Update: This article has been revised to note that Democratic consultant Jack Vaughan is working for Nathan Honeycutt's campaign.

Only two people opted to run for the open City Council 2nd District seat in this year’s election. That means the Aug. 26 primary will amount to halftime of a long general election campaign instead of an elimination round.

District 2 extends west along Kingston Pike from the University of Tennessee campus to Cedar Bluff.

Architect Nathan Honeycutt and Melody Watts, an event coordinator, are vying for the West Knoxville seat currently occupied by Andrew Roberto, who couldn’t run for reelection because of term limits. Both are newcomers to running for office.

The 2nd District encompasses West Knoxville from the western end of the University of Tennessee campus along Kingston Pike to Cedar Bluff. The district is home to shopping meccas (West Town Mall and Turkey Creek) and upscale neighborhoods (Sequoyah Hills, Westmoreland, Deane Hill and West Hills). 

The district has also become more heavily Democratic in recent years. The area’s two county commissioners, Damon Rawls and Shane Jackson, are Democrats, as is school board representative Katherine Bike. Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson represents much of the portion of the district north of Kingston Pike.

Nathan Honeycutt

Nathan Honeycutt, a Greeneville native, said he and his wife chose Knoxville as the place they wanted to move to from Atlanta with their two children in 2012.

They live in Sequoyah Hills and he makes the short commute downtown to work as a partner at McCarty Holsaple McCarty Architects. His wife is a pre-K teacher at Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church. Their kids go to West High School.

Honeycutt, 46, described his run for Knoxville City Council’s 2nd District having origins in the community service he would perform with Habitat for Humanity in Greeneville, where his father founded the chapter. That fueled his interest in majoring in architecture at the University of Tennessee, where he learned about city planning from an architect who worked on Chattanooga’s revitalization. He would eventually land in Atlanta, working for a large firm with global clients that sent him to places such as Amsterdam, Beijing and Dubai. But East Tennessee called him back.

And those experiences inform his campaign goals for development to be done with intent as Knoxville continues to grow.

“As an architect and business owner, I see the growth, the challenges and the opportunity headed our way as a city,” he said. “I joke that the secret’s out about Knoxville.”

Knoxville should be the kind of place that people are proud to hand to their children, Honeycutt said, and needs elected officials who, “are educated and experienced and passionate about our community, so that we can both protect what is so special about Knoxville, so we don’t lose our spirit, and then guide growth in a really smart, thoughtful, community-driven way.”

Democratic consultant Jack Vaughan is working with his campaign.

“I’m excited that the next City Council is going to be a pivotal part of the formation of the next 15-year comprehensive plan for the city,” he said. Honeycutt said that the community meetings — hearing from neighborhoods and residents — will guide the plan.

“As an architect, that’s something I do every day,” he said. “I bring people together and create a plan.”

He wants to incentivize mixed-use development, but in the right areas. Development along Kingston Pike in Bearden could be one of those places.

“I think we need to incentivize two- to three-story buildings that have apartments and living incorporated into them,” Honeycutt said, “and start to make more walkable districts.”

It’s possible to build a walkable area like Gay Street in other areas. He said lessons learned from Cumberland Avenue’s development, where tall buildings loom close to the street, should be used to develop a “more healthy” built environment. Requirements for building materials and setbacks along sidewalks and streets, among other requirements, can ensure quality development elsewhere, he said.

“I’m glad for the density,” he said, “but I think a couple of simple moves could have made it better.”

Honeycutt added that more affordable housing in Knoxville is needed, along with helping existing homeowners to keep their homes.

“I think you could have a mixed-use fund so that, if people are looking to do a single-story retail building, there’s incentive there to add apartments and make the building mixed-use,” he said. “So we start to get the kind of walkable mixed use along our corridors that will help our housing crisis.”

Honeycutt wants greenway connections to the West Hills YMCA, and Lakeshore Park. He supports a well-funded police department, and wants to tackle homelessness through mental health work. His mother, a psychologist who worked with mental health centers across East Tennessee, including Cherokee Health Systems, showed him some of the needs.

Honeycutt’s approach mirrors the city’s existing co-response program.

“We need to … have social workers paired with police officers to address a lot of the social and mental health issues that come up,” he said. “A large portion of 911 calls are related to domestic issues, mental health issues, things that a social worker is adequately trained to be a part of and handle.”

As for the sales tax increase referendum, Honeycutt said that he’s undecided on his support — he’s gathering feedback on the campaign trail as he goes door-to-door in the 2nd District.

“My main point is that the next City Council, their job is to hold the administration accountable, for any promises that are made now regarding the sales tax and what that money might be used for,” he said.

He said that he’s heard about the concerns about the proposed tax increase from people in his district, but that’s balanced by the needs of a growing city.

“They want parks for their children to play in. They want safe sidewalks for their kids to walk to school on,” he said. “They want investment in the neighborhoods, and those investments really impact your daily life in a big way.”

Melody Watts

Melody Watts, 34, is in her first campaign for public office, but she said she’s been an observer of city government.

“I’ve watched City Council kind of push their own agenda, specifically in my district,” Watts said. “I’m running to hopefully hear the residents in District 2 and make sure that someone’s speaking up for them.”

Watts is an event coordinator at Pellissippi State Community College, where she went to college after being homeschooled through childhood. She transferred from Pellissippi to Carson-Newman University and earned her bachelor’s degree there before going to work at Pellissippi. She runs between the college’s various campuses to help manage and coordinate events.

“We’re always listening to internal and external clients and making sure that communication is happening,” she said, “which I hope to apply to being a City Council member.”

She spoke on her campaign recently in an interview over coffee at Seed Coffee Company on Sutherland Avenue. Watts, who is single, named zoning and homelessness as her top issues, and spoke of her Christian faith and her wish to represent her neighborhood.

The West Hills resident said she believes that City Council’s decision to allow duplex zoning was wrong for the area. A plan was introduced in 2024 to create middle housing zoning to make it easier to build duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings in traditional neighborhoods inside the Interstate 640 beltway.

“The first thing I’ll do when I get elected is reverse the recent duplex issue that allows duplexes to be built in single-family detached neighborhoods, which is the majority of District 2,” she said.

(The 2nd District lies outside the band of traditional neighborhoods close to downtown where the city has made it easier to build duplexes and other middle housing types.)

“Knoxville is pretty unique in the fact that there are some urban areas within our city,” Watts said. “However, I think there’s been a push to just kind of make it like some other big city elsewhere, and having influence from the outside in,” she said. “And I think it’s time to let Knoxville – maybe give infrastructure a time to catch up – be an influence to other places, instead of trying to make it like something else.”

Watts, who has conservative consultant Erik Wiatr running her campaign, said that she hasn’t done any door-to-door visits to voters in her district, but plans to start soon. She didn’t name any community organizations that she is currently active with. Watts volunteered with a community theater some years ago, “I don’t remember the exact dates.”

Running for office “wasn’t a preplanned thing,” Watts said, but added she wanted to serve her community. She opposes the local option sales tax before voters, saying that it might have a negative impact on local businesses. Watts suggested that city codes could be revisited to “make sure that there’s not anything that’s too complicated for somebody to come and set their business up.”

One of her other primary platforms is addressing homelessness. As a Christian, Watts said her feelings were summed up on a bumper sticker she saw while in traffic recently that read, “In Knoxville, as it is in Heaven.”

“I want Knoxville to know that the Lord, he is alive, and cares about each and every person,” she said. On the matter of homelessness, she referenced existing resources such as KARM and other agencies that help those in need. “I have a passion for Christian mission service and I want to use that in public leadership,” she said.

She doesn’t want members of the city’s homeless population “to just be treated inhumanely or thrown in jail or given a citation.” Watts added her desire is to “get to the root” of homelessness.

“My heart is that I think the Lord really does care about this city, and I just want people to feel safe, and grow good roots in Knoxville,” she said.

On the matter of safety in the city, she conjured an image of someone using drugs.

“I wouldn’t think that these homeless people, who are shooting up whatever in their needles, that I have seen around the areas that they’ve been in, would be considered safe,” she said.

In January, Knoxville police released a preliminary report showing a general decrease in crime in 2024 compared to prior years.