- Some business owners are safe in the ability of Knoxville residents to find alternative roads in the city center with the Gay Street Bridge.
- Others are concerned about the closure that continues to damage the business, especially when the start of the road Sevier Avenue begins.
- The Sevier Avenue bridge hosts a city’s boost during the road landscape, including a newly paved parking lot for visitors.
- The reopening of the pedestrian bridge and cyclists can require $ 2 million in repairs, while building a new vehicle bridge is not financially possible at the moment.
How do you feel about closing the Gay Road Bridge? The answer may depend on that side of the damaged bridge that you are in a genuine sense, from restaurants downtown to Sevier Avenue traders who now feel detached, and in your belief in people’s ability to fit to change.
“I don’t know what hurt us the most, the bridge is closed or ozepic,” Bistro told the owner of Bijou Martha Boggs for Knox News with laughter, though the seriousness of losing daily traffic number of 7,000 vehicles in The whole bridge is something that the stakeholders are thinking about.
While Boggs believes that the residents of Knoxville will be taught to reserve the pedestrians and cyclists, which the city informed February 12 after the rich months nothing new to report, the owner of Sokno Sourdough Stephanie Carlson is already distancing itself further from City Center.
Everything Carlson needs, she said, is in South Knoxville, including along Sevier Avenue.
“I didn’t leave this side of the river so much anyway, and now definitely doesn’t leave that much,” Carlson said. “Like, I’m not going to the city center anymore. So, I think the bridge is touching both sides of the river.”
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For the sake of Sevier Avenue businesses, here we hope that people who come from the city center do not feel the same way for the southern knoxville. The crews began to work last month on the Sevier Avenue Streetscape road project that is moving underground upper services, improving the sidewalks and lighting, and creating a roundabout at the intersection of the Home Avenue and Foggy Bottom Street island.
Construction is expected to last two years, and businesses are tightening about what it can say about customer bases. At least one traffic lane is supposed to remain open at Sevier Avenue for most of the project.
Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon met with business owners Sevier Avenue on February 13 to discuss how the city will support South Knoxville through the construction project as well as through the bridge to close.
Part of the support will include paving of gravel under James White Parkway on Home Avenue Island to signal to visitors that it is, in fact, a public parking option.
“This is not a choice I made or anything I was expecting to handle,” Kincannon told the bridge that never reopened in vehicles. “Sometimes, things go down to the fact that no one wanted or waited. Fortunately, no one is hurt and no one is killed, and that’s important.”
Part of the city’s message in the promotion of Sevier Avenue is that there are alternative roads, and Boggs is convinced that people who want to go downtown can discover roads using James White Parkway and Henley Road Bridge.
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In addition to the rules of Bistro and those who capture a performance at the neighboring theater, which Boggs said provides a sustainable cadence of friends, foot traffic from all over the bridge in South Knoxville has been a prominent source of clients.
While pedestrians will be able to use the bridge after reopening, it has been closed to all – drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike – since June 25 when TDOT crews found a piece of twisted steel that could have made one part of the structure to tighten.
“God helps us if a bird sits on it,” Boggs said. “It was essentially a pedestrian bridge. This helped us connect us with the urban desert there.”
Kincannon said what it seemed as if little damage could have led to a “catastrophic failure” if the problem had not participated. The long -term goal is to replace the bridge, but the city simply does not have time or money to get another bridge project immediately.
“For a full replacement and appreciation, we will need federal and state dollars,” Kincannon said, mentioning that the only pedestrian option is a “forbidden gap” for “15 years or more”.
Boggs and other businesses owners were expressed by feeling in the dark about reopening plans, culminating in the February 12 announcement that seemed to come out of nowhere.
“The city did not say a word about it,” Boggs said before the news broke, telling Knox News later that “at least we know what is happening now.”
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The owner of Garage Southside James Tourville said the closure has not appeared to affect his Sevier Avenue business, though he still wants to know a time limit for reopening.
“We still had a great year as a business, and it looks like the road also did,” Tourville said. “We would definitely want some kind of solution for her or at least know what’s going on here. It’s not like it lowered our sales or something like that.”
To reopen the pedestrian and cyclists’ bridge (and the emergency and transit vehicles), the city must spend $ 2 million on repairs. Setting that with $ 19.2 million Sevier Avenue Streetscape – add to the $ 60 million pedestrian bridge that is being built between the southern waters and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville – and it is clear that the city is giving preference to its urban essence.
All this change is happening as Knoxville Smokies prepares to discover the public baseball stadium that opens on April 15, one of the largest developments in the city center in decades and one that is expected to transform the borders and voice of the city center.
Joanna Hayes It is the restaurant and retail reporter. Email: joanna.hayes@knoxnews.com.
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