Downtown Knoxville seeing a lot of shaking going on developmentally
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.
Property values within the Central Business Improvement District outpaced those across the rest of the city, according to Knox County's property reappraisals in October.
The downtown core's reappraisals increased an average of 21 percent since October 2004, compared with an average 14-percent rise citywide.
The hype over growing development interest was similarly validated in October by the unsolicited purchase of the Riverview Tower by a Texas-based real estate investment firm for $41 million.
The 24-story local landmark and second-largest office building downtown had sold for $22.6 million in 2001.
Residential development continues to lead the trend. One of the latest planned projects would convert the former Knoxville Utilities Board headquarters at the corner of Gay Street and Church Avenue into luxury condominiums.
Construction on a similar project already has begun on the former Charter Federal Building. Now re-envisioned as the Holston, in reference to its original status as the Holston National Bank, the 14-story, 92-year-old structure is set to become high-end luxury condos. The project would also convert the one-time bank lobby ground floor into a restaurant/bar.
Construction is set to begin later this year on Central Station Lofts, a $20 million project at 350 S. Gay St. With plans for 70 upscale condominiums among six upper floors and another 20,000 square feet of retail space on the ground level, it also will mark the first new construction on Gay Street in 13 years.
The project's same development partnership, The Knox Merchant LLC, plans to simultaneously begin another $10 million job one block away with the renovation of the former J.C. Penney building into some 12,000 square feet of retail space with another condo project, the Trolley Lofts, on top.
Sandwiched between those two sites will be Mast General Stores, in the old White Stores grocery building at 402 S. Gay St.
Set for an August opening, the North Carolina-based retailer's announcement of its expansion to Knoxville was triumphed as the first such commitment to follow the city's plan for a public-private-funded movie theater in Gay Street's historic 500 block site of the former S&W Cafeteria.
The planned $11.5-million movie house, with a $3.5-million city taxpayer investment, has been touted as the major catalyst needed to attract new interests like Mast. Despite several setbacks - financial, architectural and otherwise - the theater now is set for a much-anticipated October opening.
Just off Gay, plans are progressing on a new $28 million public transit center along State Street, near Union Avenue and Summit Hill Drive.
Construction is almost complete on a new $8.6 million, 50,000-square-foot Hampton Inn and Suites at the corner of Main and Henley streets.
And the number of visitors and business customers continues to climb in the heart of downtown at Market Square, aided by big draws like the Sundown in the City free, summer concert series and December's holiday season ice-skating rink.
