Plenty of places believe it or night. Downtown Knoxville which is where they had it was dying in the mid 1970's. It was hard to access, hard to find parking spaces, and lacked other businesses which had migrated to West Knoxville. At that time there waws plenty of highly accessable and more visable land in north, east, and west, Knoxville. There were just too many issues including a major creek {Second Creek I think} running through the middle which carried the city storm run off.
I worked there {in maintenance as a HVAC and Electrical mechanic} and several times we had to kill power to buildings because the flood water approached the power panels located on the creek bank. Once I walked in near knee deep water down one of the main walk ways next to the Convention Center beside the Holiday Inn which was another mess. Poor design in a poor location. Limited space for the number of persons they were trying to attract.
What’s more remarkable is that Knoxville landed the World’s Fair at all. You think of all the major city locales they’d usually be at, New Orleans, Vancouver, Montreal, et al, but Knoxville ? It was no surprise there was some funny business to get it there (between Carter, the Butchers, etc.), rodent shenanigans in a Republican city, no less.