Every rider who has parked at Tannery Knobs and looked south toward East Market Street has seen the same thing: a quiet stretch of open ground doing nothing while the mountain above it does all the work. That flat ten acres has sat there for years as the unremarkable flank of a park built almost entirely on its climb. That's about to change, and the change is bigger than a few new trails. It flips who the park is actually built for on any given Saturday.
The Only Way In Has Always Been Up
Since Tannery Knobs opened in 2019, the deal has been the same: park at the main lot, climb, then choose your line back down. Nearly five miles of trail sit at the top, a mix of flow, jump lines, and rockier technical sections built with the International Mountain Bicycling Association's Trail Solutions crew. If you wanted to try a skill for the first time, you still had to get to the top first. There was no ground-level entry point for a kid on a strider bike or an adult who has never ridden anything steeper than the Tweetsie Trail.
That's the piece the new project changes. The parcel above East Market Street, roughly 10 acres of relatively flat land at the park's southern flank, is becoming what locals have started calling Lower Tannery Knobs: a beginner-focused skills area and kids' bicycle playground you can reach without climbing anything first.
Who's Actually Paying For This
The money behind Lower Tannery Knobs is worth understanding, because it explains why this isn't showing up on a normal city construction schedule. It's a patchwork, not a line item.
The land itself is a gift. Grant Summers of Summers-Taylor is donating the parcel to the City of Johnson City free of charge, a contribution the city estimates at around $600,000. SORBA Tri-Cities, the region's mountain biking advocacy group, secured a $450,000 grant from the Tennessee Department of Health tied to its Project Diabetes prevention funding, money aimed squarely at giving people an easy, low-barrier reason to get outside and move. Area Rotary clubs, long involved in earlier phases of the park, are contributing more than $200,000. A separate state grant called First Frontier Trail is kicking in another $200,000, and that grant is worth pausing on: it's earmarked mostly for a trail connection between Jonesborough and Johnson City, which means the money funding your neighborhood's beginner bike park is the same pot of money meant to eventually link two towns by trail. The city itself is putting in at least half a million dollars in in-kind work: a road into the site, a pavilion, restrooms, lighting, and security cameras.
Assistant City Manager Steve Willis put the completion estimate at 12 to 18 months when the funding came together in late August 2025, which puts a realistic finish line somewhere between August 2026 and February 2027. That's not a firm date. It's a range built on grant compliance, volunteer trail-building hours, and construction scheduling all lining up, which is a very different kind of timeline than a paved city street project with a contractor and a bond number attached.
What Actually Changes for Someone Who Rides Here
The functional shift is about entry points, not just acreage. Here's the comparison that matters if you already use the park:
| Before Lower Tannery Knobs | After Lower Tannery Knobs | |
|---|---|---|
| Where you start | Top lot only, requires a climb before any riding | Bottom lot on the East Market Street side, flat access |
| Where beginners practice | Mixed in with existing green, blue, and black trail network | Dedicated skills park and kids' playground at grade |
| How advanced riders connect | N/A, already at the top | New connector trails link the bottom skills area up to the nearly five miles of trail at Upper Tannery Knobs |
| Parking options | One lot, one direction of travel | Two lots, ride up and finish top-down or start easy and progress |
Abraham McIntyre of SORBA Tri-Cities described the intent plainly when the funding came together: riders will be able to park at the bottom or the top, climb if they want the workout, and finish on a downhill, the progressive jump lines, or the table tops depending on what they're chasing that day. That's a meaningfully different park than the one that opened in 2019, where the only way to reach any of the fun stuff was to have already earned it on the climb.
This isn't the park's first incremental build. In 2024, SORBA volunteers put in roughly 500 hours hand-cutting Vol Holler, a trail that preserves natural root systems and rock features for a narrower, more immersive ride, unlike the machine-cut lines elsewhere in the park. The same year, King's Mountain Post 24 completed a flagpole and monument at the top of the knob honoring veterans and first responders, a project inspired by Johnson City Doughboys fans pledging to the flag before games at the ballpark below. Both are reminders that almost nothing at Tannery Knobs happened because a developer wrote a check. It happened because a rotating cast of volunteers, advocacy groups, and civic clubs kept showing up.
Where the Design Actually Stands Right Now
As of late March 2026, the Johnson City Press reported that plans for the beginner-friendly jump lines and kids' bicycle playground at Lower Tannery Knobs were approaching the final design phase, not yet under construction. Read against the original 12-to-18-month estimate from August 2025, that timing tracks: design work wrapping up in the first quarter of 2026 lines up with a build phase running through the back half of the year and into early 2027.
What that means if you're checking on this today, in mid-September 2026, is that the honest answer is somewhere in the middle. The land has been conveyed, the design is finished or close to it, and construction is either underway or about to be. It is not open yet. If you've been waiting to bring a five-year-old down to try a strider bike on something gentler than the existing trail system, the wait is close to over but not quite there.
Why the Bottom of the Hill Matters More Than It Sounds
It would be easy to file this under routine park maintenance, another trail added to a list that already includes a dozen named runs and a pump track built by Velosolutions. But the shift from one entry point to two, and from climb-first to choose-your-difficulty, is the kind of change that actually alters who shows up on a Tuesday evening. A park that requires a climb before any riding self-selects for people who are already comfortable on a bike. A park with a flat entrance and a dedicated kids' area opens the door to families who have been driving past the main lot for years without ever pulling in.
That's the story worth knowing if Tannery Knobs is already part of your week, whether that's a Saturday morning loop, a Yee Haw Brewing stop after a ride, or just a place you point to on the drive in from the interstate. The mountain isn't getting easier. The way in is.
If you're the kind of Johnson City resident who tracks changes like this because you're weighing what's next for your own home, whether that's more space, a different commute, or simply curiosity about where your property stands in a market shaped by projects like this one, Kim Leonard has spent her career paying attention to exactly this kind of neighborhood detail. Get your instant home valuation and start the conversation whenever you're ready.