For years, the stretch of Kingston Pike that climbs over Bearden Hill worked like a moat. Locals have long argued about where Bearden actually ends, some drawing the line at West Town Mall, others insisting it stops at the foot of the hill where Papermill Drive meets the Pike. Either way, that climb from Papermill up toward Wesley Road was never a place you walked or biked. No shoulder, heavy traffic, a hill steep enough to discourage anyone without a car. If you lived in West Hills and wanted a coffee on the Bearden side, you drove.
That divide is gone now, and this year's new arrivals on the Pike are proof of it.
The hill that used to end the errand
Ask anyone who has tried to bike between Cedar Bluff and downtown Knoxville about the section of Kingston Pike between Wesley Road and the branch library at Golfclub Road, just west of Bearden Hill. Before 2024, city planners classified that stretch as a barrier on the West Knoxville Bicycle Route, a gap with no shoulder and high traffic volume that effectively cut cyclists off from the rest of the route. If you were riding from Cedar Bluff toward downtown, or from West Hills into Bearden Village, that hill was where the safe path stopped.
The same logic applied to walking. Between Papermill Drive and Messiah Lutheran Church, there was no continuous sidewalk wide enough to trust with a stroller or a wheelchair. The corridor connected two halves of the same commercial spine, Kingston Pike, without actually letting anyone move between them on foot.
What the city actually built, and why it still matters two years later
In 2024, the city of Knoxville and the Tennessee Department of Transportation finished the Kingston Pike Complete Connections Project, a $2.3 million effort that put a wide, ADA-compliant sidewalk on the south side of the Pike and added bike lanes on both sides, running from Papermill Drive across Bearden Hill toward Wesley Road and the library at Golfclub Road. At Papermill, the project also added a new Knoxville Area Transit bus shelter, a marked crosswalk with pedestrian signals, and updated signal timing meant to smooth traffic through that intersection. Drainage and lighting improvements came with it.
That was two years ago, which means this is not a ribbon-cutting story. It is a story about what happens after the ribbon-cutting, once the infrastructure has had time to actually get used and businesses have had time to notice.
The businesses picking exactly this stretch
Look at where the newest names on Kingston Pike are landing. Honeybee Coffee, the local roaster that opened its first cafe on Sevier Avenue back in 2017, chose 4520 Old Kingston Pike in Bearden for its third Knox County location, open Tuesday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and weekends from 8 to 2. That address sits inside the reconnected corridor, walkable from the West Hills side now that the sidewalk actually runs the distance.
A few blocks east, city permit records reported by WVLT confirmed in January that Hawaiian Bros Island Grill was under construction at 6903 Kingston Pike, right near Papermill Drive, the same intersection the Complete Connections Project rebuilt with its new bus shelter and crosswalk. That corner used to be a place you passed through in a car. A restaurant is now staking its address on the assumption that people will arrive at it on foot or by bike, not just by drive-through.
Neither business is opening deep in the historic core of Bearden Village near Forest Park Boulevard, and neither is tucked into the residential heart of West Hills. Both are choosing the exact seam the city stitched back together, which tells you something the traffic counts alone would not: the corridor between the two neighborhoods stopped being a pass-through and started being a destination in its own right.
The loop that never asks you to get in the car
None of this is only about restaurants. The Jean Teague Greenway runs through West Hills and John Bynon Park, a paved 2.3 to 2.7 mile route depending on which entrance you count from, with access points at Winston Road, Vanosdale Road, and Sheffield Drive. It threads behind the West Hills YMCA, past the tennis courts and playgrounds, and connects onward to the Ten Mile Creek Greenway and Cavet Station Greenway, so a resident who starts at West Hills Park can keep going for miles without crossing a road that matters.
On the Bearden side, the older Bearden Village Greenway does the same job for that neighborhood, tying into the broader Third Creek and Neyland trail system that locals have used for years for the kind of casual mileage that turns strangers into familiar faces.
What changed in 2024 is that these two separate walking and riding worlds, West Hills' greenway system and Bearden Village's greenway and commercial strip, now connect at street level too. You do not have to choose between a greenway walk in West Hills Park and a coffee run in Bearden anymore. The sidewalk that used to end at Papermill now carries you the rest of the way.
What this actually looks like on a Saturday
If you want to test the connection yourself, here is a route that did not exist as a comfortable walk before 2024:
- Start at West Hills Park, off North Winston Road, and pick up the Jean Teague Greenway heading east.
- Exit the park onto the new sidewalk along Kingston Pike near Papermill Drive, where the rebuilt crosswalk and bus shelter now sit.
- Continue east across Bearden Hill on the new south-side sidewalk toward Old Kingston Pike.
- End at Honeybee Coffee, 4520 Old Kingston Pike, for the payoff.
It is not a long walk, maybe 25 to 30 minutes depending on your pace, but it is a walk that simply was not safe or practical to make on foot two years ago. That is the actual story here. Not a new coffee shop, not a road project, but the fact that the two have started reinforcing each other, and a neighborhood that used to feel split by a hill now reads as one continuous stretch of Kingston Pike.
If you are already living on either side of that hill, this is worth knowing simply because it changes what a normal weekend can look like. And if you are watching this corridor because you are thinking about where you might land next in West Knoxville, it is worth knowing because infrastructure like this rarely gets undone. The businesses betting on this exact stretch are reading the same signal.
For questions about Bearden, West Hills, or anywhere else across Knoxville and East Tennessee, reach out to Robyn Ray. Let's Connect.
