The renaissance of Knoxville’s Market Square and downtown
Downtown Knoxville was for years the equivalent of a literary dark and stormy night. Not necessarily stormy, but certainly dark. In 1987, the first time I saw downtown’s Market Square, I initially said aloud, “This is great!” Then I saw the not-so-great empty storefronts. As I discovered, Market Square, and downtown Knoxville, were victims of attitudes changing toward a suburban lifestyle.
In late 1987, my family moved to Knoxville when I became the city’s public affairs director and mayor’s press secretary for newly elected Mayor Victor Ashe. Over the summer, I’d gotten a call from a friend, Tom Ingram, who had served as deputy to Gov. Lamar Alexander. Tom subsequently founded his own public affairs and consulting firm. I was with a large Nashville public relations agency after working on Ashe’s 1984 U.S. Senate race.
Tom asked me to visit him at his office. “Victor needs you in Knoxville,” he said. Ashe was in his first mayoral campaign, which was starting to go sideways. I said, “Tom, if he wins, he might ask me to move to Knoxville.” It wasn’t a prospect I particularly welcomed. Nashville was Tennessee’s capital city and a world-famous destination. Knoxville simply was not. Nevertheless, I consulted on the campaign, Ashe won, and my family and I moved to the “scruffy little city,” a handle a Wall Street Journal reporter stuck on Knoxville.
Downtown Knoxville, for generations the hub of area commercial activity, wasn’t as scruffy as it was dead—well, maybe not all dead, but mostly dead. Shortly after arriving, I remarked, “If an explosion occurred in downtown Knoxville on a Friday night, no one would know about it until Monday morning.”
“Downtown Beirut” was Gay Street’s late 1980s nickname. The street was ripped up for a revitalization project. Boarded-up storefronts abounded. Particularly memorable: worn plywood sheets covering the former Lerner’s store at 403 South Gay Street. (Today, it is now a smart-looking residential building called Lerner Lofts).
Downtown wasn’t the place, or anyplace, to be. During December, as part of Christmas in the City, an ice-skating rink was set up on Market Square to lure people downtown. One evening, I answered the phone in my office. A woman asked, “How do I get downtown to the ice rink?” I gave directions, then asked, “Do you live around here?” She’d lived in Farragut for 10 years – but had never been downtown.
Something I learned in those years is how to tell when a downtown is struggling: murals are painted on empty store windows, and low-cost consignment stores appear. But things in Knoxville were moving. Over the decades, a succession of mayors put money and planning into reviving downtown. Some flopped, some succeeded. For example, Ashe spearheaded the effort to remove unsightly glass encasing the former Miller’s Department Store, at 445 S. Gay Street, today a downtown jewel and KUB’s main office. But something more was necessary.
In 1994, after leaving city government, I was with a company called Regal Corp. Also working there was David Dewhirst. One day, while we were going to lunch, he said, “I want to show you something.” We drove to a small, empty, building on mostly deserted South Gay Street. He said, “I bought this building; I’m going to renovate it and rent it out.” While we toured the building, I was encouraging, verbally, and skeptical, silently. Today, Dewhirst Properties is a successful real estate development company focused on the downtown area. David and others who took risks have played a substantial role in downtown’s rebirth. And it’s helped turn the city’s core into a neighborhood: almost 2,000 people now live downtown. Entertainment, restaurants, new stores – all have contributed to downtown’s renaissance. While in government I saw many people approach the city with ideas requiring taxpayers’ money. But true prosperity arises when people put their own money or credit on the line.
The number of people and organizations that have worked to bring back downtown is far too long to list. What they’ve done, with fits, starts, and toil, is working. One evening, my wife and I were having dinner while sitting outside at a Market Square restaurant. I motioned to the square. “Look at this: it’s like a festival!” But these days, it’s a normal evening, and a long way from downtown Beirut.
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