Rocky Top eyes cleanup before parking project
Engineers hired to check for underground tanks
This is the former Martin Funeral Home property in downtown Rocky Top that will be cleared to create the city’s first public downtown parking lot. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
More than two years since the parking lot was proposed for the former Martin Funeral Home site at 225. S. Main St., the City Council during its May 21 meeting voted to hire the Knoxville engineering firm Ardurra Co. to check the property for underground tanks and possible leaked motor vehicle fuels in the soil.
City Manager Mike Ellis said there appears to have been a gasoline station on the site in the 1950s, and the city must remove any tanks and fuel that may have leaked into the ground.
That work is required by the U.S. Environment Protection Agency, and the city has obtained a so-called “Brownfield Grant” through the EPA to help pay to find the tanks and identify any leakage.
“If the tanks were inside the building, there would be no problem, but if they are underground, we most likely would have to apply for another grant to have them removed and then have the old funeral home building demolished” Ellis said.
“It could be another year before that happens.”
The parking lot was proposed by Mayor Kerry Templin in early 2024, and the City Council voted in March 2024 to pay up to $125,000 to buy the site.
Then on Feb. 20, 2025, the council voted to pay up to $175,000 to complete the purchase of the site to create the lot, and later that year completed the purchase. No progress has been made since then, pending possible remediation work on the site.
The building was most recently used for a business called the Tool Shack, but that has been closed for several years.
“We will never see development until we have dedicated parking downtown,” Templin said in 2024 when the council initially approved the offer of up to $125,000 to the owners of the property. “There is no public parking [downtown] now; all parking is privately owned.
It was nearly a year later that Ellis said the attorneys were ready to close on the sale, and that up to $175,000 might be needed to cover the $125,000 purchase price plus $15,000 in back county taxes and associated closing costs.
The council approved the amount unanimously to complete the purchase, which includes the building, which the city intends to remove, along with the vacant lot next to it that has been used as a parking lot for the tool business and a barbecue restaurant next door.
The property had been tied up in probate for several years, but in 2024 it finally became available to be sold.
Templin said part of the property was once the site of a downtown gasoline station, so there possibly are still “at least four old fuel tanks in the ground” that would need to be removed.
