For all of the wonderful things that I love about our Gatlinburg area, there are still some things that our community doesn’t have, at least not yet. Our mild climate (yet with distinct seasons), the low crime rate, our wonderful scenery, and our exceptionally low property taxes are great but I do have a few wishes. Here is my top ten list of things that I wish our Gatlinburg area community had:
Number 10: A Chili’s Restaurant – We enjoy many excellent restaurants but for some reason we don’t yet have a local location of this chain.
Number 9: A Stein-Mart Store – If you haven’t ever experienced this discount department store you’ve missed something special.
Number 8: Crate and Barrel Store – Lots of outlets but we don’t seem to get the specialty stores.
Number 7: Fresh Market Grocery – This gourmet grocery store features very fresh food, lots of unique items, and I believe the chain may have started in Knoxville.
Number 6: A Toyota/Lexus dealership – Our community has a Chevy, Chrysler, GM, and a Ford dealership but we don’t have any other automobile dealers. We do however have an excellent automotive repair shop that is honest, skilled, and also reasonably priced in Rick’s Service Center in Sevierville. If you are looking for a great mechanic in our Gatlinburg area please see Rick and tell him that Jeff Schoenfield sent you.
Number 5: Panera Bread Store – I love this store but unfortunately it didn’t make it in Gatlinburg due to problems with management and labor. All Sevier County businesses suffer to some degree finding reliable help but some seem to struggle more than others.
Number 4: Williams – Sonoma – There really isn’t anything quite like this sort of store in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, or Sevierville.
Number 3: Best Buy Store – We don’t yet have any type of big box electronics store. The closest substitute would be one of the local small Radio-Shack stores.
Number 2: An Old Fashioned Bakery – Although the Donut Friar in Gatlinburg has lots of sweet items (and is wonderful) we don’t have a full service bakery anywhere in Sevier County to my knowledge.
Number 1: Sam’s Club/Costco – While we do have a Wal-Mart in Sevierville, we haven’t yet gotten any sort of discount warehouse business.
A list like this would have been much longer 10 years ago but we have filled in some of the missing links. Hopefully, when we look back on this list a couple of years from now at least a couple of these “Wish List� items will have been added.
Jeff there is only one true steakhouse in Gatlinburg (Peddler). How about a Longhorn steakhouse? There is nothing like a good steak! Also, Dunkin Donuts, Chik-fil-a in Gatlinburg, a good fried chicken place, a good Mexican taqueria, and a really good pizza restaurant. I guess you can tell that eating trumps shopping in my book.
Steve, my friend, I too am focused on food but I beg to disagree with your first point! The Alamo Steakhouse in Gatlinburg (and Pigeon Forge) has excellent steaks. There is a Longhorn Steakhouse in Sevierville near the Tanger Outlet and of course we do have a Sevierville Chik-Fil-A. I must agree with the others – Not exactly sure why we don't have a Dunkin Donuts in Gatlinburg…
Jeff,
Hi, I've commented before on your blog and always enjoy reading it. If we ever get up the courage to move down there you will certainly be our realtor (plus my mother-in-law was re/max so we are partial). Who ever does your web page would be doing you a service if they could show a link to, or listing of to the most recent topics on your blog so that people will have an idea of the content and value within it. We always enjoy reading your entries. (i agree you need a select few big box retailers to add to the area) Thanks for providing us a window to our future home! We love the mountains
Clay
Thanks for the kind words Clay! I hope that you will in fact "get up the courage" to move down here – it's a great place to live. We will also pass along your excellent suggestion to our truly superb web designer, Doug Walker of Prism Designworks.