KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The Gateway to the Urban Wilderness has a new restaurant.
The restaurant, 71 South, marks the first business to open inside a growing development at the Baker Creek Preserve. The business held a soft opening on Sunday before fully opening on April 10.
The restaurant sits right at a key trailhead for almost 50 miles of hiking and biking trails. It combines miles of outdoors with the touches of a trendy restaurant by repurposing an old building.
The city of Knoxville described this type of project as "a new kind of development." This comes after five years of planning on the Urban Wilderness.
Thomas Krajewski is one of the developers behind the project.
"The intent of this project has always been to be an amenity, to not only the South Knoxville community but also to the Urban Wilderness community," he said.
The new South Knoxville restaurant now links people to over 50 miles of trails and the outdoors. It places the restaurant right next door to Knoxville's popular nature destinations.
71 South is the first of five buildings to open its doors on Sevier Heights Road. It's part of the Baker Creek Bottoms development project.
This project repurposed a former Baptist church building into homes, a yoga studio, boutique hotels and other storefronts -- all while enhancing the area's wilderness.
The building was built in the 1930s. After serving as a church and sitting unused for 15 years, this building has a new life.
"Our interest was to try to preserve the architecture, preserve the buildings, and bring some new life for this to be the center of this community," Krajewski said.
Krajewski said it's not every day when they can rescue an older 1930s building. He said at times it's more expensive to preserve a building than to a build new one.