A local film crew has documented the reconstruction of downtown Knoxville freeways as a National Geographic special.
The filmmakers donned hard hats, safety vests and steel-toed boots and immersed themselves in the job of building roads and bridges. Their first stop was the $85 million SmartFIX40 project involving the Hall of Fame Drive extension to Broadway.That should be fun and interesting for anyone who ever did 'sandbox roads' as a kid. It will be even more interesting if, like me, you remember when they original interstates were built in Knoxville.
"We looked like part of the road crew," Lane said. The construction workers, he said, "sort of took us in as their own and looked out for us."
The reason for that, said TDOT spokesman Travis Brickey, may be that the Jupiter crews didn't mind working in freezing temperatures, at all hours of the day and night and getting dirty.
"They're used to getting in the hole with the workers and getting armpit-to-armpit with the workers," Brickey said of the film crews.
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Lane said the crew compiled 50-60 hours of high definition film and interviewed about 30 people. The film crews also converged on the I-40 widening project from Papermill Drive to West Hills. From that mountain of information, Leigh-Bell said, the 30 employees of Jupiter Entertainment will cull a one-hour segment
