Property owners and architects wonder what's in the long-delayed Worsham Watkins development plan for downtown—and whether it's going in the right direction.
by Jesse Fox Mayshark and Joe Tarr
Imagine Market Square with a ceiling. Right, a ceiling. Glass and steel. A giant skylight rather than the sky.
If you're having a hard time envisioning it, just wait. When development consultants hired by the city of Knoxville and the Public Building Authority finally release their proposals near the end of the year, there's a good chance that will be among them. According to several people who have seen the plans in progress, Worsham Watkins International envisions an entertainment and shopping district for downtown Knoxville that would be completely covered.
The plans are still "formative," but they're also in their final stages. (A completion date was pushed back from summer to fall and finally to this winter.) The developers characterize them as "European" in approach. But many people with an interest in downtown revitalization are afraid the model will look more like something closer to home. And the debate about what kind of downtown Knoxville needs is starting to spill out into the open.
"I really can't imagine why anyone would want to build a mall-like structure over the top of probably the best jewel downtown has to offer," says developer David Dewhirst, who owns the old Watson's store building on Market Square. "To try to give downtown a suburban feel, that doesn't make sense to me."
Developer Earl Worsham says suburbanization is not his goal. "There are no plans that are definitive at this stage. We have not made that [Market Square] recommendation yet, and we may not. I can assure you that any recommendation we do make will not bear any resemblance to an enclosed mall. We have contemplated a high glass and steel covering that would have the feeling of a European arcade, like Burlington Arcade in London or a wonderful one in Bucharest. This is a totally urban concept and the opposite of any mall."
A number of sources close to the project say they have seen plans showing Market Square completely enclosed—with doors to enter and exit the now public area. Whether enclosing Market Square is still being considered or not, the idea gives an indication of the direction the city's consultants are headed.
Worsham and Watkins' evolving ideas have been kept under tight wraps since the firm received a $250,000 contract to plan downtown development, partly to support the new convention center on World's Fair Park. People with access to the plans have been cautioned not to talk about them. The secrecy is understandable—in addition to their consulting fee, the firm will have a 90-day exclusive right to actually develop the project if the final plans are approved. Public disclosure and discussion of the plans could make it harder to attract investors.
But people are talking anyway. Rumors have circulated for months, especially about Market Square. According to sources who have seen the plans within the past few weeks, the roofing and enclosing of the square is still part of them. And the connection to the World's Fair Park, which would bridge Henley Street, would be completely covered. It's known that Worsham Watkins plans a movie theater complex as part of that corridor, and there is also talk of a country music theater. Residential development is hoped to be a part of the project, but efforts on those fronts have so far been less than fruitful.
Doug Berry, director of the city's development department, says he has stayed out of Worsham Watkins' planning. "The city has to let them go out and look at it from a private development standpoint, to see what is feasible," he says. "To me, it's irrelevant what I know in the interim, it's the total package I have to look at."
He acknowledged having heard "rumors" about the project, but cautioned against over-reacting to them. At the same time, he noted an "urban mall" would be an expensive proposition with high overheads.
"I just think there are lots of options," Berry says. "I don't know that that's the proposal."
However, architect and developer Buzz Goss questions—among other things—why the city's future is being planned by just two developers, and why their work is being kept so quiet.
"There's no place to go to get information. PBA works under a shroud of secrecy. Because of assumed sensitivity to development, it's assumed sunshine law doesn't apply," Goss says. "Who has the authority to give these two guys exclusive rights to develop our downtown?"
PBA administrator Mike Edwards responds coolly, "Buzz, being an architect himself, understands that when development feasibilities are being put together, it's not done in the open. No one has anointed Worsham Watkins to develop downtown Knoxville. They are consultants to the PBA, which was hired by the city to draw up a proposal...It's not going to be done in a shroud of secrecy."
Once PBA settles on a proposal, Edwards promises public hearings and debate of the plans before they go to City Council for adoption. But those like Goss who are already active downtown fear that by the time plans are released they might have enough political clout and private cash behind them to override any community concerns. "[And] this type of enclosed downtown mall concept has tons of precedents for failure," Goss adds.
One of those failures happened just a short drive away, in Nashville. In 1987, a private developer built the Church Street Center in the area that had traditionally been Nashville's shopping center but had suffered badly as suburban malls took business away.
It was hoped that the 180,000-square-foot mall would siphon off visitors from the convention center and hotel that connected to it, and revive downtown retail. "It simply didn't make it," says Gerald Nicely, executive director of Nashville's Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency. "I think the general feeling was, rather than be something unique to downtown, they tried to compete with suburban malls and it simply didn't work."
The city ended up buying the mall and demolishing it this year to make way for a new public library. Ironically, the proposal for the Church Street Center started out as a much simpler, open air retail area that would have catered to downtown workers. Nicely believes that approach would have been much more successful.
"Based on our experience, if you don't have a downtown population base, it simply has got to be something that distinguishes itself from suburban shopping malls. You've got a lot of suburban shopping over there [in Knoxville]. I can't see people driving in from the suburbs to shop when they can drive and park at West Town Mall."
Chattanooga urban planner Stroud Watson, a University of Tennessee architecture professor who has been instrumental in that city's redevelopment, says urban malls interfere with the flow of public life.
"In the inner city, I'm very concerned from the point of view of what I call the public living room, the streets and squares and corners that undoubtedly, undeniably belong to everybody," he says. "Any form of enclosure brings with it a sense of exclusivity."
Watson says Chattanooga planners have warded off proposals to enclose spaces as small as a single block, steering developers instead toward open, welcoming thoroughfares.
Most urban planners say building malls downtown is a risky, if not bad, idea. However, downtown malls and European style arcades have worked in some places. Norfolk, Va., in March opened MacArthur Center (named after the general), a million-square-foot mall built on 20 acres of land left over from urban renewal. Constructed with $100 million city money and $200 million in private cash, the mall has been a central part of the city's downtown redevelopment, which started in the '80s with office and waterfront development, says Brian Townsend, a senior planner for Norfolk.
Though it's impossible to know how successful MacArthur Center will be in the long run, so far it has surpassed expectations—spurring residential development and racking up sales tax revenue for the city, Townsend says. The mall is doing well, Townsend says, because of the high quality of stores its developer was able to secure, which can't be found in the area's suburban malls (there are no local merchants in the mall, but those around it have benefited).
"It's just been amazingly positive for reinvestment," Townsend says. "[The mall] really was the thing necessary to get people locally to feel they could invest in downtown. It always seems to take somebody from outside to show people they can invest in their downtown."
In Knoxville, however, there are people wanting to invest in downtown and Market Square. But with the Worsham Watkins plan on the way, they've been forced to wait.
Dewhirst bought the Watson's building around the same time the city announced a redevelopment plan for Market Square. That plan called for the city to condemn and purchase several buildings on the square and make them available to individual buyers. It was never funded and was shelved pending the Worsham Watkins plan.
"If they would have just followed through on the simple model they had there, all of Market Square would be a construction zone today for a lot of people coming downtown doing really interesting things with those buildings," Dewhirst says.
He compared the "wonderfully poor planning process" to those used in proposals for a new Knoxville Smokies baseball stadium (which never materialized) and a new Justice Center (which pinballed around the map of downtown for nearly a year). In both cases, Dewhirst says, individual owners and developers were left waiting for the dust to clear.
On Market Square, he says, "They had a really great model for it...and they couldn't get it done because as usual they have to look for the home run instead of a lot of singles. By now, we could have had several runs on the board. And we're still waiting for the big hitter to come to the plate. And based on past [Knoxville] history, he'll probably strike out."
Edwards again: "What he would refer to as a 'single' in a development sense is something that may be there for one or two years and then be gone. What we are trying to do is re-establish downtown Knoxville as a retail and entertainment shopping center that brings life to downtown as well as residents. And that isn't done by stepping up to the bat and hoping for a bunt."
Edwards is not thrilled at public discussion of the project before the plans are done. "The time to challenge it should be at a time where everything is there and you can challenge it in context," he says. Even on the design team, "We're having huge fist fights, and that's the way it ought to be."
As for concerns about suburbanization, he says, "The inventory of [Knoxville's] buildings and the character of its buildings, especially north of Clinch Avenue, is of major value to the city of Knoxville. You've got to keep the look. Anything that is done needs to look like it's pretty much been here forever."
Berry says the public will have plenty of opportunity to analyze the plans before City Council votes on them. But skeptics worry that if Worsham and Watkins are able to line up enough investors, it will be hard for Council to turn them down no matter what the plans are. On that score, Berry is less than reassuring.
"If they are there with this kind of proposal, and they've got the money behind it and the investors to do that, then I think the only way for the community not to give that due credence would be if those people who are doing the criticizing, are they going to be willing to invest?"
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