Outlet Drive a future entertainment hub?
The Town’s Economic Development Advisory Committee discussed the area’s business growth potential during its monthly meeting Wednesday morning, June 6, in Town Hall boardroom.
“A lot of people are unaware as to what land we own out there and how it’s zoned,” Vice Mayor Ron Pinchok said. “I have thought about the Outlet Drive area possibly as an entertainment area.”
Stephen Krempasky, executive director of Shop Farragut/Farragut Business Alliance, suggested “something high” building-wise in the area for entertainment purposes, “something that breaks the view to gather some interest.
“Most theaters have tall spaces for the backstage area at least,” Krempasky added. “A nice arts center up there, something that has reoccurring events.”
“The Steering Committee for the Comprehensive Land Use Plan has been talking about the four gateways to our Town,” Pinchok said. “… Eventually we’re going to be talking about the Outlet Drive area.
“One of the things I know that grew downtown Knoxville — I ran Bijou theatre back when A.C. Entertainment was a baby … — is we are positioned on the Interstates that you have talent moving along the road every single day,” Krempasky said.
He said Outlet Drive might be ripe for taking advantage of tourist and local patrons, who may form entertainment “patterns of travel” coming to regularly scheduled events along Outlet Drive.
“Once you’ve done something you go back … the only one really capitalizing on it in Farragut, about this position, is Cotton Eyed Joe’s,” Krempasky said.
“I know the tourism industry is huge on festivals and other things,” he added. “If you just look at the schedule in our little East Tennessee area, if there’s not five festivals on every weekend I must be reading the paper wrong.”
Pinchok asked David Smoak, Town administrator, “to bring a developer in, possibly, to talk to us about what (he) thinks about the Outlet Drive corridor. … How maybe we can be proactive to guide what we’d like to see.”
“Hopefully in August, or maybe September at the latest, we can get somebody, or a couple of people, to come in,” Smoak said.
Committee member Samuel French said the Town might want to do more than simply say ‘here’s a plot of land, what do you think?’ to a given developer.
He suggested the Town might want to be proactive, saying, ‘OK, here’s what we could do with that space,’ create some visuals.”
“You have to have a willing property owner that is willing to work with you to have a master plan for their site to get it marketable,” Smoak said. “There’s a difference in what we plan on the screen (versus) what actually can be done from a development standpoint.”
For example, “There’s definitely access issues trying to get to that center-point of Outlet Drive,” Smoak said.
“But I think that when you get one big entity to go in there, that’s going to start setting the stage for what else goes around it,” he added. “This question is, ‘what do you get first?’
“We’ve been trying (to get) entertainment-type venues to go over there.”
Meanwhile, “There’s three performing arts centers being developed in Knoxville right now … they’re 100-seater, little,” Krempasky said. “And they’re basically moving into warehouse space. … We’re not blessed with all those old buildings.”
However, the current location for At Home along Outlet Drive — the former Outlet Mall home that soon will become vacant — was estimated to be “160,000 square feet,” Smoak said, adding it currently has three owners.
“That could be divvied up into a hundred different places,” Krempasky said.
As for the area’s current commercial status, “You’ve got a lot of light industrial kind of to the east toward Knoxville down Outlet Drive,” Smoak said.
Robin “Bob” Hill, former Farragut Municipal Planning Commission chair, said Outlet Drive’s prime commercial areas should get “equal treatment with entertainment and tourism for small industrial, light industrial start-ups. It’s perfect for that. … That kind of land is used by business … not tourist.”
Hill said Farragut is ideal to develop this type of business, given the population includes “probably 200, 300 PhDs in science. We have technological riches. … for the use of people who want to make things or who want to start up a business. … I think you’ll get a strong interest in that.”
Moreover, “I don’t think anybody wants to go over there and see a movie or a play,” Hill said.
