HOPE VI in Knoxville a Cause for Celebration

On August 18th, KCDC won a Silver Anniversary Excellence Award from the Knoxville-Knox County Metropolitan Planning Commission for the Mechanicsville Commons (HOPE VI) site. It was one of twelve awards given. These awards were offered to the best projects of the last 25 years in Knoxville and were chosen from 180 former winners. The Mechanicsville Community has much to celebrate and it looks forward to an exceedingly bright future as the result of KCDC's HOPE VI program. On August 19th, a "Homecoming Celebration" was held and is planned to be an annual event. Some 1,500 neighborhood residents and visitors attended the event held in the Danny Mayfield Park, a new community green space in the center of Mechanicsville Commons. The community celebrated its history and its rejuvenation.

Once a prosperous neighborhood of African American businesses and working families, Mechanicsville in Knoxville, Tennessee began to decline in the late twentieth century. College Homes, a public housing development located in the center of the neighborhood, became a high crime area and as families moved away, businesses closed. Mechanicsville became a collection of vacant and blighted properties with little opportunity to attract any private investment. In 1997, Knoxville's local public housing agency, Community Development Corporation (KCDC), received a $22 million HOPE VI grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to revitalize the College Homes area and surrounding Mechanicsville Neighborhood.

The College Homes barrack style-apartments were replaced with single family and duplex homes, for rental and homeownership, designed to fit architecturally with neighborhood structures. New streets and sidewalks were connected to Mechanicsville's existing street grid, and alleys were built to provide rear access to the homes. The new neighborhood, Mechanicsville Commons, houses two new churches, a greenway and a community park. In addition to Mechanicsville Commons, KCDC purchased over 100 vacant lots throughout the neighborhood for new construction. In total, the HOPE VI program has built 85 new homeownership homes and 170 new rental homes. Families participating in KCDC's supportive services program are living in the new neighborhood, many as first time home buyers.

KCDC used a variety of fund sources to finance the project. Low-income housing tax credits, HOPE VI, and Federal Home Loan Bank funds financed the first two phases of rental housing.HOPE VI and home sales proceeds financed the affordable home ownership phases, while for-profit developers have built the market?rate homeownership and rental units within the area. A number of corporations have now located offices and business in the area including the Knoxville News Sentinel, Cherokee Health Systems, Pilot Oil, State of Tennessee, Fort Sanders Health System, and the newest addition, a Food City grocery store. The total amount of private investment in Mechanicsville since the beginning of the HOPE VI project exceeds $70 million.