If you live in Powell, you already know the trip that used to take five minutes now takes twenty. What you may not have noticed is how quietly that one construction zone has redrawn the rest of your week. Dinner, errands, a splash-pad afternoon, a Saturday 5K, even the coffee stop before work all bend now around a single interchange.
The thesis of this summer is simple. For the next two and a half years, Clinton Highway is the operating corridor in Powell, Emory Road is the special-occasion corridor, and the last Saturday in June is the one weekend everyone crosses back over anyway.
What The Interchange Actually Looks Like Right Now
The Tennessee Department of Transportation began rebuilding the I-75 interchange at Emory Road (State Route 131, Exit 112) into a diverging diamond in the fall of 2025, and the schedule has completion pushed out to April 2028. That is not a summer inconvenience. That is a full re-pattern of daily life through two more school years.
A few numbers put the scale in context. TDOT estimates about 26,000 vehicles travel through the Emory Road interchange each day, including roughly 13,800 drivers using I-75 north to Emory Road and about 13,500 traveling from Emory Road to I-75 south. Every one of those trips is now negotiating a live worksite. In early March, rolling roadblocks were staged on I-75 South starting at Exit 117 (Raccoon Valley Road) and on I-75 North starting at Exit 108 (Merchants Drive) for blasting near the Exit 112 ramps, with Emory Road held westbound near Starbucks and eastbound at Blueberry Road. By April, crews had already moved significant amounts of earth as work continued across the interchange footprint.
The businesses inside the disruption zone have felt it first. A Heritage Pools employee off East Emory Road put it plainly to WBIR in May:
"We're all trying to find kind of back roads to just get from one point of Emory to the other. What should take like five minutes takes about 20 minutes."
That is the sentence that explains the rest of this post.
The Corridor Swap: Emory Out, Clinton In
Here is the shift that residents are quietly making without saying much about it. Errands and weeknight dinners are drifting west onto Clinton Highway, where the DDI zone is far enough behind you that a left turn out of a parking lot no longer feels like a gamble.
A rough breakdown of where things sit right now:
- Off Clinton Highway (calmer this summer): Aubrey's Powell for a Monday burger night or the Tuesday draft special, Scotties of Powell at 7143 Clinton for early breakfast, Metro Diner, The Black Dog Brewhouse, Wells Station BBQ, Southern Kitchen Sandwich, Tokyo Sushi & Steakhouse, and Hamock's. The Airplane Filling Station sits at 6829 Clinton if you have out-of-town guests and want a five-minute stop that no other suburb can match.
- On Emory Road (worth the effort, plan for time): Asian Taste at 625 E. Emory, the professional services that have always lived along the corridor, and anything east of the interchange. Give yourself the extra fifteen minutes and go outside of the 4 to 6 p.m. pinch that a nail-salon manager described as brutal this spring when she told a reporter the traffic flow will be so much better once it is done, and construction is expected to run through April 2028.
None of this is permanent. It is a two-and-a-half-year rerouting of habits, not a verdict on any block.
The One Saturday The Detour Doesn't Matter
June 27 is the reset. The Third Annual Blackberry Festival returns to Powell Presbyterian Church at 2910 W. Emory Road on June 27, 2026, with a 5K, food trucks, vendors, games, and live music. The festival runs 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., which means the busy stretch of Emory Road briefly stops being a construction corridor and starts being a hometown Saturday again.
A few logistics worth knowing if you are local:
The 5K is not a serious competitive event, and that is the point. The Blackberry Festival 5K Fun Run is intended for all participants, sponsored by Powell Presbyterian Church, with proceeds benefiting various projects. The event is formally timed but intended to be fun, and the run starts at 8 a.m. from Powell Middle School, meanders through Broad Acres, and ends near Powell Presbyterian where the festival itself continues until 2 p.m. If you have never done a 5K, this is the one to try. If you have kids who have never done one, the Broad Acres loop is flat neighborhood pavement and the finish line hands you a food-truck lunch.
Parking is set up to keep pressure off the church's five-acre site. Parking is available at Powell Middle and Powell High schools with shuttle service to the festival. That matters this year more than most because Emory Road cannot absorb a normal festival crowd on top of construction traffic.
The event's backstory is worth a beat of appreciation. Powell Presbyterian saw an opportunity to host a summer community festival, and the first Blackberry Festival was a one-day event including a 5K run, vendors renting 10-foot square parcels, a food truck, and an old-fashioned bake sale. Three years in, it has become the anchor Saturday of the local summer.
The Weeknight Anchors When You Don't Want To Get In The Car
The other quiet trend of summer 2026 in Powell is the return of the local walk. If you are inside the loop of neighborhoods around Powell Station Park or the Emory-facing subdivisions, the park itself is doing more work this year than it did in 2024 because it is the closest thing to entertainment that does not involve a construction detour. The park offers a skatepark, playground, splash pad, disc golf, and a walking trail, with Powell Levi Park as a second option.
A weeknight that used to end at a restaurant on the far side of the interchange now ends more often at the splash pad with a to-go box from Aubrey's or Wells Station. It is not a dramatic shift, but it is a real one, and it will show up in how residents talk about this summer once the DDI opens in 2028.
For The Out-Of-Town Guest Who Asks What To Do In Powell
Every Powell resident eventually gets the same text from a visiting friend or parent: what should we actually do while we are here? The answer this summer looks a little different from last summer, because the detour has pushed the interesting stops closer together on the Clinton Highway side.
A rough Saturday morning route that avoids the interchange entirely:
- Coffee and biscuits at Scotties on Clinton Highway.
- A five-minute stop at the Airplane Filling Station at 6829 Clinton Highway. It is a service station built in 1930 in the shape of an airplane, located on Clinton Highway in Powell, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was added to the National Register in 2004 as one of East Tennessee's last remaining examples of "fantastic architecture."
- Powell Station Park for the kids, or the walking trail if it is early enough to beat the heat.
- Late lunch at Aubrey's, The Black Dog Brewhouse, or Hamock's, depending on the crowd.
You have shown a guest something no other Knox County suburb has, kept them out of the DDI footprint, and put them back in the car before the afternoon traffic thickens.
A Powell Summer, Honestly Described
The 26,000 daily trips through Exit 112 are not going away. Neither is the construction. What is changing is the shape of the local week: where dinner happens, where the kids end up on a Wednesday evening, which Saturday everyone circles on the calendar. Emory Road will be a better corridor in 2028 than it has ever been, and that is worth the wait. The Powell that shows up on the other side of construction will feel more connected to I-75 and easier to move through, which matters for property values along the corridor and for anyone thinking about a longer-term stay.
Between now and then, the summer belongs to Clinton Highway, the splash pad, and one Saturday in late June when the whole town crosses back over Emory Road for a 5K and a bake sale.
If you are weighing what these next two and a half years mean for your own house, your commute, or a possible move within Powell, Debra Gauthier has walked the corridor with clients through every stage of the project. Let's Connect.
