One of the largest undeveloped pieces of land left on Sevier Avenue now has a decision attached to it. Last Thursday the Knoxville-Knox County Planning Commission approved a revised plan to turn the old Kerbela Shriners temple site — 5.7 acres where Sevier meets Dawson Street, right up against the Kern's campus — into a 225-apartment community for residents 55 and over.

★What the neighborhood got in the final draft

The plan had been through five agendas since February, with commissioners pressing repeatedly on a single question: how much of the finished site would actually belong to the public. The approved version answers it in concrete terms. There's a public plaza at the corner of Dawson and Sevier, landscaped and built to hold food trucks. There's an east-west public path across the property connecting toward the South Waterfront, and a north-south breezeway through it. Because the ground drops away at grades reaching 40 percent, the plan adds an accessible elevator alongside exterior stairs. And a piece of the land goes to the City of Knoxville outright.

★What happens now

CR Endeavors moves into design, permitting and the regulatory work that follows, in coordination with the city — so nothing changes on the ground this month. Developer Ryan Robertson said the team had spent "a lot of time listening" over the months of revisions. For a corridor that has spent a decade arguing about what it wants to become, this is the biggest single answer it has given yet.