I guess I missed the memo about the University of Tennessee converting from education to entertainment.
By Janie Brice
On September 16, 865 Neyland was unveiled as the official name of the entertainment complex that broke ground in front of Neyland Stadium this week.
A revolutionary mixed-use entertainment district and residential facility touting retail, restaurants, and a hotel-condo hybrid with rooms overlooking the stadium for game day, the project is sure to transform the University of Tennessee into a multi-level marketing scheme. Excuse me, multi-level marketing venue.
Let’s do a roll call of who asked for this abomination. Students? No. Locals? Absolutely not. Millionaires who want to inexplicably live on a campus surrounded by children who had high school prom four months ago? Yes, of course. What about Chancellor Donde Plowman, who will do anything to better UT except, of course, provide upperclassmen housing or parking? Bingo.
A university is just that: A university. Education, training, workforce experience, diversifying your portfolio. If I wanted to drive around for an hour trying to find a parking spot, spend $300 on a ticket for an event, walk on the boiling asphalt, dodge construction, and wait in long lines, I would drive to Disney World.
The entertainment district and hotel-condo hybrid will not even be owned or operated by the University. According to Knox News, the 865 Neyland Project Team will own the complex, paying UT an annual rate of $1.5 million plus 3-5% gross income from all projects.
The University will, however, own and operate the new G10 parking garage, going from the original 1,101 spaces to 1,316 by fall of 2027. Even with a 19.5% increase in parking, this improvement is insignificant when placed next to Plowman’s plan for 55,000 students by 2030, a 34.2% population increase from the current 41,000 students.
“From the beginning, our goal has been to create a destination that authentically captures the culture, passion and energy surrounding Tennessee Athletics while delivering an experience that serves the Knoxville community every day of the year,” said Taylor Gray, a principal at RVX Ventures, the joint real estate company working on the project.
Really beating around the bush here about what will ACTUALLY be in this entertainment asylum. By “culture”, I can only assume he means the cinnamon bread from Dollywood.
Who is this “community” exactly? Ticketmaster’s cheapest ticket for the upcoming Tennessee-Texas football game is around $300. According to the 2026 Knoxville-Knox County Community Needs Assessment, the poverty in Knox County is most concentrated in downtown and the surrounding areas.
In 2024, the area around UT held 9% of Knoxville’s population, but 26.4% of residents were below the poverty line. In other words, private equity funds and commercial real estate agents would rather bolster a $280 million trickle-down NFL stadium knockoff than directly contribute to the residents of Knoxville who make the economy go round.
The more I learn, the more questions I have. Will there be opportunities for local businesses to lease out of the 100,000 square foot retail/dining space, or will they go the way of The Strip and be bought out as people flock to a centralized source of game day activities? Why is the hotel-condo a 24-story building obstructing the outside of Neyland Stadium? And again, who in their right mind is the target demographic for a luxury condo smack dab on a college campus in Knoxville, Tennessee?
All of this might make more sense if the Vols had won a football championship recently, but last I checked, that was in 1998. A 28-year drought doesn’t mean the Vols don’t deserve to be credited as a massive source of revenue, entertainment, and culture, but you can’t commercialize culture.
You can’t slap school spirit on a Lululemon pullover and sell it for $100. You can’t heat a Sysco pretzel, put it on a branded paper plate, sell it for $8, and magically transform the consumer into a season ticket holder. You can’t spend $280 million on an entertainment complex, plant it on the gravesite of G10, promote yourself as a revolutionary college gameday hub, and not win the football national championship.
Some evenings, I’ll sit in Hodges Library watching the sun set, orange and pink stretching across the sky, disappearing behind Neyland. With a 24-story hotel-condo set to be built in front of it, I might have some difficulty spotting my sunset. Or I could just move seats.