County planning staff: 2024 saw a sharp rise in residential permits, $1.8 billion in new-construction investment

Planning staff presented an annual development activity report to the Knoxville/Knox County Planning Commission, saying the county recorded a sharp uptick in residential permits in 2024 and about $1.8 billion in new-construction investment. Aubrey, a planning staff presenter, told the commission that "we produce an update of this report every spring and we've been doing so since the eighties" and that the report summarizes building permits, rezonings and subdivisions across Knox County for the 2024 calendar year. The presentation said residential permitting rose 53.9% compared with 2020 figures, while nonresidential permitting fell slightly, by about 1.4%. Much of the residential increase was concentrated in the Central City sector, where two large student-housing projects alone added most of the units: Aubrey said the Hub Knoxville development reported "502 housing units just in 2024 alone" and another project, the Mark, added "291" units. Staff noted that those student-housing additions contributed to a reversal from 2023, when development outside city limits dominated; in 2024 most permitted units were inside city limits. The report highlighted east-west corridors such as Emery Road and Hardin Valley Road as corridors with concentrated residential permitting and showed a cluster of activity near the University of Tennessee campus. The report places total inflation-adjusted new-construction value for the year at about $1.8 billion, an increase staff described as a "breakaway" from prior years; the presentation said investment rose by roughly $335 million year-over-year. Aubrey told the commission those building-permit values come from the information "reported in the building permit itself." The staff also said renovation permit dollars remained elevated relative to most prior years. Commissioners asked whether university dormitories appear in the permitting data; staff replied that University of Tennessee campus building permits are not included because "they don't submit building permits," and the presentation therefore does not capture campus-permitted construction. The commission and staff discussed how the data are used by researchers and other agencies. Aubrey said the planning office regularly provides permit data to the Boyd Center at UT for growth projections. Commissioners asked whether future reports could overlay unit-per-year trends with population projections to estimate annual housing need; staff said they have discussed the idea and that other cities have performed similar analyses. The presentation and subsequent remarks emphasized that the annual report is descriptive: "the purposes of this is just to report out what has been happening over the past year," Aubrey said. Commissioners and members of the public added context during the meeting, noting student housing's outsized role in Central City and reiterating that student housing often functions as short-term student occupancy rather than long-term family housing. The planning office said it will share more details about the comprehensive-plan–related jurisdictional breakdowns at a future meeting and continue to provide the annual update each spring.