Suttree Landing Park was one of 11 winners of the 2017 Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Awards, announced earlier this month by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation Commissioner Bob Martineau. The awards recognize exceptional voluntary actions that improve or protect Tennessee’s environment and natural resources with projects or initiatives not required by law or regulation.

Three winners from Knox County were named.

In addition to the City of Knoxville and its newest park, Keep Knoxville Beautiful was saluted for its educational outreach programs, which included more than 65 neighborhood, waterway and roadside cleanups. The Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization’s Smart Trips program was honored for its incentive-based reward program that promotes telecommuting, ride-sharing, carpooling, biking, walking, bus and transit. Smart Trips-registered commuters logged 17,908,426 miles in “alternative” commutes over the last six years, which represents 8.4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions that were prevented.

For more details, click HERE and HERE.

Suttree Landing Park, meanwhile, is the City's first new park to open in 12 years. It’s an 8¼-acre linear park within Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness that boasts festival lawns, a children’s playground, a put-in for kayakers, accessible river overlooks with picnic tables, and a public riverwalk. It opened last November.

 
Here’s how the park was described in the Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Awards announcement:

"As you walk through Suttree Landing, … it is hard to imagine that from the 1940s until 2004, this was an industrial site home to a bulk oil storage facility, a textile dying operation and an engine parts manufacturer.

To facilitate this transformation, the City of Knoxville successfully negotiated a Brownfield Voluntary Agreement with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Division of Remediation in 2010. Six years later, the city has a beautiful, multi-use riverfront park. This project illustrates that the conversion of a Brownfield site into an outdoor recreation space can be accomplished through strategic planning, partnerships, community involvement and active stakeholder involvement toward a common vision.

The city applied for and received a $400,000 Community-Wide Brownfield Assessment Grant from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess properties along the waterfront. The collaborative effort between EPA, the City of Knoxville and TDEC identified 12 sites with significant redevelopment potential. Two of the sites were used for Suttree Landing Park.

With the creation of the park came the connection of the Urban Wilderness in South Knoxville, a recreation, cultural and historic preservation initiative, incorporating 1,000 forested acres in and around the South Waterfront. The park contains a Riverwalk, two festival lawns, four overlook areas with seat walls and picnic tables, an ADA-accessible children’s playground, a put-in area for kayaks and canoes, and a surface parking lot for larger events. The park festival lawn has an irrigation system that pumps water from the river, reducing the need for potable water on site. Bioswales were installed to manage water runoff and tolerate periodic flooding. The Riverwalk consists of a six-foot-wide soft surface running trail, a five-foot furnishing zone composed of bike racks, benches, and lighting, and a 12-foot hard surface, and a multi-use path for bicyclists and pedestrians."