During the 1960s and early 1970s, urban renewal destroyed Knoxville’s Black neighborhoods east of Downtown in the name of progress. Over the next several years, thanks to the largest federal grant awarded to the city in recent memory, Knoxville officials will attempt to reconnect the areas cut off from much of the rest of the city.

Projects to be funded by the grant have been designed to restore connections between East Knoxville, Downtown, the Old City and South Knoxville.

The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Knoxville city government and Knoxville’s Community Development Corp. a $42.6 million Reconnecting Communities grant. 

The collection of projects to be funded by the grant have been designed to restore connections — primarily pedestrian and bicycle — between East Knoxville, Downtown, the Old City and South Knoxville. 

“This grant is going to be transformational for East Knoxville and for our whole city,” Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said at a gathering in Morningside Park on Wednesday to announce the award. “It's going to do two things — first, create great spaces and connectivity; and second, it's going to help heal the wounds of urban renewal.” 

Those wounds included connections that were severed by urban renewal and the construction of James White Parkway, which acts as a barrier between Downtown and East Knoxville neighborhoods. 

“We're going to fix those barriers,” Kincannon said. “We're going to repair the harms that have been done, and this is going to make it easier for the people of East Knoxville to get to jobs and cultural life, and get there safely and smoothly, and in a warm, welcoming way that makes everybody know that East Knoxville is just as important a part of our city as any other part.”

The mayor noted that urban renewal displaced more than 2,500 families, most of them African American. To make room for the Civic Auditorium and Coliseum alone, Kincannon said, 72 residences, nine businesses and two churches were razed, and many of them were never rebuilt elsewhere in the city.

“This is going to heal those wounds by reconnecting this part of town to other parts of the city,” 

Councilwoman Gwen McKenzie, who represents East Knoxville, said she thought about the generations of Black Knoxvillians who came before her.

“I’m sure they’re smiling today to see there is reinvestment that’s being done to right those wrongs of the past,” she said. “These were unintended consequences. I'm sure no one went into urban renewal thinking that, ‘Oh, we're going to decimate Black communities, we're going to eradicate Black businesses.’” 

McKenzie also emphasized that the investment would help future generations. 

“Those that are coming after us are going to have those opportunities for generational wealth building and thriving,” she said. “This is what this grant is all about. It is about connecting resources, connecting people, connecting opportunities. I firmly believe that East Knoxville is the heartbeat of this city.” 

USDOT’s Reconnecting Communities grants are narrowly tailored to remove barriers erected by past infrastructure projects such as interstate highway construction. This year, the program will distribute

 $3.33 billion in grant awards for 132 projects across the nation.

Knoxville applied for a Reconnecting Communities grant last year, but didn’t make the cut. This year’s application was even more ambitious, according to Kincannon.

The $42.6 million grant will pay for about half of the cost of the projects included in the city’s application. Since the projects are already planned, the city has budgeted or forecast funding that will now be used as the local match for the grant.

The projects, which are detailed in the grant application on KCDC’s website,  include:

• The East Knoxville Greenway will run from the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum to Harriet Tubman Park near the Change Center and Vine Middle Magnet School.

• First Creek at Austin would see several improvements, including a pedestrian and vehicle bridge over First Creek and an extension of the East Knoxville Greenway to the Old City, both of which would connect the reconstructed public housing community to the new stadium.

• The connection between the stadium and the Old City would be improved by establishing a park underneath the James White Parkway and Hall of Fame Drive overpasses. The city is already funding infrastructure improvements around the stadium.

• A cultural corridor would be established and would feature connectors in multiple directions centering on the intersection of Summit Hill Drive/Dandridge Avenue and Hill Avenue/Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue (both roadways change names at that intersection). Pocket parks in the area would highlight the city’s African-American history and culture. The network would connect Harriet Tubman Park, the Beck Cultural Exchange Center and Morningside Park.

• Perhaps the most dramatic change would be the greenway connection from the cultural corridor in East Knoxville across the South Knoxville Bridge to the Urban Wilderness Gateway Park. The greenway would be a “linear park” taking up half of the present James White Parkway right-of-way, while the roadway would be reconfigured to fit on the other half.

The grant dovetails with the goals of the African American Equity Restoration Task Force, which was formed in December 2020. The task force, championed by McKenzie, aims to secure $100 million in grant funding to help create generational wealth in the Black community that was destroyed by urban renewal. The task force has yet to determine how much of the grant should be credited toward its goal.

Tanisha Fitzgerald-Baker, chair of the task force, called Wednesday “a glorious day” for celebration and for looking ahead.

“What that says is that I matter,” she said. “My history matters, my community matters. This is a huge investment. We talk about connections. But it's not only to spaces and places, it’s to opportunity, it’s to options, it’s to resources, it’s to better jobs. These are all things to celebrate, and be grateful for.” 

The projects will be implemented in seven phases over a period of years, though some might be tackled simultaneously, officials said. A schedule hasn’t been finalized, but work should begin in 2025.