Home Commercial Chapman Highway

Commercial corridor

Chapman Highway

The main South Knoxville commercial artery (US-441) toward Sevierville and the Smokies, mixing local retail, services and redevelopment opportunity.

Typical uses along Chapman Highway

  • Retail & services
  • Automotive
  • Redevelopment

South-side frontage priced below the western corridors, with tourism-corridor traffic toward the Smokies.

Traffic counts along Chapman Highway

Annual average daily traffic (AADT) at TDOT's 3 active count stations on the corridor, 2025 counts. The busiest station reads 39,676 vehicles a day (Chapman Highway (SR-33 overlap), mile 6.86).

TDOT stationRoadLog mileAADTTrucksYear
47000104 Chapman Highway (SR-71 / US-441) 1.24 32,195 3.4% 2025 map
47000111 Chapman Highway (SR-71 / US-441) 7.04 28,694 3.2% 2025 map
47000093 Chapman Highway (SR-33 overlap) 6.86 39,676 3.3% 2025 map

Source: TDOT Traffic Points (Tennessee Department of Transportation open data, E-TRIMS), pulled 2026-09-08. Log mile is TDOT's distance along the route from its county origin; each station links to TDOT's count history for that spot. Trucks are FHWA classes 4–13 as a share of AADT.

Zoning along Chapman Highway

33 zoning districts touch the corridor within 200 ft of the road — about the first parcel's depth — under City of Knoxville and Knox County zoning; 15 of them are commercial or office districts. "Areas" is how many separately zoned areas of that district front the road, not acreage.

DistrictNameJurisdiction · citeAreas
Commercial & office
C-G-2 General Commercial City of Knoxville · Article 5 25
C-H-2 Highway Commercial City of Knoxville · Article 5 13
C-G-3 General Commercial City of Knoxville · Article 5 12
CA General Business Knox County · §5.31 12
C-G-1 General Commercial City of Knoxville · Article 5 10
DK-B Downtown Knoxville City of Knoxville · Article 5 10
O Office City of Knoxville · Article 5 7
C-H-1 Highway Commercial City of Knoxville · Article 5 6
CB Business and Manufacturing Knox County · §5.32 5
DK-G Downtown Knoxville City of Knoxville · Article 5 5
C-R-1 Regional Commercial City of Knoxville · Article 5 3
OB Office, Medical, and Related Services Knox County · §5.41 3
SC Shopping Center Knox County · §5.34 3
PC Planned Commercial Knox County · §5.33 2
C-N Neighborhood Commercial City of Knoxville · Article 5 1
Industrial
I-G General Industrial City of Knoxville · Article 6 2
I-MU Industrial Mixed-Use City of Knoxville · Article 6 1
Form-based code
SW-6 South Waterfront (form-based code) City of Knoxville · Article 7 12
SW-4 South Waterfront (form-based code) City of Knoxville · Article 7 2
SW-1 South Waterfront (form-based code) City of Knoxville · Article 7 1
Residential
RN-1 Single-Family Residential Neighborhood City of Knoxville · Article 4 55
RN-2 Single-Family Residential Neighborhood City of Knoxville · Article 4 16
RN-5 General Residential Neighborhood City of Knoxville · Article 4 10
PR Planned Residential Knox County · §5.13 7
RB General Residential Knox County · §5.12 7
RA Low Density Residential Knox County · §5.11 6
RN-6 Multi-Family Residential Neighborhood City of Knoxville · Article 4 3
RN-4 General Residential Neighborhood City of Knoxville · Article 4 2
RN-3 General Residential Neighborhood City of Knoxville · Article 4 1
Special purpose
A Agricultural Knox County · §5.22 12
OS Parks and Open Space City of Knoxville · Article 8 7
AG General Agricultural City of Knoxville · Article 8 2
INST Institutional City of Knoxville · Article 8 1

Source: Knoxville - Knox County Zoning (Knoxville-Knox County Planning open data), Planning's layer as edited 2026-09-03, pulled 2026-09-08 (Public Domain Dedication and License 1.0). District names are the ordinances' own — the City of Knoxville Zoning Code (by article) and the Knox County Zoning Ordinance, Appendix A (by section), each row linked. Zoning changes monthly by Council and Commission action — confirm a parcel on KGIS before you act on it.

What is being built along Chapman Highway

In the 3 years through 2026-02-24, the three permit offices issued 26 permits for new non-residential buildings within 820 ft of the road, $53,607,702 of declared construction cost, 8 non-residential demolitions, and 248 permits for new homes — the rooftops that feed a corridor.

IssuedProject · useAddressDeclared costPermit · office
2025-11-17 Chapman Collision Center 7518 CHAPMAN HWY $2,650 25-F0272 · Knox County map
2025-09-29 Permanent Sign(s)/Advertising Only 7609 MOUNTAIN GROVE DR $8,500 IBC-NEW-25-0446 · City of Knoxville map
2025-09-09 Permanent Sign(s)/Advertising Only 2904 CHAPMAN HWY $50,000 IBC-NEW-25-0390 · City of Knoxville map
2025-08-11 General Commercial Building 7609 MOUNTAIN GROVE DR $3,284,250 IBC-NEW-25-0124 · City of Knoxville map
2025-08-04 General Commercial Building 216 E BLOUNT AVE $768 IBC-ELE-25-0694 · City of Knoxville map
2025-06-27 General Commercial Building 2904 CHAPMAN HWY $720,000 IBC-NEW-25-0126 · City of Knoxville map
2025-05-27 My Salon South 7516 CHAPMAN HWY $14,121 25-S0052 · Knox County map
2025-05-20 General Commercial Building 7530 MOUNTAIN GROVE DR $623,960 IBC-NEW-25-0232 · City of Knoxville map
2025-05-20 General Commercial Building 7538 MOUNTAIN GROVE DR $161,913 IBC-NEW-25-0233 · City of Knoxville map
2025-05-20 General Commercial Building 7540 MOUNTAIN GROVE DR $203,127 IBC-NEW-25-0234 · City of Knoxville map
2025-05-02 My Salon South
B - Business
7516 CHAPMAN HWY $280,000 25-B1226 · Knox County map
2025-04-17 No description on the permit 313 HAWTHORNE AVE $500,000 IBC-NEW-24-0417 · City of Knoxville map

The 12 most recent of 26 new non-residential permits in the window; the rest are in the same public record.

Source: Building permits (Knoxville-Knox County Planning open data), layer as edited 2026-03-18, pulled 2026-09-08 (Public Domain Dedication and License 1.0). Window: 2023-02-24 to 2026-02-24, the layer's latest permit. The layer tracks new construction and demolition from Knox County, the City of Knoxville and the Town of Farragut — not renovations or tenant fit-outs. Declared cost is the cost of work the applicant declared on the permit; it is not a price, and it is not a valuation.

Jobs along Chapman Highway

The Census Bureau counts 9,110 jobs located within 820 ft of the road in 2023, −1,580 (−14.8%) since 2018; 52% of them pay more than $3,333 a month.

  • 1,727 pay $1,250 a month or less (19%)
  • 2,657 pay $1,251 to $3,333 a month (29%)
  • 4,726 pay more than $3,333 a month (52%)
Sector20232018Change
Public Administration · NAICS 92 2,855 4,112 −1,257
Retail Trade · NAICS 44-45 1,651 1,558 +93
Accommodation and Food Services · NAICS 72 1,170 1,099 +71
Finance and Insurance · NAICS 52 965 1,791 −826
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services · NAICS 54 522 433 +89
Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services · NAICS 56 437 460 −23
Manufacturing · NAICS 31-33 312 373 −61
Health Care and Social Assistance · NAICS 62 311 317 −6
Information · NAICS 51 202 8 +194
Other Services (except Public Administration) · NAICS 81 160 179 −19
8 other sectors525360+165

Source: LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES), Workplace Area Characteristics, Tennessee (LODES 2023 vintage 20251202, 2018 vintage 20230321), summed over the 188 2020 Census blocks within 820 ft of the road line (99 of them with jobs in 2023), pulled 2026-09-08. LODES counts jobs by the block the workplace is in, from unemployment-insurance records with noise added to protect employers — an estimate, not a payroll census; federal and some self-employment is not covered. Sector names per the LODES technical document; explore the same data on OnTheMap.

Opportunity Zones along Chapman Highway

3 of the 12 census tracts within 820 ft of the road are designated Qualified Opportunity Zones — the 2018 designations under Internal Revenue Code §1400Z-1, still the ones in force. For the next round, 2 of the corridor's 12 2020-vintage tracts are on Treasury's list of tracts eligible for nomination as 2027 Opportunity Zones; the Governor nominates from that list, and Treasury designates.

Designated (2018 round)

  • Census tract 1, Knox County · 47093000100
  • Census tract 8, Knox County · 47093000800
  • Census tract 24, Knox County · 47093002400

Eligible for nomination (2027 round)

  • Census tract 8, Knox County · 47093000800 · eligible, not yet designated
  • Census tract 24, Knox County · 47093002400 · eligible, not yet designated

Source: Opportunity Zones (HUD official content — the tracts designated under IRC §1400Z-1), edited 2026-06-02, checked against the CDFI Fund's designated-QOZ list; Opportunity Zones 2 (HUD official content — 2020 tracts eligible for nomination as 2027 QOZs), edited 2026-08-21, per Treasury's Opportunity Zone data page. Tracts within 820 ft of the road line from the Census Bureau's TIGERweb, pulled 2026-09-08. A designation attaches to the tract, not to a parcel's fitness for any deal; what an investor may do with it is the IRS's to say, and a tax adviser's — not this page's.

Flood zones along Chapman Highway

FEMA maps 22 flood-hazard areas within 820 ft of the road; 10 of them are in a Special Flood Hazard Area — the 1% annual chance floodplain, 3 of those in the regulatory floodway. "Areas" counts FEMA's mapped polygons that touch the band, not acreage — a floodplain runs for miles past any corridor. The 12 Flood Insurance Rate Map panels under the band are effective 2007-05-02 to 2013-08-05.

FEMA classZonesAreas
Regulatory Floodway · Special Flood Hazard Area Zone AE 3
1% Annual Chance Flood Hazard · Special Flood Hazard Area Zone A, Zone AE 7
0.2% Annual Chance Flood Hazard Zone X 6
Area of Minimal Flood Hazard Zone X 6

Source: FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer (NFHL), the effective flood maps as FEMA publishes them, classed by FEMA's own legend, pulled 2026-09-08. Look a parcel up by address on FEMA's Map Service Center. Whether a parcel needs flood insurance is a lender's flood determination on that parcel, not a corridor page's.

Water service along Chapman Highway

2 community water systems' mapped service areas touch the corridor within 820 ft of the road:

  • KNOXVILLE UTILITIES BOARD-KUB · TN0000366 · serves about 242,383 people · surface water · TDEC record
  • KNOX-CHAPMAN UTILITY DISTRICT · TN0000367 · serves about 39,780 people · surface water · TDEC record

Source: Tennessee public water system service areas (TDEC, with Vanderbilt's Drinking Water Justice Lab), edited 2026-02-09, pulled 2026-09-08. TDEC's own caveat: "These data should not be used as an endpoint for decision making at local scales for water system infrastructure. These datasets are generated at a coarse scale not intended to be interpreted at local scales." — confirm a parcel's water and sewer with the utility. Electric, natural gas, wastewater and fibre are not shown: no public service-area map of them holds at corridor scale, and the providers publish no boundary feed — confirm with the provider.

Corridor profile

Chapman Highway (US-441) is South Knoxville’s main street and the historic route from Knoxville toward Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains — which layers steady tourism through-traffic on top of the local customer base.

The corridor’s story right now is price and momentum. Frontage prices sit well below the West Knoxville corridors, while the neighborhoods behind it — SoKno, the Sevier Avenue district, and the Urban Wilderness draw — have been pulling investment south of the river. That combination has made Chapman a genuine redevelopment corridor: automotive, local retail and service businesses hold the frontage today, with newer concepts steadily backfilling.

Operators who count drive-by traffic should note the seasonal tourism swell toward the Smokies, and site-selectors should watch the city’s South Knoxville planning initiatives, which shape what the corridor supports next.

Landmarks & anchors

  • Gateway route to the Smokies (US-441)
  • SoKno / Sevier Avenue district nearby
  • Urban Wilderness trailheads off the corridor

Official local sources — Chapman Highway

Public, official links so you can research the facts yourself — we point at the sources rather than editorializing the data.

More commercial space around Chapman Highway

The listings above come from the East Tennessee REALTORS® MLS, which carries only part of the commercial market — searched across Knox County, because the feed cannot search by road. Lakeway-area (LAAR) listings will join when that feed is connected. For more, browse Crexi and LoopNet — or ask Shawn what is actually available here, including space that never reaches a portal: tell him what you need.