City staff outline Knoxville's redevelopment process and incentive toolkit

Rebecca Jane Justice, urban design and development staff for the City of Knoxville, and Ben Bentley of KCDC laid out the city's process for vetting public-private partnerships and the financing tools the city can use to spur redevelopment.

"We talk a lot about this," Justice said at the start of the workshop, outlining a presentation that covered why incentives matter, where they're appropriate and what resources applicants can find on the city's web pages. Bentley described the approval roadmap as a multi-step process that typically spans about six months when submissions and entitlements move smoothly.

The process, as explained to council members, begins with an initial application (exhibit A) that provides a project snapshot and whether it aligns with the city's key development priorities. KCDC then conducts a preliminary financial review using exhibit B to test assumptions such as construction costs, borrowing rates and equity. "We look at the return without an incentive and then compared to what the return is with an incentive," Bentley said, calling this the "but for" analysis.

After KCDC's internal review, the city sends the financial package to a third-party consultant for an independent check of assumptions and returns. Bentley said the third-party review often surfaces adjustments and is an important guardrail before elected bodies see a request. Formal approvals depend on the tool: façade programs typically require only council approval; TIFs generally need city council, county commission and KCDC board sign-off; pilots usually require council and the city's industrial development board.

Justice emphasized that applicants are encouraged to navigate entitlement processes (rezoning, variances, design review) before deep financial vetting: "those are any approvals or public process that need to be approached and concluded before you have a by-right development," she said, clarifying that the design review board (DRB) approval is commonly required before KCDC performs financial analysis.

On public transparency, Bentley told council members that projects often become publicly visible around the third-party review when the administration has internal clarity that a vote is forthcoming. Justice added that when entitlements are sought, those public processes usually notify neighbors earlier.

Council members asked to be involved earlier in the process so district representatives can give local context. Justice suggested applicants inform district representatives during initial conversations and use KGIS mapping to identify districts and affected parcels.

The presentation stressed that each project is evaluated individually and that the city's expectations (for example, workforce housing targets) are negotiable during initial conversations. Bentley and Justice said the multi-step approach is intended to balance early troubleshooting with rigorous financial vetting before incentives are recommended to elected officials.