Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Connect the Dots

There were two very interesting articles in the News-Sentinel last week about the University of Tennessee. One was about a memo issued by UT officials refuting "rumors" that President J. Wade Gilley may be retiring at the end of the summer. The other was a long, intensively researched piece by reporter David Keim about controversies surrounding an administrator named Pamela Reed. Reed, a woman with a rocky and litigious personal and professional history, has held several positions within the UT hierarchy in the last few years and is currently the subject of much consternation in Andy Holt Tower. What the articles didn't make clear (and thus left up to us) was that those "rumors" about Gilley's pending departure are very much connected to the Reed situation. Although few people associated with UT are willing to talk on the record about it, the administrative staff and members of the UT Board of Trustees are reportedly concerned about the way Gilley has handled Reed's various appointments. Gilley is currently taking some time off, ostensibly for health reasons (he suffers from diabetes). But, memo or no memo, there is still speculation inside and outside the tower that his days at the Big Orange helm are numbered.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers?

So, even if you buy the spin that would-be downtown developers Worsham Watkins International are willing to smooch and make up with their estranged would-be partner John Elkington (who decided a few months ago to submit a Market Square redevelopment plan on his own), why exactly has Public Building Authority chief Dale Smith been serving as a go-between? PBA theoretically works only for local governmental bodies. All of its work on downtown redevelopment, and its authority to do that work, stems solely from contracts with the city of Knoxville. And yet even as Mayor Victor Ashe was preparing a downtown recommendation that pointedly does not designate WW (or Elkington, or anyone else) as the city's developer, Smith was trying to patch things up between two private entities who are both jockeying for a share of whatever cash Ashe decides to pump into downtown. At whose behest? Well, his own, it turns out. "It was PBA," says PBA spokesman Mike Cohen. "The city knew we were doing it, but there wasn't really an order from anyone to do it. Dale did it because we viewed it as better if those parties weren't at war, regardless of whether or not they end up working together." Right, right, two developers being angry at each other is clearly a matter of great public import. Apparently, however, such harmony between other concerned parties—like, f'rinstance, the people who actually own property on Market Square—was less of a worry for Smith.

We Can Only Hope the World

Doesn't Pick a Home-Game Weekend:For those who aren't familiar, the Mississippi-based magazine Oxford American has built a reputation as perhaps the most consistently interesting glossy magazine about Southern culture. The current issue features a column called "Home-State Destinations: Places That Everyone in the World Should Visit." In the May-June issue, they asked actress Patricia Neal (The Fountainhead, Hud, Breakfast At Tiffany's) for a recommendation. Maybe we shouldn't have been surprised that the two places in Tennessee she mentioned were right outside our windows. "When I come to Knoxville, if I'm not staying with friends," Miss Neal writes, "I stay at my favorite hideaway, the Hotel St. Oliver, located in downtown Knoxville, just off Market Square. It is a small, European-style hotel appointed with authentic and reproduction antiques...." (We haven't checked, but we're pretty sure their celebrity-visit-per-room ratio is unmatched anywhere in East Tennessee. The small Union Ave. hotel has also hosted the likes of Elton John and Luciano Pavarotti.) Miss Neal continues: "Located in the same building is the Soup Kitchen, a quaint Victorian lunchery. I particularly enjoy the homemade soups, Mexican cornbread, and carrot cake."

South Knox Survivor

The May 17 Metro Pulse mention of Mayor Victor Ashe's declaration of a Tina Wesson Day in Knoxville to honor the Survivor survivor prompted another "survivor" sort of story, and a similar declaration. Knox County Commissioners Howard Pinkston and Larry Clark, the South Knox duo, decreed May 30 as Trudy Miller Monaco Day in honor of her efforts in organizing and presenting the first South Knoxville Heritage "Vestival" in the old Candora Marble Factory in Vestal on May 12. Pinkston says the event drew a couple of thousand souls and that Monaco "worked her buns off" to make it a success. "And she survived it, too."