For years, the Sue Clancy Greenway inside Adair Park simply stopped, leaving walkers and cyclists stranded at a creek with no safe way past the tangle of traffic where Broadway meets Interstate 640. That changed Tuesday morning when the City of Knoxville cut the ribbon on a new half-mile extension connecting the park to communities south of Sharp's Ridge, closing a gap that residents and officials alike had long called Fountain City's most frustrating bottleneck.
The grand opening for the Sue Clancy Greenway Extension took place at 9 a.m. in Fountain City, according to the WATE 6 On Your Side report by Matt Hollingsworth. The city described the new stretch as a “missing link,” and Mayor Indya Kincannon told the crowd that work on the connection actually began decades ago under former Mayor Victor Ashe's administration. For years, she said, the greenway inside Adair Park was a dead end — but not anymore.
A Half-Mile Fix Decades in the Making
The new mile-long stretch of trail connects Adair Park and the neighborhoods north of I-640 and Broadway with the area south of Sharp's Ridge, according to the WATE report. Behind the scenes, the connector required navigating a patchwork of private and institutional land. Property easements needed to build the extension were negotiated by the nonprofit Legacy Parks Foundation across land owned by the Knoxville Utilities Board, Berry Lynnhurst Funeral Home and Lynnhurst Cemetery, and The Park at Fountain City apartments, per the City of Knoxville. Those negotiations allowed planners to route the trail around active businesses and cemetery grounds instead of forcing pedestrians onto the busy roadway.
Construction itself was handled in-house. The city broke ground on the project on November 17, 2025, with Public Service Department crews performing the clearing and crushed-stone trail work themselves rather than contracting it out, city officials noted. The result is a 10-foot-wide crushed-stone path running along Lynnhurst Creek, which the Legacy Parks Foundation says is slated for future asphalt paving under Knoxville's Five-Year Neighborhood Investment Plan.
Linking Up With Existing Sidewalk Improvements
The new segment doesn't exist in isolation. It connects directly to 3,800 feet of sidewalks the city built along Old Broadway in 2024, part of a $3 million safety project designed to help pedestrians bypass the congested Broadway and I-640 interchange, according to city officials. Together, the two projects create a continuous non-motorized route stretching from Fountain City neighborhoods north of the interstate down toward Sharp's Ridge and, eventually, downtown Knoxville.
Trail users now have two ways in: through Adair Park itself, or via a dedicated south trailhead at 4719 Old North Broadway near the eastern entrance to Lynnhurst Cemetery, according to Knox TN Today. Adair Park, the trail's anchor, is a 38-acre municipal park at 1807 Adair Drive that features its own 1.1-mile loop trail, two wooden bridges over Adair Creek, and plant species dating back to the site's days as the city's nursery.
Honoring the Woman Behind Knoxville's Civic Calendar
The trail's name is not incidental. Sue Clancy served as Knoxville's inaugural director of special events, a role Mayor Kincannon highlighted at the ceremony, and she launched the city's Special Events Office during the 1982 World's Fair era under Mayor Ashe before going on to manage major civic milestones including Knoxville's 1996 Bicentennial celebration. Kincannon credited Clancy with starting many enduring city traditions, including Christmas in the City.
Clancy herself spoke at the grand-opening event. She said Knoxville was a wonderful place for her children to grow up, telling the crowd, “There's just no place like it.” Reflecting on the trail and the traditions she helped build, Clancy said, “The seeds we planted, look what this generation has done,” adding that there was a lot to be thankful for and that, in her words, “No worlds can explain.”
Part of a Growing Regional Trail Network
The extension adds to what is now a sprawling system. With its addition, Knoxville's parks network encompasses more than 125 miles of paved greenways and natural trails, including 15 miles specifically in North Knoxville, per city figures. The city has also worked to build community stewardship into that expanding footprint: in 2022, Knoxville and the Greenways Commission established a volunteer Greenways Ambassador Program through the Parks and Recreation Department, tasking volunteers with assisting trail users and monitoring conditions across the network, according to Tennessee Town & City.
Tuesday's ribbon-cutting also fit into a busier civic schedule: the ceremony preceded a scheduled Knoxville City Council meeting later that evening, according to Knox TN Today, meaning city leaders marked the trail's completion before returning to the business of governing the city that built it. For a stretch of trail that sat as a dead end for years, the half-mile fix stands as a small but visible example of how connecting fragmented infrastructure can pay off for an entire section of the city.
