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Seven Days

Friday, July 21
* Powell Airport loses out in a bid for state funding to do some $93,000 in repairs. It could mean an end to the airport's non-stop service to Karns, Carter, and Halls...

Monday, July 24
* Knox County Commission asks the city to slow down its annexation binge, at least long enough for the county to put up signs warning residents that they're about to be gobbled up. Commissioners are reportedly negotiating with George Lucas to use the likeness of Darth Vader on the signs.
* The state announces its budget shortfall will be even worse than expected, by about $45 million. All right kids, get out and sell those candy bars!

Tuesday, July 25
* City Council makes a breakthrough in theoretical math, finding a way to add $20 million or so to the convention center project without changing the total budget at all. Nobel scientists from around the world herald the advance. Mayor Victor Ashe even makes a special appearance at City Council for the occasion, cutting short his delicate diplomatic negotiations with most of the continent of Europe.

Knoxville Found

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Usually people either recognize these things or they don't, but we actually had incorrect guesses for this one; even though hundreds of people step on it every day, only one person got it exactly right. Though the brass markers in the sidewalk say White and Fourth, it's actually at the corner of White and 12th, in Fort Sanders at the edge of UT's campus.

Fourth Street was the Victorian-era name for 12th Street; the name dated from the 1890s, when Fort Sanders was an incorporated community of its own, called West Knoxville. The original numbering system survived into the 20th century, but in the early 1920s, city fathers changed the numbering to conform with Knoxville's address-numbering system. A few other neighborhoods, including North Knoxville, still have similar sidewalk plaques dating from the same era.

The correct answer came from Sherry Hopkins of Knoxville, who can collect her prize—a copy of Ilene Beckerman's book Mother of the Bride—by calling or writing us.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

Knox County school board work session
Monday, July 31 * 5 p.m. * First floor board room of the Andrew Johnson Building * 912 S. Gay St.
The school board will hold a workshop to discuss the agenda for its Wednesday meeting.

Knox County school board meeting
Wednesday, Aug. 2 * 5 p.m. * Main Assembly Room of the City County Building * 400 Main Avenue
With school just around the corner, come find out what's going on this year. The board's agenda is available online.

UT's Driving Passion

Will a new master plan curb UT's love of asphalt?

A University of Tennessee advisory committee is designing what they call "a pedestrian-friendly environment" for campus. That's an admirable change in direction for a university that's allowed the automobile to dictate planning and design for the last 30 years. But reversing the auto-centered environment at UT won't be easy, especially with a proposed four-lane auto bridge carrying 10,000 cars a day between the agriculture college and Volunteer Boulevard. And, since the ultimate authority for the campus landscape rests with the same administration that supports the bridge, how much influence will the plan really have?

"This is a strong effort to remove parking from the interior of campus and create other ways of getting students and faculty to and from places," said Curtis Catron, a partner in the planning firm Bullock Smith & Partners, which is working with the advisory committee to update UT's 1994 master plan. At a meeting July 20 for faculty input on the plan, Catron offered several possible ways to make campus friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists: closing streets, limiting the number of parking permits, starting 24-hour shuttle bus or trolley service, and moving most of the school's parking to the perimeter of campus.

History professor Bruce Wheeler, the faculty representative on the committee, says the university's long tradition of accommodating auto traffic makes the group's job a learning process. "This is new for us," he says. "It's not for other schools. The campus, especially the west part of campus, was not built as a pedestrian campus. We're looking at the feasibility of making ours a more pedestrian-friendly and accessible campus, and the extent to which it can or cannot be done."

One point of contention with the plan, however, is how thousands of new parking spaces on perimeter property will affect surrounding neighborhoods like Fort Sanders and Maplehurst. Fort Sanders already has one UT parking garage, and a second—a 1,500-car structure at the corner of Cumberland Avenue and 11th Street—is on the way.

Some faculty objected to outlying garages, arguing that they could disrupt already-threatened neighborhoods and isolate the university from the surrounding community. Neighbors agree.

"I'm all for campus becoming more pedestrian-oriented. I feel strongly about that. As far as parking garages on the perimeter, though—I wouldn't want them to become barriers between the neighborhood and the university, isolating the neighborhood and UT," says Randall DeFord, president of the Historic Fort Sanders Neighborhood Association. In fact, DeFord suggests that the university's best solution would be to move campus parking into a central super-garage in the middle of the campus.

"They should build the largest garage right in the center of campus, and radiate out from there," he says.

There's no indication that the university has any intention of building such a garage. In fact, there are signs that the university administration isn't very willing to remove auto traffic from the center of campus, despite the proposals in the early stages of the master plan update. Both Catron and Wheeler say the looming presence of the proposed bridge is essentially a done deal and must be worked into the master plan.

"The bridge was a decision that was made before the campus advisory committee was even formed," says Wheeler. "The questions that the faculty has begun to think about are, 'How is the campus going to work with the bridge in place?' and 'What's that going to do with traffic on other parts of campus?'...A number of faculty members are concerned that, if we're moving to a pedestrian-friendly campus, how will the bridge affect that? That's a legitimate concern."

Phil Scheurer, senior vice president for business and finance at UT and a member of the advisory committee, insists that the university intends to stick to the plan. "I anticipate that we'll follow its principles," Scheurer says. "Our intention is not to develop a plan that we're not going to follow."

But based on experience with the bridge—which explicitly contradicts the last master plan—Wheeler says many members of the university population are pessimistic about the committee's ultimate effectiveness. "Some of them are disturbed that they weren't consulted at all," he says.

—Matthew T. Everett

Downtown's Two-Way Stretch

The city gets ready to reroute its streets

For the first time since downtown's interior streets became one way in 1948, serious consideration is being given to making several of them two-way once again.

A traffic study conducted for the Public Building Authority recommends that Church Street, Clinch Avenue, and Union Avenue all be reopened to two-way traffic in the vicinity of the city's new convention center. The recommendations are due to be considered by the PBA's board within the next few weeks and would also require City Council approval.

As a first step toward these changes, the PBA is recommending that the Clinch Avenue viaduct, which has been closed to vehicles since the 1982 World's Fair, be re-opened to two-way traffic linking 11th Street and Henley Street. Buses dropping off and picking up convention-goers will be encouraged to take an east-bound access route over this bridge to the convention center's main entrance on the south side of Clinch, just west of Henley. Moreover, the bridge would be widened to handle three lanes of traffic at a cost to the city of $2.5 million. The widening would allow buses bound for the convention center to queue on one of the two east-bound lanes without blocking traffic.

The main purpose of reopening Clinch and Union to two-way traffic is to facilitate access to the convention center parking garage, which is going up between these two streets just east of Locust Street. In addition to becoming two-way as far east as Walnut Street, they would also become three-lane (up from two) through elimination of street parking. Creating an east-bound lane on Clinch would allow access to the garage from the west, but only via a circuitous routing that would require would-be parkers to turn north on Walnut, then west on Union, then south again on Locust to get to the garage's public entrance, The reason for the round-Robin Hood's barn approach is that the University of Tennessee has insisted on a separate entrance (off Walnut) to the spaces in the garage that are dedicated for replacement of the erstwhile UT Conference Center garage, which was demolished to make way for the convention center. Nor would vehicles be able to access the garage by making a left turn off Henley onto Clinch. The reason, according the traffic study conducted for the PBA by the consulting firm Site, Inc. is that such a left turn lane would create too much congestion too near to the tunnel linking Henley to the interstate.

Creating a west-bound lane on Church (which is presently one way east-bound between Henley and Gay Street) would provide an alternative route to Henley, taking some of the load off Clinch. Back-ups on Clinch are already common at rush hour due primarily to bottlenecks on Henley approaching the interstate access tunnel. To help alleviate these, north-bound Henley would also be reconfigured to provide two lanes dedicated to feeding the tunnel.

Once having started with making these east-west streets two way, why stop at Walnut? "Our concern has been with traffic flows related to the convention center and its garage," says Dick Bigler, the PBA's convention center project manager. But he reckons the city might decide to extend two-way traffic on Church in particular all the way to Gay.

Neither Sam Parnell, the city's longtime director of engineering, nor his longtime predecessor Darcy Sullivan even recalls when the city's interior streets became one-way. But a retired police captain, Ben Sartin, remembers that it took place during his first year on the force in 1948. "It was mass confusion there for a while," Sartin recollects.

But any glitches associated with converting them back are likely to pale by comparison with what would appear to be a massive problem looming just about the time the convention center is due to open in 2002. That's when the Henley Street bridge is due to be closed for a year or more for structural repair—following the reopening of the Gay Street bridge, which is due to be closed for repair starting this December. Ironically, the Clinch viaduct, which looks the worst of the lot, is the only one of the three bridges engineers have found to be structurally sound.

—Joe Sullivan

The Feel-Good Candidate

Shannon Wood keeps on running

Last time Metro Pulse checked in with U.S. Senate candidate Shannon Wood, she was appearing at Knoxville's Gay Pride rally. When she stopped by the office last week, she was in the midst of a driving trip through a series of bean suppers and picnics organized by die-hard Democrats in Republican strongholds across East Tennessee.

"I'm running a million-dollar campaign on a shoestring," she says, arriving a little late due to traffic, unaccompanied by a press officer or handler or any of the other accouterments of high office. "That, if I'm lucky, will get me through the primary."

Wood, a Nashville theater owner, is the closest thing to a legitimate Democratic candidate challenging Sen. Bill Frist this fall. But first, she has to get through the Aug. 3 primary—in which, oddly enough, her biggest opponent has more or less endorsed her. (That would be self-styled reformer John Jay Hooker, who's mostly running to bring attention to campaign finance abuses.)

Wood's real challenge, though, is neither Frist nor any other candidate. It's the perception that, however well-intentioned or informed, no one can make a serious bid for national office without lots and lots of money. And no one will give you lots and lots of money unless they think you can make a serious bid. Such is the catch-22 of modern politics, in which millionaires like Frist or former Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen have a massive advantage. Wood knows all of that, and she sounds a little tired of talking about it. She'd rather talk about healthcare reform or education or any of the other reasons she started running in the first place.

"I'm not willing to give up on democracy just 'cause the other guy has more money," she says.

But she also thinks that, in a year when the big-money, big-party presidential candidates seem to leave voters either retching or yawning, there's something to be said for sincerity. And that may be her biggest selling point: the guilt-free vote.

"People look at me and they brighten up and they say, 'Hey, somebody I can support. Somebody I can vote for that's not a compromise vote, a lesser-of-two-evils vote.'"

For more information, check out www.shannonforsenate.com.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark