UT's Blitzkrieg

Gail and Richard McGinnis, owner/residents of an old home in the tree-shaded Mountcastle Park neighborhood adjacent to the UT campus, were startled awake Wednesday morning at about 5:00 a.m. when cranes and bulldozers arrived to demolish a handsome brick slate-roofed Tudor duplex behind them. Though their property is directly adjacent to the demolition site, she says UT had offered her family no warning whatsoever of the demolition.

Built in 1927 by W.H. Peters, Knoxville's first law director, the house suddenly destroyed had been a candidate for the National Register due to a number of unusual architectural features. It had most recently served as UT's office of Diversity Resources, which has moved to another building on Terrace. UT officials confirm the house is being demolished to make way for a parking garage.

Ironically, the McGinnises and other neighbors had been in City Council Tuesday night to protest a private development in their neighborhood. Mrs. McGinnis, who has lived in her old family home on Terrace for most of her life, says UT had recently attempted to obtain her home for a parking garage, but that she had refused to sell. Some neighbors believe UT's middle-of-the-night tactics are meant to intimidate owners into selling.

Miracle on Magnolia May Come to an End

Mike Lewis is putting out an SOS. If the name sounds familiar, it may be because Lewis was one of the subjects of "Unsung Heroes," a Metro Pulse cover story last winter praising the efforts of folks who make this town livable. Lewis was included in the story because he bought two run-down tenement buildings on Magnolia Avenue in 1996 and has spent the last two years not only rehabilitating the buildings but rescuing the neighborhood. Many of his tenants would be in the street if not for his efforts. He has been shot while doing hand-to-hand combat with drug dealers, and he has forced city police and emergency personnel to stop referring to his buildings as "Krystal Heights," a nickname denoting the buildings' proximity to that Magnolia Avenue fast food joint.

Now, he's looking for help.

Lewis, who owns two of the three brick apartment houses (his are the ones with fresh coats of paint and nobody sitting in the yard drinking out of bottles in brown paper bags) in the block east of Magnolia Avenue United Methodist Church, has 122 tenants in 50 apartment units and has a HUD Moderate Rehabilitation Program contract to provide low-income housing.

This one-man neighborhood improvement project's problem is that Washington bureaucrats have decided they no longer want to fool with the Moderate Rehabilitation Program, and it's been written out of next year's appropriations bill, even though Congress had expressed the will to fund it. Without this program, Lewis and other landlords like him will likely find it impossible to stay in business. He has made trips to DC in an attempt to get the attention of his representatives (primarily Sen. Fred Thompson), but, so far, to no avail. Time is running out.

Poster Boy

The Knoxville Police Department's 1997 annual report is out, and its cover has a familiar look. We've seen that picture of Chief Phil Keith before; most of it anyway. The shot appeared on the back cover of last fall's News-Sentinel "Protect and Serve" supplement—a pull-out tabloid touting the accomplishments of Keith's department. The supplement appeared at a propitious time—just after the shooting of Juan Daniels escalated the call for a citizen's review board—and there was more to the picture than meets the eye in its most recent incarnation. The entire right hand side of the photo has been cropped out, excising the image of a bicycle cop and that of John Szczepanowski, fired earlier this year on accusations of brutality.