As part of the East TN Community Design Center’s Community Collaborative initiative,  a community input session was held at the National Guard Armory on Sutherland Avenue in February 2020. The Community Collaborative is a partnership with many local organizations including AIA East TN Chapter, UT’s College of Architecture + Design, Knox Heritage, Keep Knoxville Beautiful, the City of Knoxville, and others, which focuses each year on a different area of town and efforts to improve it.

The input session was an open house from 4:30 to 6:30 pm and allowed residents and interested citizens an opportunity to give their input on the future of Sutherland Avenue. Attendees were given a “Passport” which helped guide them through 5 Input Stations.

Station 1 collected data on the general demographics of those in attendance; where they lived and what age group they represented. Station 2 had a series of three maps highlighting sections of the Sutherland Avenue corridor and gave people the chance to mark the maps with green, yellow, and red stickers. A green sticker meant they felt something was an asset that should remain as is, yellow meant that something was ok, but needed some improvements, and red meant it needed to be removed or completely changed.

Station 3 asked people to answer in one phrase the questions: ‘What is one thing keeping Sutherland from being beautiful?’ and “What is one physical thing that would make Sutherland better?’. The responses were written on small slips of paper and taped on a large board for everyone to see. Station 4 provided two large boards, which allowed participants to fill in the blanks in response to the two questions: ‘What types of businesses do you want to see on Sutherland?’ and ‘What types of businesses do you not want to see on Sutherland?’

Finally, Station 5 was the Visual Preference Survey. This was a series of several categories such as bus shelters, public art, sidewalks, bike lanes, and benches that gave 4 choices showing various styles and asked people to choose their two favorites.  This allows the ETCDC to gain a sense of not only what people want to see on Sutherland, but to see the design styles they prefer.

The next steps include the ETCDC is to take the data and create an Enhancement Plan for Sutherland Avenue that will be presented to the community and neighborhood groups. Professor Marleen Davis’s Third Year Studio also will be developing projects along the Sutherland Avenue Corridor.  Their work will be displayed at a future event.