Knoxville wins massive $42.6M grant to reconnect East Knoxville with downtown

Knoxville has a rare opportunity to improve how East Knoxville residents get to downtown and neighborhoods across the river – including reimagining James White Parkway – with a $42.6 million federal grant. The project would create more paths for East Knoxville residents to walk or bike to jobs, activities and recreational amenities that have been difficult to access since urban removal, which flattened entire blocks of mostly Black homes, churches and businesses in the 1960s and ’70s. Through eminent domain, the city acquired this property for urban removal − touted as urban renewal at the time − for the construction of the Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum. Urban removal policies also led to the creation of new routes like James White Parkway and Interstate 40 at the expense of Black neighborhoods. The new seven-phase project seeks to help reconnect East Knoxville with downtown, which would then be connected to South Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness. The South Knoxville connection would run through Morningside Park and involves retrofitting James White Parkway, one of the most notable barriers built by urban removal, to create barricaded walkways and bike paths along the bridge crossing the Tennessee River. Holograms could bring Knoxville’s African-American history to life...