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Seven Days

Thursday, Dec. 6
Bill Sansom, head of Knoxville's H.T. Hackney Co., says he's putting $15 million into the wholesaler's new distribution center in Roane County. He's going there because he couldn't get the zoning needed to place the center in Knox County. He says there are no hard feelings toward the company's home county. With the deal he got from Roane County, he should be anything but upset.
Friday, Dec. 7
Big business story: "Fans already booking Rose Bowl trips." Oh, well. It was the same story in Gainesville, Fla., a week ago.

Saturday, Dec. 8
LSU defeats UT for the Southeastern Conference football crown and scotches the Rose Bowl bid and the Vols' shot at a national championship. Oops, muh dear. Drink mo' citrus 'til next year.
The state Board of Regents votes to end remedial classes in its universities, colleges and tech centers. The move will save the state $25 million and affect only a third of incoming students. What a good fiskul deel that is!

Monday, Dec. 10
When it's revealed that a Greeneville high school principal has been taking his pet llamas to a nursing home for the therapeutic value of their interaction with patients there, Knox County Superintendent Charles Q. Lindsey inquires if any of his principals have pet wolves that might be taken to County Commission meetings for therapeutic interaction with commissioners.

Tuesday, Dec. 11
The UT Board of Trustees considers a proposal to offer larger pay raises to faculty than to support staff. Bad move. The professors still would not be paid well enough to keep them from departing, and the secretaries and custodial staff will be sorely needed to teach classes sometime down the road.
A former West Knox Utility District employee testifies in Chancery Court that she was fired for refusing to falsify water quality reports to the state. She says unidentified bacteria were present in treated water pumped to the utility's customers. And we thought all along that foul smell was coming from the Turkey Creek development effort.

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:
The first correct respondent to last week's photo knows more about it than we do, so we'll just let him explain it: "[It] is of one of the markers recently placed by the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable (KCWRT) to identify the various parts of Fort Dickerson," writes Fred Wohlhuter of Newport. "I am a member of the KCWRT. Thank you for the publicity you have given this project." Sure thing, Fred. For those who don't know, Fort Dickerson is on Chapman Highway on the right less than a mile after you cross the Henley Bridge. Mr. Wohlhuter goes on to note that "[w]e have several members of the KCWRT who are experts on the Battle of Knoxville." He adds modestly, "(I'm not one of them.)" Hey, you're expert enough for us! And just to prove it, we're going to send you a copy of R. Scott Brunner's Due South, a collection of essays and observations about life in Dixie.

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

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Thursday Dec. 13
1:30 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
A request for adoption by MPC of the South City Sector Plan is on tap.

PARTNERSHIP FOR NEIGHBORHOOD IMPROVEMENT
Thursday Dec. 13
5:30 p.m.
City County Bldg., Small Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Annual meeting to recap progress on Knoxville's Empowerment Zone and to gain public comment and encourage added participation in the EZ program.

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
Saturday Dec. 15
10:30 a.m.
Ijams Nature Center
2915 Island Home Ave.
Swearing in of new Council members.

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
Saturday Dec. 15
11:45 a.m.
City County Bldg., 5th-Floor Atrium
400 Main Ave.
A special meeting to elect a vice mayor and establish some board memberships and chairs for Council members.

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday Dec. 17
2 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
County backing for the Universe Knoxville project should be brought to a vote.

Green Light District

Council approves a new redevelopment area. But why?

Carlene Malone went out the same way she came in—swinging.

This week's Metro Pulse cover girl was the only member of City Council Tuesday night to ask any questions or raise any objections about a proposed redevelopment district that takes in a sizable chunk of downtown Knoxville's north end.

Noting that she had never heard of the proposal until it showed up in her Council agenda packet last Thursday night, and also that five of the Council's members voting this week will be out of office by next week, Malone asked what the urgency was in beginning the lengthy redevelopment process.

"We're getting five new Council members," she said. "I think they are the ones who should vote to begin this process."

While never directly addressing the question of why the proposal was coming forward now, city Director of Development Leslie Henderson said, "This has been discussed for some time." She noted that the 1988 downtown plan—which hasn't been updated since then, because of Mayor Victor Ashe's oft-repeated refusal to do so—called for a redevelopment district at the north end of town.

"You say it's in the '88 downtown plan," Malone shot back. "I've been on Council since '91," without hearing it discussed.

Malone's motion to defer the issue until the new Council was seated died for lack of a second. The proposal asks Knoxville's Community Development Corporation to begin drawing up a redevelopment plan for what's called the Jackson Avenue/Depot District. It passed on 8-1 vote.

As originally proposed, the area in question was a diving-bell shaped block of land between Vine Street to the south, Depot Avenue to the north, Broadway on the west and Gay Street on the east. It includes all of the 100 block of Gay Street, home of the Emporium and Sterchi buildings, both slated for renovation into residential condos and apartments. It also includes the stretch of Jackson Avenue that intersects with Broadway, where the vacant McClung buildings sit (they're the big empty brown buildings you see when you drive by on the interstate). The area also stretches across the railroad tracks to Depot, where city officials are attracted by the S&M warehouses (across the street from the BellSouth building), which they think could also be converted to residential or commercial use.

At Tuesday's meeting, a group of Old City property owners—including former Mayor Kyle Testerman—asked Council to extend the redevelopment district another block along Jackson Avenue to its intersection with Central. Testerman said he thought being part of the district would make more development incentives available to property owners. "We would like to be included in those types of incentives to make the table fair and balanced," he said.

Malone noted that most of the city's new incentives for downtown development are available to any designated "historic" building that meets certain criteria (e.g. the project has to include more than 10 apartments or condos), and that they don't have to be in a redevelopment district. But Henderson says one incentive—tax-increment financing (TIF) is available only in redevelopment districts.

In any case, the Council majority happily expanded the district without asking any questions. After the meeting, it was unclear whether the district now includes both the north and south sides of Jackson between Gay and Central (Henderson said she thinks it does) or just the north side (which is what KCDC's Dan Tiller said). Presumably KCDC will get that clarified by someone before it starts to draw up its plan.

As to what that plan may actually include, Tiller said he wasn't sure. "We've got to define our objectives, the process, and the plan," he said.

In any case, it's clear one target of the plan is the aforementioned McClung buildings, which are owned by developer Mark Saroff. Saroff has been trying to develop them into housing units for years without success; he has complained of a lack of incentives and support, such as those recently introduced by the city. Henderson said she still hopes Saroff can put a project together—but if he can't, the redevelopment district will give the city the ability to take his property via eminent domain.

"That is a serious concern to the city," Henderson said. "It is a blight on that area. We have been hopeful Mark Saroff would make an agreement for redevelopment...We feel like it's getting close to the point where we might have to condemn [the buildings] because they're unsafe."

City Law Director Michael Kelly also specifically mentioned Saroff's buildings at Tuesday's meeting. "It has been an eyesore in this community for as long as I've been here," he said. Saroff says nobody talked to him about the plans. "I saw Kevin [Dubose] in front of the buildings on Thursday and saw him taking pictures," he says. "I said, 'What are you doing, Kevin?' He said, 'I'm just taking a walk downtown.' They did not notify me I was going to be included in a redevelopment district."

Henderson said most property owners in the affected area have not yet been contacted. Saroff, who was urging the city to consider incentives for downtown development long before the city actually enacted them, says he doesn't understand why he's been singled out for condemnation rather than financial support.

"It's shameful that they haven't offered to provide assistance, in an Empowerment Zone, to an Empowerment Zone business, to someone who's been committed to historic preservation for 10 years," he says. "It's not like I wasn't there asking for assistance....I have told the city we needed to pay attention to the buildings, that the historic preservation was important."

Another affected property owner, developer David Dewhirst—who is working on the Emporium building and also owns several other Gay Street buildings, including one he lives in—is happy with the plan.

"It has the potential to do a lot of things," he says. Among them, it may make it easier for the city to acquire property in the area to provide parking for new residential projects along Gay and Jackson. Dewhirst and his partner Adam Cohen were involved in recent negotiations with Saroff to acquire his buildings, but those negotiations apparently fell through.

But who will develop the KCDC plan, and how, remain unclear. A few property owners said Tuesday that they'd like to be involved in the discussions. "Property owners need to involved," Dewhirst said. "At the same time, everybody who has a stake in downtown should be involved."

However, Tiller noted that KCDC typically draws up its plans in-house and then merely presents them for comment at a public hearing. So it's possible the "objectives" of the plan will be determined entirely by KCDC staff—who were given no concrete directions by Council on Tuesday.

"This is a serious deal," Malone warned her colleagues. "You don't even know the boundaries...These are slippery slopes with the heavy hand of government."

Two of the incoming Council members also had questions about the plan. Joe Hultquist, who will be sworn in Saturday as the 1st District representative, said the apparently rushed preparation of the plan "raises an issue, probably unnecessarily, that's really a trust issue—the public perception of, 'Is this an above-board plan, or is somebody trying to ram something through?'"

Rob Frost, who will take Malone's 4th District seat, also wondered at the timing of passing the plan Tuesday. "I'm just curious as to what's going to happen between now and when the new Council comes on," he said.

Henderson and Tiller say the new Council members will still have time to study the plan when KCDC presents it for approval. Tiller says he doesn't expect to have it prepared for several months.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark