bring back commerce & vine

The following map continues to amaze me:


First, half of what was downtown Knoxville is gone. Central Street was actually central. Second, what I'd like to talk about today, is that we had an orderly grid system at one point. Despite that fact that we've done our best to ruin its efficiency by chopping it up and plaguing it with one-way streets, the downtown grid continues to serve and provide our city's best streetscapes... with one particularly glaring exception.

You may notice there is no big squiggle across the top of the map. I'm not talking about I-40, the Mother of All Squiggles, but its far less useful cousin Summit Hill Drive. Born of an era when traffic engineers obsessed with getting from Point A to Point B as fast as possible, Summit Hill frolics across northern Downtown, jumping from grid section to grid section. The curvy four lane brazenly ignores downtown, getting drivers through perhaps 5 seconds faster. Even the name "Drive" implies its suburban era heritage, when downtown was a thing to be avoided and gotten by quickly.


The traditional urban streetscape has returned to downtown, with sidewalk cafes and small shops and people living above. Streets that were built around this idea are flourishing. But this 1960s anachronism works against the grain. Why is it that the "treble clef" square is always empty? Why are there almost no street level businesses on Summit Hill? How can we activate this important part of downtown?

I say: restore the grid. The streets that were minimally affected by the "urban renewal" of the 60s have been the quickest to bounce back. Let's salvage the streets that were chopped up. Let's do something like this:


Summit Hill's path is pretty set to the west, but as it descends to Central Street we have a chance to make something beautiful. Streets that used to be prominent, Vine Ave. and Commerce Ave., would become important again. The buildings at the sides of the square would no longer be isolated by odd triangles of leftover space. Imagine a cafe like on Gay Street, but across the street is a park like Krutch, but larger. The edges of the park would have parking to replace all that is lost and then some. Don't worry, we can keep the median trees in the park- they look so nice at Christmas.


Imagine this: in the park we could build an open shed that would be a permanent home for the Farmers Market. The Market House will never return to Market Square now, but we could make something like it in a new place. Vendors could back their trucks up to it just like they used to and sell their products rain or shine.


Or maybe something else?

A lot of potential is being wasted on what could be one of the great urban spaces of Knoxville. The greatest hinderance is the highway that roars through the middle of it. I've told you what I think we should do. What do you think?