Leading Knox County Into the Future with Glenn Jacobs

Julia: Welcome everybody to another episode of Connect the Knox. I’m your host, Julia Hurley, connecting Knoxville to the nation. Today’s guest is Glenn Jacobs, Knox County Mayor and Knox County is the third largest—and possibly coming up on the second largest—metropolitan area in the state of Tennessee. So, kind of a big job. Glenn Jacobs, aka ‘Kane’ for all of you who see him and recognize him, yes, it’s the same guy. But right now we are talking about Glenn Jacobs, the mayor. Glenn, thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate your time.

Glenn: Well, thank you so much for having me, Julia. I appreciate it.

Julia: Everybody wants to know, how did you end up in Knoxville, Tennessee [laugh]?

Glenn: I have had a very interesting life story. I was actually born in Madrid, Spain. My dad was in the Air Force, so I was born on an Air Force Base, then we came back to the States and Dad retired. We moved to rural Northeast Missouri. Went to college on a basketball scholarship, ended up playing football. Looked like I was going to play in the NFL, but then hurt my knee. Kind of fell into wrestling and came to Knox County—well actually East Tennessee—in 1995 for wrestling.

Love it here. Met my wife. Love the area. Love her. So, [laugh] you know—and, you know, and she’s—it’s funny because she’s actually, through the years, many years ago, I talked about, “Oh, you know, we can move here, move here.” And I’m always, like, “Oh, I don’t know. I really like it here.” And of course, her family’s from here.

But nevertheless, this is a great place to live. It was actually convenient to travel out of despite the fact that we don’t have that many direct flights, I mean, it’s a half-an-hour flight to get down to Atlanta, and you can get anywhere in the world from there. So, I just love it. And now I’m actually at the point where I don’t even like leaving the state of Tennessee anymore because I think this is the best place that anyone could possibly live. But nevertheless, just never left here, fell in love with the place.

As my wrestling career was winding down, figuring out what was next for me, I’d always been kind of interested in government and politics and had the wild idea that I could run for county mayor. Mayor Burchett, who is now a congressman, was term-limited, so I felt that I had an opportunity to do that. Went for it; won by 23 votes out of almost 40,000 votes. And then just won reelection August of this year. And it’s just been a wonderful ride.

Julia: So, let me—do you have dual citizenship?

Glenn: I do not. Because, since I was born on an Air Force Base, I am considered a natural-born American. I do not have a birth certificate, which is wild. I actually have, like, a certificate of a report of live births from the State Department or something like that. But yeah, I’m considered an American and never had a chance for the dual citizenship.

Julia: Dang it all. I tell you, there are so many opportunities like that you don’t even know they exist. But it never hurts to ask. I think that’s so neat.

Glenn: Yeah, the other thing was, I didn’t want to do it because I think I’d be eligible to be drafted into the Spanish army, so I’m like, I’m cool, you know [laugh]? I’m not even going to explore that [laugh].

Julia: [unintelligible 00:03:27]. Well, we’re really excited that you basically got elected by an absolute landslide for your reelection campaign. So, that’s good. So, that is a term-limited seat, correct?

Glenn: Yes, ma’am.

Julia: Okay, so that ma—because so many counties are completely separate, so many counties that don’t have county term limits. So, with only what, three, three-and-a-half years left on that next term—

Glenn: Pretty much yes, ma’am.

Julia: Okay, so three-and-a-half years. And I’m going to just get into this because I think it’s extremely important. You set out about a year ago, maybe longer, I’m sure it’s been in your head longer, but a year ago, to really start making a new plan for Knoxville during Covid. I’m a real estate agent. Your wife is a real estate agent.

We have seen unprecedented growth in our infrastructure, our boundary lines, our NPC regulations. There’s literally been no update to that plan in two whole business cycles, including the ’08 crash. You have taken on an entire new opportunity. And you’re not just—what is the word I want to—how is that—you’re not steamrolling everybody with your plan. You’ve actually put together, basically the entire county and surrounding counties leadership, real estate agents, planning, builders to talk.

Can you talk a little bit about your plans? Because I think that, for Knox County, is something, number one, Davidson County and Nashville sure needed when they were growing too much. And Knoxville’s, you’re really looking out for what’s happening here. And even though you’re term-limited and don’t have to, you still are. So, tell us about that plan.

Glenn: Yeah, this is the most important thing that we’re doing, as you said had. We have a land use plan, but it hasn’t been updated in over two decades, and a lot of things have changed in the interim. We’ve seen a lot of people move here, we’ve seen development in various areas in the county, used to just be rural areas; they’re not anymore. They’re suburban now. And our plan doesn’t reflect that.

And that makes it hard for everybody. The zoning is all messed up and what that has caused, that’s called sprawl because in some areas where we need to be able to put more units per acre, we can’t do it. And so, you just end up with single-family units everywhere. And also in those areas, we also can’t have any commercial businesses. So, for instance, Hardin Valley, which used to be all just farmland, you know, 15, 20 years ago, now, it’s the fastest growing part of the county, but it’s just all single unit family homes for miles and miles, you have to drive 20 minutes to go to the restaurant or to go to the grocery store, very frustrating, lots of congestion and we don’t want to see that happen other places, of course, and we also want to try to do what we can to make it better out there.

And the key there is to have the plan reflective of what the conditions on the ground are. And the idea—and we hired a consultant to do this, as you said, this is not something that we’re trying to run down people’s—shove down people’s throats; we get it, you know, we all have to be happy with this. So, we’ll probably come up with what they refer to as a hybrid of a town center corridor model. Part of the issue for the county is ensuring that our infrastructure can keep up with this growth. So, we’re not seeing you know, lots of development over here, but we don’t have a road to get over there, or you know, we don’t have the sewer in the water and those sorts of things.

So, it really is a big effort. Schools have never been involved in this before, so we had a concerted effort to get schools on board as well as all the other stakeholders. We just finished up the one public comment period on that. We had it open, online that people could discuss what they wanted to see. But as moving it forward, we’ll still have more public input into it.

And also, for the first time ever, we’ll incorporate a master transportation plan into this. So, we can look at, yeah, at the roads. And you know that you’re always a little reactive because the market drives all this and you’re not—you know, we can’t predict exactly what the market is going to do, but this will give us a map to make some better decisions, and we can become more proactive and you know, we’re not always trying to put out fires and spend money here and spend money there; we can actually come up with a plan and say, okay, this is what we need to do for the next decade or so.

Julia: Yeah. So, I think that’s—one, thank you because that’s been needed for a very long time. And I think that if more counties were to adopt a future growth plan, that if we were to ever see another situation like Covid, where Tennessee, being the conservative state that it is, keeps its borders open, and keeps his businesses open, we may see another influx of people from all over the country. We need to be prepared for that possibility.

Glenn: I’m going to interrupt real quick on that, you know, because we have a lot of folks—and I get it. I mean, as I said, I grew up in rural Missouri and I like wide open spaces and I like living on a farm, frankly. But when we see people come in here, and a lot of folks are uncomfortable with that, and I certainly understand that, but it’s a good thing because what that indicates is this is a good place to live. There are places around the country where folks can’t wait to get out of and they’re moving away from those places and they’re moving to places like here. So, I always say we don’t have problems, like you look at the Rust Belt and some of these other places where they’re dying because their population is leaving. We do have challenges that that’s creating, but it’s better to have those challenges than it is to have the problems that those places have.

Julia: Absolutely. No, I totally agree with that. And due to our state policies, we probably won’t see the problems that those other people have, which is a blessing in disguise. That was started a hundred years ago, so thank you lawmakers from way back then [laugh] so we’re quite protected. But that plan moving forward, can you help people understand—because I promise you and I know that your office gets a thousand phone calls like this a week—I probably get a hundred a month of people just asking me, as a real estate agent, who is in charge of their problems?

And they don’t nece—“Who’s in charge of this problem, Julia?” And so, one of the questions is, maybe understanding that Knox County is not the only government that is in charge of Knox County and kind of maybe taking a couple of minutes to parcel that out so people understand that that’s a different conversation for different people.

Glenn: Sure. It is interesting because people say, “What’s a county mayor?” You know, because you don’t have that in other places and basically, so you have Knox County, which is the government for the county outside of the city of Knoxville. The city of Knoxville, even though it’s in Knox County is its own political entity. Now, there are some things that the county does inside the city, but nevertheless, for all intents and purposes were two separate political entities.

And then you also have the town of Farragut and Farragut doesn’t do as many things as, say, the city of Knoxville does, but they still have, like, their own codes and things like that. So, depending on where you live, you’ll deal with a different codes department, you’ll deal with different plans, land—you know, the city just went through what they call Recode Knoxville, which is basically their land use plan for the city and Farragut’s is slightly different as well. So yeah, depending on where you live in the county, you have to have a different set of rules as far as land development. And then also my office does not make land use decisions directly. That’s actually a function of the planning commission and sometimes people don’t get that either. They think I’m the person that decides, “Oh, this can go here and this can go there.” No, I actually have no decision-making power over that. That’s planning commission; ultimately, county commission makes those decisions.

Julia: Yeah. I think that understanding how that system works, as Knox County grows, more people that are originally from Knox County are increasingly frustrated with, they still don’t know. And so, it’s really important to know where you need to go for the correct information. And I really appreciate that. So, getting back to that mixed-use plan—and I know that I had sat in on a Realtors Association conversation—there were three different options and everyone in the room from all ages, I was probably the mid-range, there were a few agents that were probably in their late-50s, early-60s, and then a very large majority under the age of 30. So, much young blood coming up in Knoxville; that’s huge for us.

And the overwhelming majority through all of our age groups, oddly, was mixed-use development. We all want to see the same thing. How does that work out sparcing that through the single-family residences versus, you know, no sidewalk areas or basically what we would call a food desert center section?

Glenn: Right. As I said, you know what, I think what’s going to come out of this—and it’s not my decision, but just looking at all the—data is kind of that town center model. And we have this. Anyone that’s familiar with our area, you have, like, North Shore Town Center, which is kind of west of Knoxville and in the Farragut area. But it’s a really nice development and it’s a retail surrounded by higher density multi-family, then it goes out from there.

Turkey Creek is a lot like that. Turkey Creek is the huge shopping area. We probably won’t see that in the rest of the county, but again, it’s a commercial retail center surrounded by higher density, condos, apartments, those sorts of things, and then out into a more single-family. And it’s the same where there’s a development now that’s on the table, still has some work to get done on it, but it’s the same type of deal. And I think that’s—that can appeal to everybody, you know, because you, if you like, kind of, the downtown feel, it’s mini downtown, basically.

And then it goes out into the lower density, the single-family, but then you’re still close to whatever, grocery store or restaurant, those sort of things. And it’s the same with, when we’re looking at decisions about sidewalks and those sorts of things, a lot of that is stuff that our engineering public works department will look at within the subdivisions, you know, and make—we just actually got that changed to where they’re the ones that make the decision about whether sidewalk is needed or whether it’s not.

You were talking about young people. When you look at our demographics, it’s very interesting what’s happened because Tennessee does not have a state income tax. We are a low-tax jurisdiction. I think we’re seeing a lot of retired folks move here and we’re seeing a lot of growth in the 55 and older demographic, which is great; that’s the demographic I’m in. But we’re not seeing that same growth in younger people and that’s something that we really have to work on because younger folks are the ones that build businesses, they’re the ones that, you know, really provide the economic energy.

So, some of the things that you know, we’re just trying to make it a place as much as we can, you know, that has the amenities that people want, outdoor spaces, greenways, parks, downtown, we have a great downtown in Knoxville now. And we’re also—that’s part of the reason we’ve talked about and are moving forward with a stadium downtown, a new stadium which will be surrounded by additional development. And a lot of that is what our chamber calls civic furniture, it’s stuff that younger fo—everybody, but especially younger folks can do with their families. So, we are very cognizant of trying to attract and keep young people here. And I would love it, you know, someone comes in, goes to UT, graduates, and stays here and applies their talents and gifts here. To me that’s the ultimate in the pipeline, right?

Julia: We all know that real estate is location, location, location. Our team at Just Homes Group Realty Executives have the true expertise, pairing buyers and sellers with the right opportunities. Whether you’re looking to buy or sell a home right here in Knoxville, Lenoir City, Clinton, or Farragut, we have the expertise throughout every Knoxville surrounding area. Call just Homes Group Realty Executives today.

Julia: That’s actually one of the conversations that we have on this podcast with everyone that visits and everyone that lives here, everyone that contributes here. Every business owner gets asked the same question: what could you add—not you individually, but let’s just say a college graduate from UT who now has a communications degree or some different kind of degree and maybe a hospitality, that they are not aware maybe an opportunity exists. Or maybe people of my age group and the new people that are coming into your age group can say, “Hey, I’ve got extra time, little extra energy, a little extra money. I can’t think of, really, anything extra to add. What would you suggest that we build to keep that talent here?”

Glenn: I think there’s actually a lot of stuff that we already have that we haven’t marketed really well. You know, one thing is we have tremendous outdoor recreation in East Tennessee. You know, people think of Western North Carolina, but we rival anything. I mean, we have the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is 45 minutes away. In the city, you have the urban wilderness. They have mountain bike trails in city limits, which is one of the few places in the country that.

Out on the north side of the county, we’re working on a 41-mile kayak trail on Beaver Creek. We’re cleaning that whole thing out, you know, so that’ll be one of the premier water trails in the southeast. You look at our downtown between market square in the Old City and the Market Square was just voted as one of the hippest places in America. So, there is a nightlife here, we have the cultural amenities, we have a symphony, we have a great art museum. Zoo Knoxville, I believe, is a great zoo not just for a city of our size, but it’s just a great zoo.

Julia: We are the number one red panda… “Producer” [laugh] in the world.

Glenn: Yeah. And then, of course, you look at sports. We don’t have professional teams, but hey, you know, the football team is ranked seventh in the country, basketball team is doing really well, of course, the Lady Vols are just iconic, the baseball team is a top, gosh, probably top five program now. So, there’s a lot of good sports at UT, very high level. I mean, if you’ve never been to an SEC football game, NFL ain’t nothing on an SEC football game. It’s awesome. So, I do think that we have a lot of things that people enjoy and want to do, it’s just I don’t think that we have always marketed as well as we should have.

Julia: Yeah, I think we have a lot of them to spend money on but I don’t know about our jobs for them to earn the money to spend it. And I think that that’s kind of where we’re missing that connection is we have you know, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the hospital, Oak Ridge National Lab, Pilot Flying J, we have the largest sign company industry in the country, I don’t know if people knew that or not, but they’re are very rare growth opportunities because we’re still a growing area. So, bringing business with you when you retire would be a bonus.

Glenn: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, too, you know, the chamber is really on to something with what they’re doing and realizing that with the innovation economy, I think that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is half an hour away. It’s the premier research lab in the country, as well as Tennessee Valley Authority is headquartered here in Knoxville, and then UT. Those give us an innovation package that’s really unrivaled as far as the institutions. So, I think there’s great opportunities and we’re finally starting to see some of that, we’re seeing some innovation companies come here.

And frankly, that’s what’s driving the global economy. And it’s not—manufacturing support, and it’ll always be important, but it’s really innovation that’s driving everything. And the more that we can do to plant our flag in the innovation sector, you know, whether it’s advanced materials, advanced manufacturing, whether it’s analytics and data and those sorts of things, we have the assets to do that. Again, it’s just a matter of actually doing it. But I’m starting to see some, you know, some breakthroughs in those areas. And that really—there are good jobs and they’re in that sector of the economy, as you said, that people can create their own businesses and have a huge impact on the world.

Julia: Yep. And Knoxville is really primed, finally, after all these years, Knoxville has been absolutely primed for fantastic internet everywhere. There’s not a place in Knox County at this point that you can’t get great internet. So, we’ve got a lot of work-from-homes who have relocated from major metropolitan areas that are now working right out of Knoxville, Tennessee. Another opportunity.

Glenn: Yep, you’re exactly right. I mean, we’ve seen that of people coming here from, again, maybe California, New York, wherever. And before the pandemic, of course, the move was to midsize cities because big cities, people are just kind of over that, right, and pandemic really exacerbated that. But anyway—which is good for us, though, because we are seeing people that might still work someplace else, but they live here. And, again, optimally would be like, hey, it’d be great if you’d start your own business here and bring all that with you, but nevertheless, just having those folks here is important.

Julia: Yeah. And I think I have been reaching out. When I connect them, I connect them with the chamber and I connect them with Leadership Knoxville, with Tammy, and just say, “Hey listen, there are people out here that will pay for you to start a business, they will give you grants.” I mean, obviously the Boyd Foundation and things like that, and so Nashville has a lot to offer. Again, I think that we are just missing that one hub of information. Of course, Knoxville is huge and so it’s hard to get all the information for all that, but I know that they can contact your office and I know everybody in your office knows where to take them. So, [laugh] [unintelligible 00:21:21] wonderful staff.

Glenn: Very true, yes. And I think our chamber has been doing a really good job, too. I think, you know, the pandemic of course, was difficult for everybody, but I see some of the stuff that the chamber’s doing and I’m very supportive of their initiatives and I think they’re doing a great job.

Julia: Well, let’s—I want to shift conversation; I’ve got maybe five minutes left. A little bit, a little bit about the wrestling because I actually have a reason for it. You have traveled all over the country and all over the world due to the ability to be a professional wrestler, and you still chose Knoxville. Tell me about some of the other cities that you visited, what was great about them, what are the things that you were pulling these ideas and these fantastic things, but you still set on—not just because your wife is from here because you could have gone anywhere; she would have gone. She could have been a real estate agent anywhere. So, you have experienced everywhere around the world, fan bases around the world, cities large and small, and you still chose Knoxville. What brought you, what is with your heart here? What is here?

Glenn: Midwesterners and southerners are a lot alike, in that we’re friendly, polite people. And seriously, folks aren’t like that everywhere [laugh] around the world, right? And ultimately, that’s it, is I just feel that here that I’m among my folks, my people. And that’s just something that I’ve always felt, that I’ve had a connection. And you think about our area, 60% of the nation’s population is within a day’s drive of Knox County. That’s huge. I mean, you know, if you—

Julia: Say that again?

Glenn: Sixty percent of the nation’s population is within a day’s drive of Knoxville. Yeah, so we’re located—you know, when you think about things, like logistics companies and those sorts of stuff, shipping companies, distribution companies, they all want to be here because we’re easy access to the East Coast. Again, you look at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, its most visited park in the country, they had 14 million people last year go there. It’s a wonderful attraction. And I just, I mean, I just love the place, you know?

It’s big enough that everything that I want is here. And if it’s not, Nashville is a two-and-a-half-hour drive, Atlanta is a three-hour drive, you know, Charlotte’s three-and-a-half, four. So we’re, again, that convenience of location, if we don’t have it here, it’s a couple hours away. But it’s also small enough that, you know, we don’t feel like a big city. We just don’t. But there’s some really cool stuff here. So, it just checks all the boxes for me.

Julia: It really does. I love that. I love that. So, one last, maybe the second to last question. I have just interviewed earlier today—and that’ll be posted sometime in the next month—a young lady that moved here who is a professional pole vaulter—

Glenn: Oh really?

Julia: —a—right—and they’re doing an entire—they’ve got a new track coach at UT, she’s going to come and coach it, she’s got a professional coach, Olympian, so they’re bringing an entire industry that we never had before basically with them. Is there a wrestling industry in Knoxville? Is there something that you all are building, like, a wrestling school that other people who are attracted to that can come here and do?

Glenn: Yeah. We do have a wrestling school. All of them are small outfits, I mean, it’s not, you know, huge or anything. But we have had a couple of people that have been kind of successful as far as moving on to the next level, which you is really great.

You know, we actually have a huge production, TV production market here. We’re, like, the fifth biggest in the country or something like that. People don’t think about that, but HGTV was headquartered here, Jewelry TV is headquartered here—yeah, yeah—so RIVR Media, which is a big production company, is here. So, that plays into it as well.

East Tennessee has always been a hotbed for wrestling. And it’s funny, since I didn’t grow up here, I don’t know when people—I know the folks now, the names, but it’s just different names than I was exposed to when I was a kid. But nevertheless, I think when you think about entertainment overall—we have Dolly Parton, too, does certainly doesn’t help—or certainly doesn’t hurt, but there’s a lot of good stuff going on in our area in that sector of the economy as well.

Julia: Yeah. I just think it’s, I think it’s amazing when people come here with their talents and then they go and they contribute in public service as you have, and they bring their talent to give it to other people. And when I interviewed her today, just to even think of the concept, and she’s here for the [unintelligible 00:26:16], she met her person, they were from here, she moved here and now she’s bringing an entire pole vaulting nation with her. And I was like how… interesting. So, now Knoxville is going to be the new hotbed for pole vaulters. And I was like, “Well, there you go.”

So, always bringing your talent with you and Knoxville has a home for talent. And I think that that is absolutely a wonderful thing to bring with you. Can you help our viewers understand how to get in touch with your office, by the way, if they need to ask any questions about anything, especially about Knox County, or even the surrounding counties. Again, Knox County is our hub for East Tennessee. So, how can they get in touch with you and your staff?

Glenn: Our website is knoxcounty.org. That’s knoxcounty.org. Phone number to the office is 865-215-2005. And drop us an email which is county.mayor@knoxcounty.org—my staff gets those—or give us a call. But there’s—our website is really great. There’s a lot of information on there as well.

Julia: Okay. Lightning round. Are you ready? What’s your favorite restaurant?

Glenn: Here in Knoxville, actually would be… oh, gosh, there’s so many of them, but today I’m going to go with Louis, the Original Louis in Fountain City.

Julia: You’re the first person to mention Louis.

Glenn: Oh, no. There’s so many—that’s a loaded question though because, again, we’re a foodie town, not known as it, but we are. There’s a lot of good restaurants here.

Julia: Yeah, so many restaurants. Okay. Favorite pub, bar, or brewery?

Glenn: My favorite pub is Balter Beerworks.

Julia: [unintelligible 00:27:48]—oh, yeah. Their brunch, by the way, not bad not bad [laugh]. Favorite sports place, like, to watch sports.

Glenn: Oh, my favorite sports place would be Fieldhouse Social.

Julia: I haven’t been there yet.

Glenn: Have you not?

Julia: No, I haven’t had time. Every time I’m down that way, I’m actually at an event or something and never make it in there.

Glenn: Yeah. So, I’m going to drop a name, but part of the reason it’s my favorite sports place [is because 00:28:13] had lunch with Coach Phil Fulmer there one day. So.

Julia: Oh, that’s fun. He’s so sweet.

Glenn: Yes, he’s a great guy.

Julia: Let’s see. Favorite grocery store?

Glenn: Oh, [laugh] let’s see. Oh, gosh… I’m just going to have to say the Food City in Halls because that’s where I shop all the time.

Julia: Fantastic. All right, last question. When people visit you that have never been here and they say hey, “Take me somewhere,” where do you go?

Glenn: I take them to Vol Market out on Western Avenue used to be Vol Market #3, but they still call it that, but it’s just now the only Vol Market. And it’s a little bitty place, but it’s got one of the best hamburgers in town. And it’s one of those folks—or one of those places, too, where Mayor Burchett now Congressman Burchett, like if someone comes in, like, the governor comes in and they go over to Vol Market, so you never know who you’re going to see at Vol Market.

Julia: That is hilarious. So, where is that located?

Glenn: On Western Avenue.

Julia: We—so everybody can visit the Vol Market on Western Avenue. Everybody that I interview has a different secret place where it isn’t really a secret, but you never really think about it. When you live here, you don’t think about it being something special until it is. So, thank you so very much to Glenn Jacobs, Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, almost I want to say now the second largest metropolitan city in the state of Tennessee, so you’ve got a lot to take on in the next three years.

We really appreciate everything that you’re doing. And just going to say before I go, governor, in four years, maybe; there’s a lot of hopeful for you. So, don’t have to say anything today, [laugh] but we appreciate you taking the time for us. Please tell your family we said hello and thank you. And we will see you soon. Glenn, thank you so much.

Glenn: Thanks, Julia.

Julia: Bye.

Julia: Thank you for tuning into the show. Make sure to like and subscribe, leave a five-star review on your podcast player of choice, and if you would like information on moving to Knoxville, send me a private message. As always, this is Julia Hurley, connecting Knoxville to the nation.