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"America's Most Livable, uh..." (Oh, never mind.)
Emily Ellison had little hope when she went to the Board of Zoning Appeals to beg them not to put the interests of big business before the quality of life in one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
"We just want to be able to live in peace," she told the board, explaining that she and her neighbors don't put much stock in a nearby company's promises. Several members of the audience nodded their heads.
"That's what we want, too," one Sequoyah Hills dowager said. The others around her guffawed.
But the board members were unmoved when Ellison said her Lonsdale community is "like a war zone," and listed complaints including noise and air pollution, cracked foundations, rust-stained vinyl siding, explosions at all hours and being "land-locked" due to streets having been blocked off to accommodate AmeriSteel. They were more receptive to attorney Arthur Seymour Jr.'s assurances that "...This is an improvement to an existing facility... There's a committee to address neighborhood concerns."
And it took about 15 seconds for them to unanimously approve AmeriSteel's request to make its new blast furnace building taller than city codes allow.
Then the board prepared to hear several hours worth of arguments over the telecommunications tower under construction in the commercial zone in Sequoyah Hills. Ellison made her way out of the Small Assembly Room. Nobody noticed.
Hot Air
A semi-new wrinkle in the landscape of local political punditry is about to debut. It will be called The Hot Spot and intends to be kind of a mini-Crossfire. The new on-camera personality will be that of Greg "Sweet Face" Isaacs, who is a lawyer and a Democrat. The banner for the other side will be carried by the ubiquitous George Korda, who will engage Isaacs in the segment that will be taking up the last third of the Channel 6 Sunday Political Roundtable program. Mike Hammond will moderate the new segment.
Pipple and Pah-tays
Finally, a ritzy party that Barbara Aston-Wash missed. Saturday evening several downtown residents opened their homes to some 50 invited guests for a full seven-course "progressive dinner": a self-styled "Moveable Feast" loosely celebrating the 100th birthday of the late Ernest Hemingway. Sumptuous Oysters Rockefeller were served at Andie Ray's intimate '20s-era apartment in Maplehurst, beet and curry soups at Mike Dotson's townhouse near Locust, fresh salad at Buzz and Cherie Goss's lofty condo in the Pembroke, pasta with rich gorgonzola at Dennis and Judy McCarthy's beautifully renovated suite on Gay, droll "shish kebabs" at sunset on Peter Ullrich's airy roof next door, dessert on the back porch of David Dewhirst's walkup on the 100 block, and coffee and chocolate in Robert Loest's four-story loft across the street, the home he shares with that giant statue of well-known Russian Sergei Rachmaninoff. We regret that we don't recall what most of the happy partiers were wearing, except that Metro Pulse crossword wizard Ian Blackburn wore a handsome tuxedo avec cummerbund, accented by bluish dungarees and sandals. Some wags estimated they had consumed enough food and French wine to choke the Trojan Horse. The entire event lasted some seven hours, after which a few survivors staggered down to Lucille's to reflect on a perfect evening.
Don't Cheer Yet
At 106 S. Central Street in the Old City, there's a new coat of paint on the outside of the building that once housed Hooray's Sports Bar and Grill. The fresh look has generated speculation about the empty property making a comeback. But rumors of a steak and lobster place moving in, passed along to Metro Pulse by an active downtown planner, turned out to be untrue, or perhaps just premature. According to the property's owner, the successor to Hooray's will be a business able to financially back a long-term commitment to the space. And so far, no such tenant has stepped up.
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