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Seven Days

Thursday, Oct. 25
In separate incidents, one guy fakes a Middle Eastern accent and calls a bomb threat to an East Knox motel, and another guy threatens a KAT bus with a bomb/anthrax hoax. Both are arrested. They should be tried in New York, where their sense of humor would be better appreciated.

Airlines continue to announce new flights from Knoxville to Washington, D.C. Great. Are they going to raffle off the seats that nobody buys?

Friday, Oct. 26
DOE people say they found no anthrax in an Oak Ridge office building where a mysterious white powder was found in the ventilation system. There was no comment on whether the usual array of other Oak Ridge toxins were present.
Knoxville Police Chief Phil Keith says the city will be getting new funds for security purposes after he and other law enforcement officers met with officials of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Do you detect any pattern in the news here?

Sunday, Oct. 28
It's revealed that former state Sen. William "Waterbed Bill" Owen, who is thinking of running again for the first time in a decade, has a plan to help redistrict the legislative seats here by putting the whole city in one district and the county around it, donut-style, in another. Just what we need: another city/county rift, formalized.

Monday, Oct. 29
Taylor-White Manufacturing of Knoxville announces the closing of two Jefferson City plants, noting that there is a shrinking demand for their specialty, TVs in wood cabinetry. Uh, where were they in the '80s when wood cabinets disappeared from TV retailers' shelves?

Tuesday, Oct. 30
WIVK radio executive Mike Hammond tells the News-Sentinel he does not believe that when country music's xenophobic icon, Charlie Daniels, sings, "This ain't no rag, it's a flag...and we don't wear it on our heads," the singer is referring to and disparaging Muslims. Hammond also believes the tooth fairy left that dime under his pillow.

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

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:
This sectional slice of the old Knoxville Scenic Studios on Maryville Pike in South Knoxville brought a wave of fond recognition and reminiscences. Many respondents mourned the removal of the giant paintbrush and palette that used to adorn the art-deco warehouse. Others noted that the company at one time was a major producer of sets for movies and Broadway plays. Perry Childress of the East Tennessee Community Design Center, who lives nearby, notes that his favorite remaining element of the building is the painting of a tropical plant ascending an interior staircase, visible through a window. The first correct identification came from David Norden of E. 93rd Street in New York, New York. "I hope it is OK that I am just a former Knoxvillian," he writes. Aren't we all, really? In keeping with the theme of creative design, Norden wins a brand-new pot holder from IHOP Restaurant, in the shape of a skillet. (Not art deco, but maybe it counts as pancake primitivism?)

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

CITY ELECTION EARLY VOTING
(Last Day) Thursday Nov. 1
10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Downtown West, Knoxville Center, the Civic Coliseum and the Old Knox County Courthouse.

KNOX COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION
Monday Nov. 5
5 p.m.
Andrew Johnson Bldg., 1st Floor
912 S. Gay St.
Work session
Wednesday Nov. 7
5 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Regular monthly meeting.

CITY ELECTION
Tuesday Nov. 6
8 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Various polling places citywide
New members will be elected for Council Districts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6.

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Thursday Nov. 8 *1:30 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Regular session.

Back to Basics

City's new downtown incentives emphasize residences

It was a small crowd—a scant three dozen or so—that gathered at the Emporium Building on Gay Street for last Tuesday's press conference announcing the City's new package of downtown residential incentives. It was a far cry from the lavish, well attended kickoff at the Tennessee Theatre some 18 months ago for the now defunct Worsham-Watkins redevelopment proposal for downtown. Yet the less-than-plush venue suited the city's leaner, meaner, more cost-conscious approach to downtown redevelopment. As architect and downtown resident Buzz Goss observes: "We've gone from the silver bullet, one big home-run project approach to a more sustainable program that allows incremental development."

An incremental approach is only one difference from earlier proposals, though. Attractions and "shoppertainment" are distinctly absent. Instead, the incentives are designed to encourage residential redevelopment, which will hopefully spur the retail market. "I hate to use the word infrastructure," says Deputy Mayor Frank Cagle, "but that's what residential development is for small businesses. Conventioneers can spend a lot on the weekends, but who's going to support you Tuesday night?" According to Leslie Henderson, city development director, a strong residential base downtown is crucial to any future retail development. "That's what all the studies show," says Henderson. "You have to have residential in place in order to attract retail. Those numbers are what retailers are looking for."

Historic preservation is another shift. Instead of Worsham-Watkins' resounding emphasis on new construction, the new incentives are geared wholly toward the reuse of downtown's large stock of existing empty buildings, which the administration views as an asset. "We have," says Henderson, "a stock of existing historic buildings that's probably the finest you can find in any medium-sized Southern city."

Among the approved incentives is a low interest loan fund in conjunction with several local banks, which would provide bridge loans of up to 20 percent of a project's construction costs—a percentage that happens to coincide with the amount of Federal Tax Credits that developers could qualify for when restoring historic buildings. The loan fund, says Henderson, "allows you to apply for tax credits but get the money up front as cash in hand to do the project." In addition, the loan fund has other added benefits. "It gets banks used to lending for residential downtown," Henderson points out, adding that for many area banks, downtown "is an unfamiliar territory."

Perhaps the most striking policy shift in the incentive package is its other main component—tax abatement. As recently as last year the city officially regarded abatements, or property tax freezes, for residential redevelopment to be in violation of the state constitution. But Henderson says she and her new deputy Kevin Dubose brought "two fresh sets of eyes" to the problem and found a solution. "What we found," says Henderson, "was that we could go through the Industrial Development Board—the name would lead you to think it was just for industry—but there's a component in there that allows you to do moderately priced housing." Thanks to that loophole, a development's property taxes could be frozen at the pre-renovation level for as much as five to 10 years, depending on cash flow.

The flip-flop on tax abatement was a welcome change for many downtowners, some of whom have been advocating the move since 1994. "I'm thrilled to see it now. Really, this is a good step," says Susan Key, who lives on Market Square. "But," she adds with more than a hint of frustration, "I wish the city had taken it more seriously back then. Just think where we'd be now." And there's similar frustration in Goss' voice when he observes that "at least now whenever somebody comes into town and says 'We're interested, how can the city help,' we can give them an answer."

The gestation period isn't the only misgiving some have over the long-awaited incentives. With a minimum of 10 units required to qualify, some feel a significant chunk of downtown has been left out. "That seems to rule out Market Square," says Key, "We need development incentives for all historic building projects downtown—not just for large buildings." Henderson understands the frustration but points out that from 25 to 40 buildings could qualify under the current approach. "We want to have the biggest bang for our buck," she says, "and prime the pump with as many numbers as possible. We can't afford to do all of it."

David Dewhirst, whose 40-unit rehab of the Emporium Building is the incentive program's pilot project, points out that "the small buildings are going to largely be done by people who are going to be doing them for their own use—as residences or offices, not as an investment. They won't be looking at it from just a cash flow perspective." Nor, as Henderson stresses, are the current incentives a definitive package. Likening the program to "building the airplane as it's rolling down the runway," Henderson says that, "we felt like we needed to take a step now and do what we could. The market is demanding it." And for many downtown advocates, after nearly two years of false starts and faltering hope, the response is perhaps the most encouraging news of all. "Contrary to popular belief," quips Cagle while mingling in the small press conference crowd, "there are people in city government who listen."

—Matt Edens

Tree Plea

Cherokee National Forest ranks high on a new list of environmentally threatened lands

Although it didn't make the top 10 endangered list, the Cherokee National Forest is considered one of the country's most "threatened forests," a step away from endangered, according to a national environmental group.

In a report released in September, the National Forest Protection Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups, said "The Cherokee National Forest (CNF) in Tennessee sees significant impacts from logging and associated road building. Regional chip-mill capacity and production are increasing, resulting in air and water pollution that threaten species. The CNF supports a staggering array of life where the flora and fauna have evolved almost uninterrupted for more than 200 million years."

Marcy Reed, executive director of Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, and Perrin de Jong, the Tennessee delegate to the Alliance, say intensive logging, development, air and water pollution, and prescribed burns (which can be helpful in Western forests but not in the East) are all factors that threaten the Cherokee.

Blame also rests with the Forest Service's management of it, which is primarily devoted to auctioning it off to logging interests, they say. This year, the Forest Service reported that logging 1,000 acres in the Cherokee in 1998 cost taxpayers $1 million. But even that figure may be rosy. The General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, announced last week that the Forest Service's accounting methods were so flawed that the numbers were "totally unreliable." In the wake of the GAO findings, the Forest Service has decided to discontinue its annual report to Congress.

Terry McDonald, a spokesman for the Forest Service, disagreed with the Alliance report. "We'd be surprised to see anyone thought the Cherokee was threatened because of logging and road-building activities," he says. Of the forest's 635,000 acres, the forest service logs .03 percent a year, while natural mortality claims about 2 percent, he says. It builds about 2-1/2 miles of road a year. "It gets down a lot of times to what folks perceive as correct management of an area," McDonald says. "National forests were established for a lot of reasons, not totally preservation."

De Jong says national forests generate more jobs from recreation than logging. "There's all kinds of ways to employ people on public lands besides resource extraction," de Jong says.

The National Forest Protection Alliance report is vague about how the group determined whether a forest was endangered or threatened. Nominations were made by local environmental groups based on nine "scientific and economic criteria." The top 10 endangered forests are the Allegheny in Pennsylvania, the Ouachita in Arkansas and Oklahoma, the Black Hills in South Dakota and Wyoming, the Tongass in Alaska, the Umpqua in Oregon, the Clearwater in Idaho, the George Washington and Jefferson in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, the Ottawa in Michigan, the Gifford Pinchot in Washington, and the Lassen and Tahoe in California.

—Joe Tarr