After 15 years of Inside of Knoxville harping about it, the secret is officially out: Downtown Knoxville is the place to be. But as its meteoric rise continues, the question gets sharper every year: who can still afford to live here, or even just near the center city?
Increasingly, I find myself caring less about the latest luxury condos and more about what it takes to keep downtown accessible to folks who don’t have a trust fund or a remote tech salary but still want to be part of the center city’s energy and opportunity.
A former downtown service industry colleague of mine (we were both servers at Tomato Head in the early 2000s) floats a chewy little thesis: While a lot of rightful credit for downtown’s revival goes to the developers who took financial risks on neglected buildings, maybe we don’t talk enough about the people who invested in downtown with their labor, creativity and presence. The cooks, baristas, artists and scene-makers who chose to build lives and community here helped make downtown desirable in the first place…