The two-lane stretch of Louisville Road between Proffitt Springs Road and Topside Road has two 11-foot lanes, and TDOT plans to widen them. Two large neighbors are now planning around this road. One is a firearms headquarters whose property sits in Maryville. The other is an Air National Guard base in Alcoa. Neither one is inside the town of Louisville, and both are shaping the road that runs through it.
The New Gate Is Driven by the Airport
In October, the 134th Air Refueling Wing at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base made its plans public. It wants to move its entrance to the intersection of Louisville Road and Louisville Loop Road, west of the CSX tracks. WATE reported that the cause is McGhee Tyson Airport's expansion, which will keep the base from renewing the land lease for its current main gate past 2044.
The project's price is at least $25 million, and right now it has no funding. Officials told WATE they hope for congressional authorization in fiscal year 2027. Col. Jon Barrett, the wing's Mission Support Group commander, said the plan is to start taking bids by the end of this year, with a detailed timeline to come later. He also said a full Traffic Impact Study is done. Blount County Business News put the possible move as early as 2027.
Here is what the gate would change on Louisville Road, as Barrett described it to WATE:
- Dedicated turn lanes for the new base access road
- A southbound left-turn lane and a northbound right-turn lane on Louisville Road
- A protected eastbound left-turn lane, plus acceleration and deceleration lanes
- A fourth leg added to a traffic signal that was already planned with three
- Retimed local traffic signals
The signal was already in the plans before the Guard got involved. To keep disruption down, the Guard worked with the Tennessee Department of Transportation to add its gate to a road project that was already underway on paper. That project is called Project Eagle.
Project Eagle Was Built Around Smith & Wesson's Trucks
Project Eagle traces back to September 2021, when Smith & Wesson announced it was moving its headquarters from Springfield, Massachusetts, to Blount County. In October 2021, TDOT created an economic development project under its State Industrial Access Program to improve State Route 334, also known as Louisville Road.
The road matters to the company because of where it leads. In 2024, WATE reported that Louisville Road to Topside Road was the quickest route from the Smith & Wesson facility to the interstate. Which town holds that facility has changed more than once. The Daily Times traced the property from Louisville to Alcoa and then to Maryville. It also reported that Alcoa officials asked TDOT in 2021 for work at Proffitt Springs Road and Louisville Road. That intersection work is finished. The widening is the second half.
TDOT's project page lays out the new road. The current two 11-foot lanes would become two 12-foot lanes, with six-foot paved shoulders and curb and gutter on both sides. The work would run from near Proffitt Springs Road to just past Topside Road. The state is paying for all of it. The project is still in preliminary engineering. TDOT is drawing up functional plans, which will be used for right-of-way acquisition and utility relocation.
The Plan Residents Already Changed
The current design is not the first version. TDOT held a public design meeting at Louisville Town Hall on March 28, 2024. What followed was one of the clearest cases of a town pushing back on a state road plan.
Using an information request, The Daily Times obtained what residents sent TDOT. It totaled more than 500 pages, including comment cards, a petition with more than 600 signatures, and a letter from the head of KenJo Markets. Mayor Jill Pugh had written an open letter asking residents to contact the department. One part of the plan drew the most objections: a concrete barrier between the lanes on Topside Road. Commenters said it would cut off access to businesses and to the Louisville Post Office. The KenJo letter asked TDOT to reconsider the barrier because it would limit access to the store at that intersection.
TDOT scaled the plan back. In the 2024 version The Daily Times reported, the Topside Road barrier was gone and a bike lane had been added on Louisville Road. That is the most recent public description of the design. Final plans are still being drawn.
The Dates, Lined Up
Each piece of this runs on its own schedule. Lined up together, they show when Louisville Road and the roads around it are likely to change:
- June 2026: TDOT's latest posted status for the Alcoa Highway project, dated June 2026, said the Topside Road interchange was down to punch-list work such as sign adjustments and final stabilization.
- Summer and fall 2026: TDOT estimated that Project Eagle's plan-in-hand review would be submitted in summer and its plans, specifications and estimates in fall.
- End of 2026: The Guard expects to start taking bids on the new gate, even though the project has no funding yet.
- Fall 2027: TDOT's estimated finish for Phase 1 of relocated Alcoa Highway, which includes new bridges over Pellissippi Parkway.
- 2027 or fiscal year 2028: TDOT's page gives two estimates for when Project Eagle goes to construction bids. Its milestone table says 2027 and its status text says fiscal year 2028. Construction is expected to take two to two and a half years after that.
- 2044: After this year, the base cannot renew the lease on its current main gate.
If construction starts in fiscal 2028 and runs the full estimate, crews would be on Louisville Road around the end of the decade.
The Curve the Town Controls
Old Lowes Ferry Road is the one road in this story where Louisville makes the call itself. It has also changed three times in about 18 months.
In December 2024, Town Engineer Roger Bird gave the Board of Mayor and Aldermen nine ways to make the curve between Ken Way and Lowes Ferry Road safer. The Daily Times reported that the options ran from signs and cameras up to rebuilding the road. The board picked a pair of flashing stop signs for just under $1,000, and they went up in 2025. Complaints kept coming in afterward. According to the paper, TDOT officials told Bird the signs could be seen as a potential liability, though no one ever ordered them removed.
At a board meeting, a retired traffic engineer described the spot this way, as quoted in The Daily Times:
"That section of road has icing problems, it's a shaded section, it's a grade and a curve. All those things together makes it the worst icing condition possible, and the best thing you can do is encourage low speed, constant speed, little acceleration."
The town then hired an engineering firm, CDM Smith, for a curve study, dated March 2026. It counted 11 recorded crashes from January 2023 through the start of 2026. Five happened in 2025, and five happened in the rain. The study recommended taking out the stop signs and replacing them with curve warning signs, 25 mph advisory speed plaques, reflectors and high-visibility striping.
The board had already voted to take the stop signs down. On April 14, 2026, it voted unanimously to approve the study, move ahead with phase one, and lower the speed limit from 25 to 20 mph. The minutes from that period say chevron signs were up and radar speed signs had arrived. Town staff were installing them and getting help programming them correctly.
By the April update, the board had voted the stop signs out, and the curve had chevrons and an approved 20 mph limit. The study also lists possible later steps, such as high-friction pavement, active warning beacons and, eventually, widening or straightening the road. As of the March memo, those steps had not been built. Mayor Pugh has said a townwide study and action plan paid for by the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant is part of the larger picture.
Where Louisville Has Had a Say
The main traffic behind these changes does not start in Louisville. The trucks are headed to a headquarters in Maryville, and the new gate is being moved by an airport lease. Even so, the parts of these plans that have changed so far have changed because people in town spoke up. Five hundred pages of comments took a concrete barrier off Topside Road. Months of complaints led the town board to vote out a pair of stop signs in favor of a slower posted speed. Project Eagle's functional plans are the ones TDOT will use for right-of-way acquisition and utility relocation, and the project's TDOT contacts are listed on TDOT's Project Eagle page.
If your home is on or near Louisville Road and you've wondered how a wider road, a new signal or a base gate down the street might affect what it's worth, we can talk it through with you. We know these roads, and we've grown up watching Blount County build out around them. Start with Mandy Street and Get Your Instant Home Valuation. We'll follow up with the local details a quick estimate leaves out.
