Who is Fred Bass and how does he plan to turn a sleepy cove on Fort Loudoun Lake into a fancy yacht club?
by David Madison
Where did the Bionic Man dine when in Knoxville during the mid '70s?
The Meating Quarters, boasts proprietor Fred Bass, recalling the times he hosted actor Lee Majors at his steak house in the West Town Mall. Two decades later, Bass is back in Knoxville looking to develop another restaurant, this time a waterfront eatery at his proposed Knox Landing Marina and Yacht Club. The Metropolitan Planning Commission will scrutinize plans for the $8 million development after Bass presents a detailed site plan and the findings of a recently completed traffic study next month.
In the meantime, area residents, boating enthusiasts and potential investors want to know more about Bass and his company, Southern Hospitality Hotels and Resorts. When Southern Hospitality relocated to Knoxville last year, Bass' arrival was reported as an economic boon. But the three-year-old company has yet to open a hotel or resort, and Bass is a relative unknown in Knoxville.
Bass is now doing the rounds, introducing himself and pitching his plan to redevelop a rag-tag collection of gangways, sunken boats and submerged debris at Maxey's Boat Dock. On the walls of Southern Hospitality's office in the old Maxey home on Maloney Road, Bass has architect sketches, conceptual drawings, and photos of himself. The stocky and tan Ft. Lauderdale native is pictured living well. There's Bass at the wheel of a giant power boat and another of a younger Bass basking in the glow of Atlanta's jet-set. He's leaning with his briefcase against a Mercedes that's parked next to a private plane.
More impressive than the photos, however, is the formidable team of attorneys, architects, engineers and real estate brokers Bass has hired to pin down details and usher Knox Landing toward success. Meanwhile, Bass continues to maneuver as the project's front man, shaking hands and spinning his own story like a captain's wheel.
Before taking the helm as top chop of the Meating Quarters, Bass sold pharmaceuticals for UpJohn and Johnson and Johnson. In 1971, he left corporate sales to start his chain of steak houses. Six years later, Bass says his company's line of credit through the Jake Butcher-controlled Hamilton Bank was abruptly cut off. As Bass tells it, the Meating Quarters were devoured during Butcher's notorious rise to banking prominence.
"They called a lot of notes at the time," says Bass, "and a lot of businesses got hurt."
After closing his five steak houses and moving back to Atlanta in 1977, Bass says he reunited with a group of other former Johnson and Johnson employees. Bass helped his former associates build a company called Biological Corporation of America. In five years, says Bass, BCA's stock went from $5 to $25 a share.
A colleague named Ed Gallup parlayed his success with BCA into a new company called Immucor and hired Bass as Immucor's sales manager for the Southeast. Bass says he negotiated a $1 million deal that helped push the company, which sells chemicals for blood testing, out of the red. Today, Immucor generates $40 million in annual sales.
In 1990, Bass was hired by CytRx, a fledgling pharmaceutical company started by another Johnson and Johnson alum. At the time, CytRx was struggling to find investors, so Bass says he was called in to rustle up capital. Two years later, stock in the company shot up 600 percent. Bass likes to show off a news clip celebrating this chapter of CytRx's remarkable success. But according to CytRx President Jack Luchese, Bass did not orchestrate the sudden spike in his company's stock.
"I have nothing negative to say about him," says Luchese. "He's a consummate salesman, but the 600 percent increase wasn't due to Fred Bass. It had everything to do with a corporate deal and he didn't have anything to do with it."
Bass counters by saying, "every CEO and president wants to take the credit." While conceding that he did not actually craft CytRx's stock ballooning deal with Burroughs Welcome, Bass insists he helped lay the ground work that made the deal possible.
After leaving CytRx in the early 1990s, Bass remarried, took a six month vacation to his family's home on Lake Okeechobee in South Florida and then relocated to Asheville. He was officially out of the pharmaceutical business and just beginning to dabble in hospitality—Southern Hospitality, to be exact, the name Bass chose for his current company.
Once in Asheville, Bass entered into a franchise agreement with Wingate Hotels and tried to bring a Wingate Inn to Hickory, N.C. Reporting on the country's "newest hotel chain," a USA Today story from 1995 describes how Wingate Hotels "is betting it can attract business travelers by copying concepts that other chains have used successfully."
The bet didn't pay off, says Bass, who moved back to Knoxville last year. He wanted to relocate the Wingate Inn originally planned for Hickory to Cedar Bluff Road, but says occupancy rates were too low to make the franchise fly.
Bass' scuttled plans never made the news earlier this year when he dissolved his relationship with Wingate Hotels. But his relocation to Knoxville was trumpeted by the News-Sentinel, which gave Bass an editorial "grin." Another small item in the News-Sentinel highlighted Bass' presentation to the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership, noting the entrepreneur's association with restaurateur Grady Regas and contractor Raja Jubran.
Jubran, who runs the development firm Denark-Smith and is the vice chairman of the Chamber Partnership, says the hype about Bass' arrival in Knoxville was "premature." Bass wanted Jubran's firm to build his Wingate Inn, but as Jubran says, "After the [News-Sentinel] story, nothing panned out."
Now, with Bass still looking for investors to drop anchor at Knox Landing, once again it's too soon to tell whether Southern Hospitality's latest venture will ultimately set sail.
Other developers have sniffed around the Maxey Boat Dock property in the past, but no one has taken a project as far as Bass. On the second floor of the Maxey home, drawings of the proposed development show a boardwalk, a light house, walking trails, a restaurant and boat slips, where, says Bass, people can park a yacht and live. In marina lingo, this is called a "dockaminium."
For yacht dwellers and water skiers alike, Bass' plan to build a marina may surface like sunken treasure if the city, county and MPC sign off on the project. There's currently a two-to three-year waiting period for boat slips on Fort Loudoun Lake, claims Bass' Century 21 real estate agent Peg Haynes. And Bass' restaurant broker, Tim Duff with Coldwell Banker, points out what many in South Knoxville already know: There's no nice restaurant between UT and McGhee Tyson Airport serving quality, sit-down meals.
When Bass talks about what kind of restaurant he'd like to see move in, he mentions Chesapeake's, Aubry's and a chain based out of Charleston called The Boat House. So far, says Duff, one chain and two established local eateries have begun looking toward Knox Landing with opportunistic eyes.
Bass' project manager, Greg Stamps with Maffett Inc., also has his spy glass fixed on Knox Landing. Before moving to Cookeville, Stamps lived in Lakemoor Hills. His firm specializes in building marinas and already owns a development in Florence, Ala., that closely resembles the one Bass has planned for Maxey's Boat Dock.
"The need is there," insists Stamps, whose firm is investing sweat equity in Bass' project. As a former Lakemoor resident, Stamps says he sympathizes with the neighborhood's concern about increased traffic along Maloney Road and Montlake Drive. But the area is already a dogwood trail, and Stamps believes the neighborhood gets "just as much traffic during dogwood season" as it would if visitors began flocking to a marina.
A recent study does show the marina and yacht club increasing traffic in the neighborhood, but only during "off-peak periods." In other words, according to Bass' traffic study, Knox Landing will not create car congestion along the neighborhood's tree-canopied streets. And if traffic does become a problem, Bass believes the Tennessee Department of Transportation's planned overpass for the intersection of Alcoa Highway and Maloney Road will act like Drano to break up any clogs.
A spokeswoman for TDOT notes that the Alcoa-Maloney overpass is not a part of the department's current budget, but work on the project could still begin in early 2001.
Such predictions carry little sway with John Emison, president of the Lake Hills Homeowners Association, whose group has grown impatient with TDOT.
"Alcoa Highway improvements have been promised for years and years and years," says Emison. "People in South Knoxville are so cynical about what's going to happen with Alcoa Highway, they're not going to believe anything until they see bulldozers moving earth."
Traffic and the changes Knox Landing could bring to the county's Maloney Road Park are what concern Emison's group the most. The homeowners association has begun "discussions" with attorneys about fighting the project. If Knox Landing gets approved, says Emison, the association wants the adjacent county property to remain a park and public boat launch.
Knox County is looking to lease the park land to Bass and allow him to develop the space as part of the yacht club and marina. The Parks and Recreation office is waiting to see what action the MPC takes when Bass goes before the commission on Oct. 14. If MPC gives Knox Landing an approving nod, then Knox County will ask Bass to provide background information about himself and a financial disclosure about the project.
By then, Bass would like to disclose that a well-heeled collection of investors has jumped on board. That hasn't happened yet, but the initial "couple hundred thousand" Southern Hospitality is using to get the project going came from private investors Bass says he served well while working in pharmaceuticals in Atlanta.
In Knoxville, Bass has yet to wire himself in with the right people, says Bill Hodges, developer of Franklin Square and a collection of 36 estates called Harrison Keepe.
"If you're an unknown, that's a barrier to overcome," explains Hodges, who says he's impressed by Bass and will try to introduce him to potential backers. "We're kind of rooting for Fred. If he does put all the right pieces together, then what happens is he'll put together a development that we all can be proud of."
Bass says he has heard murmurs about mobile home magnate Kevin Clayton expressing interest in the project. When asked about becoming an investor, however, the Clayton Homes president said he was "not interested."
Others are eager to hear Bass' pitch about the need for a nice restaurant and more boat slips in South Knoxville. Richard Cate, former head of the Downtown Organization, lives in Rivergate, just down the road from where Bass wants to build. Cate says he's not overly concerned about increased traffic in the neighborhood and likes the idea of a yacht club replacing the dilapidated Maxey Boat Dock.
How many people like the idea enough to sink money into the development remains to be seen. Knox Landing is still bobbing on the horizon; still some distance from becoming a done deal. No matter, says Bass confidently, "I have a vision. I have seen how these developments can be done. I'm going to do mine right."
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