Photos courtesy of Dan Andrews / Knoxville Focus
Heading downtown for the New Year's Eve fireworks and ball drop on Market Square? Or catching Jenna and Her Cool Friends at the Knoxville Museum of Art?
Detour a few blocks and check out the decorative lighting on the rejuvenated Henley Street pedestrian bridge at Clinch Avenue.
The dramatic lighting is part of a $2.7 million infrastructure upgrade that will improve the experience of pedestrians approaching World’s Fair Park and the Knoxville Convention Center from two sides. The pedestrian bridge also boasts a new frosted glass roof and stylistic perforated metal panels that replaced outdated metal cage fencing.
Other upgrades being made in the area include new Streetscape amenities to the Clinch Avenue bridge over World’s Fair Park (new 5-foot-wide bicycle lanes, wider sidewalks, planter-box landscaping and benches), improvements to the elevator tower, and a new crosswalk canopy on the Clinch Avenue Viaduct. (The canopy will help pedestrians get to the Convention Center and Sunsphere from the Tennessean and the World's Fair Holiday Inn, and then back again.)
The pedestrian bridge lights are currently blue, accentuating a motif of the Great Smoky Mountains. But as Knoxville Focus photojournalist Dan Andrews reports, the LED lighting system can be programmed using more than 100 different design options, so the bridge illumination can be tailored to a holiday or special event.
Check out these photos and story by Dan Andrews, who's an enthusiast for Knoxville's Sunsphere, waterways and all things electronically and digitally cool when he's not out digging up news. Click HERE.
