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Seven Days

Thursday, Dec. 13
The Cracker Barrel restaurant and store chain is sued for $100 million for alleged race discrimination. The company, hoping to adjust employee and customer attitudes, files to change its name to The Barrel, eliminating the term "Cracker" from all of its contracts, signs and ad materials.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks Knoxville's metro area second only to Toledo, Ohio's in the percentage of citizens who smoke. Hey, we're only a few puffs and hacks from being No. 1!

Friday, Dec. 14
A windstorm causes a power outage that lasts more than two hours at West Town Mall but puts only a mild crimp in an afternoon Christmas Shopping binge, according to shoppers who say they were in the dark about who wanted what this Christmas anyway, and that the eenie, meenie, minie, moe method works just as well without lights.

Saturday, Dec. 15
Five new members of City Council are sworn in. There is a delay of several minutes, however, as a solemn Joe Hultquist demands time to study the oath before swearing in public.
Some of the heirs of the founding family of Knoxville's JFG Coffee Co. were acquitted of wildly unjust federal accusations of insider trading violations by a jury in Atlanta, it's reported locally. It's also learned that at trial, the allegation that the defendants made $200,000 overnight on an unauthorized phone tip was referred to repeatedly by attorneys on both sides as "the best part of the deal."

Monday, Dec. 17
The 19-member Knox County Commission votes 35-20 with three abstentions to authorize the use of the county's credit to back bonds for establishing the Universe Knoxville planetarium and museum complex in downtown Knoxville. In the confusion over the vote tally, no one pays any attention to Chamber President Tom Ingram twirling dials and muttering behind a curtain near the dais.

Tuesday, Dec. 18
State Sen. Jeff Miller (R-Cleveland) announces that he is introducing a bill to create the Volunteer Tax Me More Fund. OK, if you insist, Jeff, but we can't imagine that you have the money to have much impact on the state's fiscal crisis.

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:
A bit of political commentary, perhaps? Or just a town with a good sense of humor? Whichever it is, this sign is, of course, in Farragut. But the first person to actually tell us where in Farragut was Sara Bruce, who noted that it is a south turn off Kingston Pike near Campbell Station Road. Sara tells us that the dead-end road "leads only to the Farragut Town Hall. Which is the headquarters for the City of Farragut government and a beautiful brick building." True enough. And for her acumen, Sara wins a copy of Love Lessons From Bad Breakups by Sherry Amatenstein (a "dating expert," apparently). Which we hope Sara doesn't need.

Who's on First?

Market Square still open to development ideas

As the countdown continues toward a Feb. 1 deadline for developers to submit proposals for the comprehensive redevelopment of Market Square, it's still an open question who will step forward to do so.

For some time, it appeared that a joint venture of firms headed by former Chattanooga Mayor Jon Kinsey and downtown Knoxville's largest landlord, Brian Conley, was alone in showing interest in responding to the request for proposals (RFP) by Knoxville's Community Development Corp. While the Kinsey-Conley venture clearly has a head start in preparing a response, at least two others are now showing an interest in doing so.

One is Lucia Enterprises, a developer based in Palm Coast, Fla. Its principal, Bill Lucia, met with selected Market Square property owners last week, accompanied by John Sicard of Knoxville-based Gem Technologies. According to Sicard, Lucia specializes in converting older buildings into loft residential and commercial properties, while Gem is an engineering and design/building firm.

The other is local architect Jennifer Martella, who says she is in the process of assembling a development team. Martella has enlisted the involvement of Ray Gindroz of Urban Design Associates in Pittsburgh, with whom she collaborated on KCDC's Hope VI redevelopment of the former College Homes area in Mechanicsville. But they have yet to settle on an actual developer to join their team.

Meanwhile, the Kinsey-Conley group is pushing ahead with plans not just for Market Square but also its environs. "You can't look at Market Square in isolation, so we're addressing how it fits into the context of downtown as a whole," Kinsey says. As part of this address, they assembled for a recent full-day charette such notables from UT's College of Architecture and Design as Dean Marleen Davis and Professor Jon Coddington, along with local architects Buzz Goss, Mike Fowler and Dee Dee Christopher.

Presiding over this assemblage was Chattanooga's guru of downtown planning, Stroud Watson. "There's a great need for a burst of new energy coming into the square," Watson reported in a wrap-up of the proceedings. Just in terms of making the square more accessible, Watson advocated numerous steps including: (1) making all of downtown's streets two-way; (2) creating more open space on the square by removing the "faux" marketplace at its north end; (3) erecting steps directly up from the square to the TVA towers that could serve as an elevated venue for outdoor concerts; extending Krutch Park eastward to Gay Street and making it more connective with the square.

High on the list of energy builders is a prospective new cineplex on Gay Street, just across the street from an extended Krutch Park. Kinsey professed confidence in his ability to attract a six-screen cinema to this location, just as he was instrumental in getting one in downtown Chattanooga. "The old S&W cafeteria fa�ade lends itself to a theater very well, and the theater could connect to the State Street Garage, either via an overpass or underground," Conley said. (The property is currently owned by Knox County, which acquired it for its since-discarded justice center project.)

The Kinsey-Conley group is less clear and more cautionary at this point about the number and types of retail tenants that can be attracted to the square itself. Watson went so far as to say, "We don't want to build out every shop on day one. This city is not a shopping center."

Yet KCDC's charge to prospective developers, under a redevelopment plan approved by City Council, is to submit plans for filling the square's now largely vacant ground floors with commercial tenants in a "comprehensive and coordinated manner." All this is supposed to be accomplished by working in concert with the square's many individual property owners, some of whom continue to resist the city's push to have a single coordinating developer imposed on them. (Paradoxically, a retail planning consultant retained by the resisters concluded that filling the square's 82,000 square feet of ground floor space is feasible if a "comprehensive retail strategy" is employed.)

Amid all these cross-currents it remains to be seen whether any other developers will prove venturesome enough to respond to the RFP. Following Lucia and Sicard's meetings with property owners, Sicard allowed that, "we're giving it some consideration," but he went on to say that, "it looks terribly complicated and much different than anything any of us have been involved in."

—Joe Sullivan

Sex in the Old City?

The city says a strip club planned for the Old City violates ordinances

Gene Lovelace thinks he knows what the Old City needs—naked women.

Lovelace was all set to begin showcasing nude dancers this week at a club in the Old City called Last Chance Adult Theatre. But city officials say the club isn't allowed, because it is within 1,000 feet of other establishments that sell liquor.

"The Old City needs something like this to bring people in here. I'm here to get business for myself and help other people get business," Lovelace said Tuesday afternoon, as he smoked a cigarette in the space he's leased next to Blue Cats on Jackson Avenue.

Lovelace owns the other Last Chance nude club on Alcoa Highway. He's been working on renovating the Old City location for months. The 18-and-older club would feature 15 to 20 female dancers and be open Monday through Saturday. Alcohol would not be sold, but brownbagging would be allowed. Lovelace hadn't yet decided whether the dancers would be topless or totally nude. He was waiting for building and fire code approval to open.

But the city's law director, Michael Kelley, and Ron Mills, who works for Kelley, say the club would violate city codes at that location. Ordinances prohibit any adult entertainment within 1,000 feet of an establishment "authorized to sell any alcoholic beverages for on- or off-premises consumption. Any location selling beverages that contain less than five (5) percent alcohol are not to be considered with regard to the required spacing." (Adult entertainment is also prohibited within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, parks, etc.)

Even though the Last Chance doesn't plan to sell liquor, plenty of its neighbors do, including Blue Cats, Lucille's, Patrick Sullivan's and the Platinum.

"It sounds like it's a pretty easy call," Mills says. "The liquor license [at Blue Cats] is enough of a killer."

There are likely some other locations in the vicinity that could legally work, Mills says, but they're probably on the outskirts of the Old City.

That ordinance is currently being challenged by Fantasy Video, a Bearden store that was shut down for renting adult videos. But the law currently stands, and Lovelace and his attorneys seemed unaware of it.

Jerrold Becker, Lovelace's attorney, says he believes the club complies with the city's ordinances. "We believe we conform to the zoning pattern completely, and are prepared to defend that position," he says. "We looked at the zoning regulations and proscriptions, and we don't feel we violate any of them. Obviously, the client's going to open up, and we'll take it from there. Hopefully we won't get into court fight."

Lovelace's co-counsel is Nashville attorney Bob Lynch, who has represented strip clubs in that city and has done a lot of work regarding brown-bag laws.

Gary Mitchell, who owns Blue Cats and is renting the space to Lovelace, says the club seems well prepared. "He spent about $10,000 getting the place ready. His attorney is the guy who represents all those clubs in Nashville," Mitchell says. "This guy [Lovelace] spent a lot of money and I don't think he would spend it if he didn't think [the club] would pass muster. He didn't just wake up one day and say, 'I'm going to do this.' He spent months researching this."

Frank Gardner, who owns Manhattan's, Patrick Sullivan's, the newly opened El Camino Mexican restaurant, and Jackson Avenue Antiques, says he was surprised to learn about the proposed club down the block.

Asked if he worries Last Chance might scare patrons off, Gardner says, "My hope is the general public will not hold it against our business. We obviously have nothing to do with it. They really are located way off the street, so it won't be like a storefront situation. It won't be like New Orleans where you have the hawkers out on the street. I presume it'll be low-key. I could be wrong."

—Joe Tarr