KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Real estate owner and developer Tony Cappiello has bought the old Tennessee Highway Patrol headquarters site on Kingston Pike for $2.11 million, records show.
THP operated the regional headquarters in a once quiet and bucolic part of the county, from 1966 until early 2022 when the patrol moved to the Strawberry Plains Pike area in East Knox County.
Cappiello, whose development work has included the Bearden area and Oak Ridge, couldn't be reached for comment.
The empty building sits alongside Interstate 40 by Buckingham Road and Kingston Pike. It's in a prime commercial corridor of West Knoxville across the street from West Town Mall.
Once on the outskirts of town, the area now is a population center. The state estimates there are about 30,027 people within 2 miles and 131,593 people within 5 miles.
The quitclaim deed transferring the 1.3-acre site from the state to Cappiello was filed June 1 in Knox County Register of Deeds Nick McBride's office. The specific address is 7601 Kingston Pike. The state put it up for bid earlier this year with bids due by March 1.
The nearly 60-year-old building features a giant communications tower and has about 7,500 square feet, assuming the owner doesn't tear it down and build something else there. It's zoned Highway/Commercial, according to the state.
THP moved into the one-story building with basement in 1966. Construction was $200,000, according to a May 1966 front-page News Sentinel story.
The building served at least for a time as the main place from which to take your driver's test --- much more quiet on Buckingham Road (at least in the mid 1960s) than the former THP center at Kingston Pike and Alcoa Highway, which apparently had gotten pretty hectic, at least for beginning drivers, according to the News Sentinel.
"A feature of the basement level is a fallout shelter provided with filtered air," the story noted. "The dorm section of the center has eight bunks, showers and lockers and a kitchenette for coffee and snacks."
