New Year, Big Momentum: Construction on Waterfront Drive Continues, To Start on Suttree Landing Park

City of Knoxville:

January 13, 2015 - It's the start of a new year - and 2015 will mark a major expansion of South Knoxville Waterfront redevelopment. Work is underway by road builder Charles Blalock & Sons on the new $3.2 million Waterfront Drive, a tree-lined direct access to the new five-acre Suttree Landing Park that also will be under construction this year. The new 2,988-foot-long two-lane street north of Langford Avenue will connect more than half a mile between Barber Street and Foggy Bottom Street. It will rim the southern edge of the new Suttree Landing Park. The road project includes asphalt pavement, 11-foot-wide lanes, concrete sidewalks and curbs, landscaping, tree plantings and decorative street lighting. The first phase of the park construction is going out to bid this month. Suttree Landing Park - the City's first major new park to open in a decade - will feature an event lawn, a river walk and river overlooks, a boat ramp and a playground. In a follow-up phase, restrooms and a boat house will be built. "The conceptualization, public input and planning for Waterfront Drive and Suttree Landing Park have been meticulous and thoughtful," said Dawn Michelle Foster, the City's Deputy Director of Redevelopment, who's headed up the projects. "Bids for the park construction will soon be solicited, and the road construction began last fall. Now that we're fully into the construction phases, it's exciting to see these great public amenities becoming a reality." Joe Walsh, the City's Director of Parks and Recreation, predicts the new park will be well-liked and widely used by South Knoxvillians. "It'll be a nice, aesthetically-pleasing park on the south side of the Tennessee River, and it'll be symmetrical with what's on the north side - Volunteer Landing and Ned McWherter Park," Walsh said. Also slated to be completed in spring 2015, a little over a mile southwest from Suttree Landing Park, is the newly redesigned entrance to Fort Dickerson Park off Chapman Highway. In addition to adding new landscaping, the $1 million Fort Dickerson Roadway Realignment Project will realign Fort Dickerson Road with Woodlawn Pike and includes about 475 feet of new two-lane road with sidewalk and signalization.