still in the making - a new, multiplex theater, renovated retail spaces and more than a half-dozen sites for condominium developments.

Still, downtown's progress in 2005 made the strongest case yet for what it could become.