UPDATE: This article has been updated with more specific data on the number of development plans reviewed by the City of Knoxville.

With building activity at an all-time high, city and county officials are scrambling to keep up with the avalanche of permit applications. 

Development investment in Knox County topped $1.1 billion last year.

And they’re falling further behind.

In the city of Knoxville, it can take nearly two months for a builder to get plans reviewed. The city's goal is about two weeks.

Knox County, which saw twice as much building activity as the city last year, takes less than a week for residential plans approvals (many developers use pre-approved house plans), but three weeks or so for commercial buildings that aren’t too complex.

David Brace, Knoxville’s chief operations officer, said the growth in volume of development plans submitted to the city for review — a 47.4 percent increase during the past five years —  has slowed the process considerably.

“There’s huge investment in our city,” he said. “Right now, we’re sending our plans review staff into the field to do inspections. We need them in the office reviewing plans.”

A report on development activity in 2022 recently issued by Knoxville-Knox County Planning shows the city added 1,320 dwelling units last year, the vast majority of them (1,104) in multi-family projects.

Knox County outside the Knoxville city limits, including the town of Farragut, saw more than double the city’s residential construction growth — 2,871 units. Of that total, 1,516 were detached houses.

Commercial, industrial and other non-residential construction accounted for 59 projects in Knoxville, eight in Farragut and 113 in unincorporated Knox County. 

With the county’s population growth over the past decade and a homebuilding industry that has yet to fully recover from the 2008 recession, the supply of housing hasn’t kept pace with demand. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Knoxville’s 2022 population was estimated at 195,889, up 2.7 percent from the 2020 Census number. Knox County has grown 3.3 percent to an estimated 494,574 during the same time period.

According to a recent report from the Knoxville Area Association of Realtors, the area needs 25,000 new residential units to restore the balance. 

“The pressure is as high as it ever has been,” said Jim Snowden, Knox County Senior Director of Engineering and Public Works. “We’re trying to keep up with plans reviews and inspections.”

He said the office is understaffed and could use one or two more employees. The county raised its building permit fees earlier this spring, which should provide more funding to help pay for the new positions that could be added during the current fiscal year.

“Our goal is to give the best customer service, whether it’s somebody remodeling a house or building a large subdivision,” Snowden said.

The backlog is acute in the city. According to data provided by the Kincannon administration, the number of plans submitted for review has risen from 1,638 in 2017 to 2,414 in 2022. The average time for plans to be reviewed, including revisions, has jumped from 38 to 54 days.

“We’re going to hit it hard,” Brace said. “We have to meet the demands of the market.”

City Council has approved three new engineering and plans inspections positions — one in the current budget year and two in the upcoming fiscal year. The city has also engaged Cannon & Cannon Inc. to ease the workload in the short term and has issued a request for qualifications for a contractor to help address the longstanding backlogs in both plans review and field inspections.

Brace said the city is also hiring Avero Advisors to address user issues, both internal and external, with its permitting software. “We’re not happy with how things are going with that project,” he said. “That transition has not gone the way we want it to.”

Finally, the administration moved neighborhood codes enforcement to the Public Service Department. Brace said that would allow the Plans Review & Enforcement Office to focus on buildings and Public Service to tackle neighborhood quality of life issues.

Developers routinely say they are building houses as fast as they get approved for construction. Victor Jernigan, who develops property in both the city and the county, said the city in particular needs to hire more employees, but noted that both governments are short staffed.

“They don’t get a budget high enough to do what they need to do,” he said.

Jernigan also said the city has “significantly more” regulations for developments, which he asserted both slows the process and increases costs to make it difficult to build more affordable housing. 

In 2022, new construction investment in the entire county topped $1.1 billion, with about 77.8 percent of the total going toward residential projects. Renovations totaled $324.8 million last year, with close to two-thirds devoted to commercial, industrial and other non-residential projects.

Inside the city limits, about one-third of the new residential units were built in the central sector, which includes downtown and Fort Sanders. Other fast-growing sectors in the city were north and northwest.

The fast-growing southwest and northwest sectors of Knox County accounted for 71 percent of the residential building activity outside the Knoxville city limits.

Total residential construction activity throughout the county, including Knoxville and Farragut, has increased 119.8 percent over the past decade. The pace has accelerated over the past four years, soaring 55.9 percent since 2018. 

Commercial construction also sped up between 2013 and 2022, rising 140 percent. In recent years, however, the number of new non-residential projects has remained relatively steady with the exception of a spike in 2021.

Snowden said the supply of residential building sites isn’t keeping up with the demand. “The logjam in the system is a shortage of lots,” he said. 

Thirty of the 39 subdivisions established in 2022, consisting of 1,316 building lots, lay outside the Knoxville city limits. 

The report states that 3,101 acres of land have been converted from agricultural to other uses — overwhelmingly for subdivisions — since 2017. In 2022, rezonings converted 524 acres of agricultural land, which was 57 percent of the acreage covered by all rezonings in Knox County last year. Since 2013, nearly 9 square miles of agricultural land have been converted to other uses.

“Agriculture is far and away the most important industry to the state of Tennessee,” said Kevin Murphy, co-founder of the advocacy group Knox County Planning Alliance and a farm preservationist. “We are the No. 3 state in the nation in converting farm and forest land.” 

He said land use policy must preserve property with important farm soils. “Farmers are really worried about all the subdivisions that are being built.”

Murphy said he hopes the county’s Advance Knox land use and transportation planning process can preserve farmland as residential development in rural areas continues. He’s also focused on policies and zoning regulations that will result from the plans.

“If they want to make changes in our lifetimes, this is the time to make those changes,” Murphy said.

Snowden said the county will look at overhauling its zoning code once the Advance Knox process winds up next summer.