Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Closed for Renovation

Black Business and Contractors Association president Zimbabwe Matavo returned Tuesday to ask City Council (again) to schedule a workshop on developing the Five Points business district. This time, he brought some friends to help plead the case, including Sandra Moore, Mark Deatheridge and James Smith. Sixth District Councilman Raleigh Wynn, who represents the Five Points area, suggested that they ask somebody for Empowerment Zone money. Councilman Gary Underwood suggested that they wait for the new City Council to be seated in December. Councilwoman Carlene Malone, who along with Councilman Nick Pavlis has repeatedly said she'd be willing to attend a workshop on the issue, pointed out that the Empowerment Zone money has mostly been already earmarked. After considerable hemming and hawing, Vice Mayor Jack Sharp declined Deatheridge's requests to ask for a vote on scheduling a workshop and told the BBCA representatives to check back Thursday to see if five members of Council are willing to meet. In the audience was Councilman-elect Mark Brown, who won the 6th District seat in this election season's only landslide, and many of whose supporters believe deserves consideration when the new Council selects a vice mayor in December. Brown is a proponent of Five Points development.

So, It Worked

Organizers who put together Wednesday's panel discussions, films and discussion groups on the UT campus about the war on terrorism drew some grief from the war's more zealous backers. A poster advertising the event depicted the World Trade Center attack alongside the bombing of a Red Cross building by the United States. One person emailed organizers: "I find you and your idiotic poster most offensive. Your visual comparison of the 4,000 plus innocent people killed at the WTC and the bombed out Red Cross building, where maybe one person was killed or injured, to be most ignorant and near sighted. Why didn't you show the truckloads of human body parts associated with the terrorist attack on the United States along with the injured rag-head kid." The organizers, Meagan Carter and Bob Poeschl, say the intent of the poster was to get people thinking about the continued cycle of violence and get them talking about issues surrounding the war.

If She Told Us, She'd Have to Kill Us

"I'll just say, they're very, very focused right now," Pat Summitt said at SEC Media Day recently. "They're on a mission."

Think she was just mouthing typical season-opening coachspeak clichés about playing for March? Think again.

Summitt's is one of the most recognizable names in sports, and people who associate her only with stalking the sidelines of basketball courts and affixing hapless players with The Look might not be surprised to learn that she is a much sought-after motivational speaker. What probably would surprise them is a recent story by sportswriter Mel Greenberg in the Philadelphia Inquirer reporting on one of Summitt's recent pep talks this fall—at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Greenberg quotes Lady Vols spokeswoman Debby Jennings saying that the Summitt CIA speech was scheduled prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the above-quoted statement is all Summitt would say when Greenberg asked her about it at SEC media day

Poking Fun

When urban retailing guru Bob Gibbs reported on the results of his study of the possibilities for marketing Market Square, he showed slides illustrating the latest national shopping trend—new town centers designed to look old. Gibbs kept making the point that Knoxville doesn't need to build a faux historic district, since we already have the real deal in Market Square. In the middle of this explication, here came a rendering of downtown Knoxville dominated by a spired skyscraper-office tower and hotel, connected by glass tubes to the convention center on the west side of Henley Street and a glass dome over Market Square.

"And then, there are grandiose plans," said Gibbs, who was clearly struggling to keep a straight face as he showed the slide of the Renaissance Knoxville plan once advanced by Worsham Watkins . When a member of the audience later asked him why droves of developers aren't already here, if there's such a great market for what Knoxville has to offer, Gibbs dryly commented that "there's a process in place" for cities to market themselves—national events where developers and cities come together to look one another over. There was one recently in Las Vegas, Gibbs said, "and Knoxville didn't have a booth."