KaTom helps Knoxville Smokies Outfit New Stadium

After 25 years of playing ball in Kodak, the Knoxville Smokies minor league baseball team has returned to its original Knoxville home for the 2025 season and moved into a new stadium in the heart of the city. Throughout the construction of this stadium, dubbed Covenant Health Park, its builders turned to KaTom to help design and outfit concession stands, kitchens, and bars.

The multi-million-dollar undertaking involved numerous contractors and designers, and KaTom's team started its piece of the project by designing potential foodservice layouts for Denark Construction—the contractor who won the project bid. Eventually, KaTom became the foodservice consultants for the job.

When designing each kitchen and bar layout, KaTom partnered with DIA, a Knoxville-based architecture firm overseeing much of the stadium design. They provided spaces for KaTom to work in.

"From there, we just kind of ran with it." KaTom Design Manager Michael Holbert said.

In addition to creating the design for each space, KaTom also provided some of the equipment, including beer draft systems, bar supplies, hoods, sinks, and walk-in coolers.

Holbert notes KaTom's design went through several changes and expansions, but by the end, it included indoor and outdoor foodservice rooms across the entire stadium. The project became one of KaTom's largest undertakings to date, involving four separate concession kitchens, an upper-level kitchen attached to a main commissary kitchen, and three full bars.

Preparing for Growing Demand

Covenant Health Park was built by Smokies owner Randy Boyd and the city of Knoxville, among other stakeholders, and is expected to create nearly half a billion dollars in economic impact over the next three decades. One of the builders' top priorities was the ability to house comprehensive stadium food services to meet a large influx of customers.

"This was a bigger deal than they initially thought it was," KaTom Project Manager Jason Winkler said. "So, they actually added more equipment to it."

The expected influx is due in part to the baseball team, but Covenant Health Park is intended as a true multi-use stadium for the city; it is built to host the One Knoxville professional soccer club, as well as events and concerts throughout the year.

"They really wanted it to live up to its name," Winkler said. "So, it's really open to as much as they can do."

One of the main benefits of the stadium's foodservice layout is each concession stand is self-sufficient. Rather than using several small stands serving food made in a central location, each space is equipped with cooking and storage space to serve its own food and drinks without relying on runners traveling to and from a main kitchen.

However, the stadium still has a full-sized commissary kitchen in the central part of the park from which staff can shuttle food if necessary. It's connected to a view-level kitchen by an elevator to help meet demand when the view-level holds larger gatherings.

KaTom also installed several mammoth walk-in coolers and freezers near the kitchen to help store food until it's ready to be prepped or served. KaTom partnered with Rollseal to create a custom automatic rolling door, through which palettes could fit, for the walk-in cooler.

Coordinating Solutions on Tap

One of the ways KaTom helped the park prepare for busy crowds was by partnering with Krowne to create an innovative long-draw dispensing system that connects each concession stand to its own keg cooler room. This helped solve an issue that often plagued Smokies Stadium in Kodak.

"They were blowing through beer." Holbert said, "On Thirsty Thursdays, they were running out of beer, and they were having to go to a central keg room and pull kegs."

To help the staff avoid the hassle of running kegs through the crowded stadium, KaTom helped design and install these dispensing systems, providing each concession stand with multiple beer taps, including several with options to add more later if the park needs to expand service.

"The beauty of the Krowne system is that it can easily be added to even years down the road," Winkler said.

These beer taps are fed by kegs in nearby walk-in coolers from glycol trunk lines. The lines carry the beer to each tower, keeping it cold all the way up to the dispenser.

While two of the bars are equipped with kegerators, KaTom installed the same long draw system in the third bar behind the backstop, with the longest glycol trunk line traveling as far as 180 feet through the floor.

In the same bar, the beer taps were originally designed to be on top of a stone counter; after they were ordered, however, KaTom found out the customer wanted them out of sight underneath. KaTom's partnership with Krowne paid off when they reached out for help. Because Krowne had provided the taps and much of the underbar equipment, they were easily able to create custom-made stands for the taps so they fit the specific dimensions of the counter.

"It was really not stressful at all," Winkler said. "Krowne took all the guesswork out of it, and they were just a great partner in this whole system."

KaTom's coordination with designers, manufacturers, and contractors helped bring the project to successful completion.

Senior Project Manager for Denark, Mohamed Abbas, worked closely with KaTom's Vice President of Business Development, Charley Bible.

"Charley is one call away," Abbas said. "If something's wrong and you need something and you have an issue, he picks up the phone. You know, he knows the details, he knows what's going on in the jobs, and he's helpful."

After several years of designing, planning, and installing, the KaTom team finished its task; Covenant Health Park is expected to be ready for its April 15th opening.

"It is an amazing feat, you know" Winkler said, "I'm really excited for opening day."