KNOXVILLE — Knox County Commission voted this week to approve a ground-lease agreement with Strong Stock Farm LLC for 120 of the farm’s 167 acres at 8217 Rutledge Pike, at $150,000 a year, restricted to “agricultural purposes, including the construction of facilities for agricultural activities and offices.” County fairs are named in the lease as a specifically approved use.
It is the first document attached to AgriCentre East — the branded name Knoxpatch first reported in August, when the site was still 120 acres of cattle pasture with a $140,000 naming study attached to it — that is not a rendering.
“We’ve said all along the placemaking would precede the paperwork,” said Davis Lyle, principal of the naming consultancy Hearth & Vector, who confirmed the firm’s contract includes a bonus clause that triggers whenever a signed legal document uses the name “AgriCentre East.” The lease does, seven times. Lyle said the firm is now scoping a second study to determine what, specifically, will be built on the acreage the first study only branded.
The lease’s fair-use clause was read aloud in full at a ribbon-cutting Thursday for the site’s new parking-lot survey stakes, to applause from roughly a dozen attendees. Knox County property coordinator Renee Culvahouse called the $150,000 annual rent “extremely reasonable for a pasture with this much upside,” a phrase her office confirmed it had road-tested on three other undeveloped county properties before settling on this one.
The cattle currently on the property were not available for comment, and under the terms of the lease, may not be for some time: the agreement makes no provision for their relocation, and county officials said grazing would continue “in the interim,” a term the lease does not define.
The 120 acres remain, as of Thursday, a pasture.