Some members of the CBID question its proposed change of course
by Jack Neely
The CBID holds lots of public meetings every year. They've been pretty pleasant affairs for the most part, approving grants to worthy businesses working on renovations. There's applause and congratulations. The one next Wednesday morning, June 23, at the Customs House, promises to be different. The CBID is considering a significant change in course, and several in its membership don't like it at all.
When people talk about the CBID, they're not talking about a district so much as a cadre of downtown property owners known formally as the Central Business Improvement District Management Corporation. Formed only six years ago, and funded by assessments on downtown property owners, the CBID has changed the face of several parts of downtown. Distributing tens of thousands of dollars to help remodel dozens of downtown buildings, CBID has helped fund major renovations to buildings like the brewpub now known as Great Southern, the JFG and the rest of the Jackson Ateliers in the Old City, and numerous other properties on Gay Street and Market Square. CBID may be best known for its facade improvements, but times are changing in ways that some members find exciting and others unsettling.
CBID was once a $400,000 a year enterprise and generously doled out grants as incentives to downtown businesses. Most recently, the CBID has assisted with the physical rehabilitation of much of the 100 block of Gay Street, and with the large-scale remodeling that went into the opening of Lula, the restaurant on Market Square. However, CBID's revenue declined by almost 40 percent in recent years, now hovering around $250,000.
During the same period, the CBID has been absorbed into the Superchamber so thoroughly you have to poke around to find remnants of its original membrane. Its Executive Director is the surprisingly youthful Pete Crowley; but out of the same office in Old City Hall, he's also Director of Central City Development for the Superchamber. "There's a whole lot of overlap," he says. "Sometimes, I have to think, wait, am I going to this meeting as a Partnership employee, or a CBID director, or both, or neither?" Nowdays, he says, he's spending about 80 percent of his time on the CBID.
If he were arrogant or power-hungry, you might be tempted to compare Crowley's haircut to Caesar's, but in fact he still has the affect of a bright and earnest college kid. He sees his role modestly, as that of facilitator for what the CBID membership wants.
"We have to deal with the fact of declining resources right now," he says. "We can't be as loose and free as we were in the past." CBID's revenues have fallen off sharply due to the considerable amount of downtown acreage that has passed from private to public hands in recent years, and to the fact that TVA's belt-tightening has cut that agency's once-generous contributions in half. They're now forced to settle with annual budget of about $250,000, and much of that already earmarked for the expensive and recently completed Bijou Theatre renovation.
That reality forced CBID to reevaluate its role in Knoxville.
Like most downtown groups, CBID once had a certain old-boy flavor to it. Many of these folks you might have seen eating lunch together at the S&W 20 or 30 years ago. Myra Franklin is a different sort of beast, a newcomer from out of state, and unlike most CBID members, a downtown resident. Though young urban pioneers have been living in downtown lofts and apartments for more than a decade, it's still unusual for middle-aged professionals to live downtown. But for a wealthy retired couple from out of state to move to downtown Knoxville deliberately was, until two years ago, unheard of. The story about how she and her husband Dick arrived downtown has already become a sort of downtown legend. The two, both successful psychotherapists, had seen much of the world and knew exactly what they wanted in a community. They wanted a place warmer than Wisconsin, to begin with, but still a place with four distinct seasons. They wanted to be convenient to the East Coast. They wanted to live near mountains and water. And they wanted to live in a city that was small, but big enough to support symphony, opera, and other performing arts. They picked Knoxville; but they didn't pick downtown Knoxville until their first visit here, when they stayed at the Radisson. "This city has something," Myra Franklin recalls thinking. "I think it was Market Square." It's still her favorite part of town.
Two years ago the Franklins moved into a loft in an old commercial building on Gay Street, and proceeded to mix it up with the local community, attending more public meetings in their first year than most Knoxvillians do in a lifetime.
She's from Wisconsin, but she calls downtown Knoxville "the neighborhood I grew up in. I walk outside, and almost without fail I will run into somebody I know. I know the farmer on Market Square, I know the police officers."
Pam Fansler, Chair of CBID's Board of Directors, nominated Myra Franklin to head up the corporation's Strategic Planning Committee. "You've got the most at stake," she said. For several months, Franklin and her committee members studied downtown Knoxville's needs. They also studied what other CBIDs around the country were doing. They found a national trend away from edifices and toward events.
The decision was that much of CBID's original mission, to make downtown's buildings more physically attractive, was largely accomplished; what's needed now is more activity. Special events, the reasoning goes, might accomplish some of that. And part of their mission was to scare up new sources of funds; events have been known to raise a few dollars on their own.
The nature of what sort of activities will liven downtown is still up in the air, as is the question of whether CBID's membership will approve the reorientation in its meeting on June 23.
For her part, Franklin herself is especially intrigued with the idea of food-oriented festivals similar to those she's seen in Washington and Portland—perhaps one with a Taste of Knoxville theme. She mentions the tremendously successful V-Roys album-release show on Market Square last fall that drew an estimated 2,000 people; but she, Crowley, and Fansler are all quick to insist that the festivals they have in mind aren't mostly beery noisefests.
"We need to create something people want to come here for that they can't get in the suburbs. What you can get in the suburbs you can get in any suburb in any city, anyway."
Gesturing around the JFG Coffee House (now Cup-a-Joe's), she says, "you don't have buildings like this anywhere but downtown." It's one of several well-known commercial buildings downtown that were renovated in part by CBID grants.
Crowley insists CBID's prospective redirection of its resources won't abandon such projects. Some downtown business people who had invested in downtown property with the assurance of CBID's certain cash flow for all worthy projects are feeling bereft these days, even cheated by this apparent double-whammy: Not only have CBID's resources sharply dwindled, but much of what's left may be diverted to other sorts of projects.
Longtime downtown entrepreneur Susan Key recently moved her business, Key Antiques, to Bearden, but still lives downtown and owns a building on Market Square which she was hoping to rehabilitate for a new tenant.
"I'd expected to utilize CBID development money," Key says. "That facade money was going to be a huge help to me."
Not surprisingly, Key and several others who were anticipating help with private developments strongly oppose the proposal. "I think bricks and mortar is the top priority for CBID," says Key. "Our number-one priority is to fill up those empty buildings."
Key is not alone. Jim Ullrich's printing company has been located on Clinch Avenue for the last 15 years. He says he has "great concern" about the proposal. "We need to do something different from what we have been doing, and something in the marketing area," he says. "But there's still a great need for incentives for people doing small developments." Observing that the plan's boosters have noted that few other CBID organizations nationwide offer grants as Knoxville's CBID does, Ullrich says, "Maybe they just don't have to, because they give tax incentives that we don't have here." He mentions one such program in Providence, Rhode Island.
"If they turn CBID into basically an entertainment group that's going to draw people downtown, I don't think we're going to be able to do much of anything else. We're not doing much with the people who come downtown now. I don't think more is the solution."
He'd like to see CBID's limited resources spent mostly on an effective and dependable transportation system and on marketing and promotion.
One disappointed property owner, who declined to be identified, said the current proposals suggest that "CBID has outlived its usefulness," and that it's time to dissolve the organization altogether.
Key quotes a downtown colleague who called special events a "labor-intensive crap shoot," especially as a fund-raiser.
"My understanding is that CBID was going to do things city government was not going to do," Key says, referring to the city's events coordinator. Crowley says he admires Sue Clancy's work with the city events office, but he adds that that office, which began with the Ashe administration, may end with it. The CBID should assure there will be someone taking that role permanently, and suggests it may even be worthwhile to hire a full-time staffer for the job.
Kim Trent, president of Knox Heritage, is one of Knoxville's most outspoken preservationists, and might have been expected to mourn CBID's proposed diversions. However, of the proposed new emphasis on events, she says, "I think it's a good idea. They've been using the money for facades for several years, and they've laid a really strong base," she says, mentioning the 100 block. "Now it's time to start touting them. Say, 'look at what's here, and have a good time.'
"CBID should be the PR group for downtown Knoxville," she adds. "I think there's a vacuum there." She thinks the CBID could also facilitate renovations with a "menu" of options of exploiting existing federal tax credits that are often ignored.
"There's a misconception that we're not going to do this and that," Crowley says. "We need to find ways to take $10,000, and with strategic leveraging, turn it into a $40,000 project."
Crowley is also considering other options for development incentives; in the past, CBID has offered grants; it's likely that a low-interest loan—say, half of the prime rate, or even zero interest—might be more appropriate in many cases.
"We have been very reactive in the way we do business. We've waited, in large part, for people to come in here and say, 'I want to do this.' New strategies should identify target sites that need help."
The Board has already polled its membership about the proposed Strategic Plan, and will vote on the issue at what promises to be a lively meeting on Wednesday.
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