One of Knoxville’s most famous attractions is coming back to the Old City in the spring of 2025.

The Tennessee Smokies — the Double-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs — are relocating back to Knoxville after two decades of playing at Smokies Stadium in Sevier County. The Smokies have had success since moving to their current home — seven playoff appearances, four division titles and a league title — but with 22 years under Smokies Stadium’s belt, the venue is starting to show its age.

“To have a viable, long-term team, you’ve got to have a viable stadium because they do get old,” the radio voice of the Smokies Mick Gillispie told The Daily Beacon. “And even as great as Smokies Stadium has been, it’s just gotten old after all this time.”

Baseball in Knoxville dates back over 100 years, and the Smokies have been a Double-A franchise since 1963. By the late 1990s, Bill Meyer Stadium — the Smokies’ home for the better part of 40 years — had lost most of its functionality, and Knoxville mayor Victor Ashe was not eager to keep the team in the city. So the Smokies packed up and migrated 21 miles east to Kodak, where they took on a new name — the “Tennessee Smokies” — that was more representative of the entire state.

Gillispie joined the Smokies in 2007, but even then he recognized the city’s unhappiness with Ashe and the potential it had as a baseball town.

“I knew Knoxville loved baseball,” Gillispie said.

There have been calls since the initial move for the team to relocate, but it was only when current UT President Randy Boyd bought the team in 2013 that a reunion with Knoxville became real. Sevierville is not without its baseball lovers, but most of the fans in attendance at Smokies Stadium each night made the drive from Knoxville.

For the decision makers in the process, such as Chris Allen, the Smokies’ president, a move back to the fans is the most logical choice.

“This is a highly emotional project, if you do the history and find out how the Smokies got to Sevier County in the first place,” Allen said. “It left some people with a bad taste in their mouth and unhappy that the team left Knoxville originally. It’s a very emotional project, but for the most part, people are excited to get the team back to Knoxville.”

The plan from Populous — an architectural design firm responsible for 20 Major League Baseball ballparks — was to build the new stadium just east of the Old City in an empty lot, so no businesses or residents would be disturbed.

The $80.1 million dollar facility would be a multi-purpose venue complete with the latest amenities in food service, signage and video boards. Other events such as concerts and markets could be held there, and it would even be subleased out to a professional soccer team.

The initial plan for a 2024 opening, however, has suffered some major-league setbacks.

“It’s probably one of the worst times in my lifetime to try and build anything in this country,” Allen said.

A press release from April 2022 said that a delay is “likely because of global supply chain issues and a volatile construction market.”

The spike in the prices of building material, as well as the increasing difficulty to acquire said materials, has left the Boyd Sports group in a precarious spot.

Knoxville natives have waited patiently for two decades for baseball to return to the third-most populous city in Tennessee, and team ownership does not want to make them wait any longer.

Yet as prices continue to increase, they also want to spend their money wisely.

“At the end of the day, you’ve got to make the right business decision,” Allen said. “You can’t let emotions determine your decision making process because that could cost you a lot of money.”

When the new stadium is completed in Knoxville, it will be a bittersweet day for Allen and the rest of his team. They will get to see the fruits of years of hard labor pay off, but at the cost of leaving Kodak, a place they called home for a quarter-century.

In their eyes, the benefits of baseball in Knoxville outweighs the emotions of leaving.

“I think it will be a day of celebration, because we’re going to look back at all the wonderful moments we had at that ballpark,” Allen said. “You’re going to look back at that and you’re going to smile, and at the end of the day, it’s going to be a little bittersweet because you’re going to be moving on.”