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Seven Days

Wednesday, April 10
The Tennessee General Assembly began consideration of legislation that would allow the state's driver's licenses to be issued and used for driving purposes only, for driving and identification purposes, or for identification purposes only, depending on whether: a.) you know how to drive; b.) you know who you are and know how to drive; or c.) you wonder who you are and where you came from. Regardless, you'll have to wear UT orange to make application or take the test. It's going to be a great law.

Thursday, April 11
Sundown in the City inaugurated its 2002 season of early evening concerts on Market Square, drawing hundreds of individuals and families for the first Thursday of its 25-week run. If there's nothing to do downtown, why do all these people keep coming to these things?

Friday, April 12
The Tennessee Smokies, who used to be the Knoxville Smokies, open their third AA baseball home season in Sevier County before a crowd of 1,600 at their classy stadium off I-40. They'd have done that in downtown Knoxville if anybody in charge around here had had any cents...er, sense.
A Knox County chancellor rules, pending city appeal, that the Cherokee Country Club has a perfect right to tear down the historic J. Allen Smith mansion, which the club owns. He does not rule on a city motion to declare the club members who support the demolition perfect assholes. But he hints he might.
Schools Superintendent Charles Lindsey presents the school board with a budget that would commit an additional $17 million to K-12 education here next year, pending approval by the Knox County Commission. Such an increase would amount to $1.83 per student per day—jeez, almost two bucks! Are our kids really worth that much?

Monday, April 15
It's reported that Gov. Don Sundquist's chief of staff will be moving to Oak Ridge National Laboratories soon. It's not yet known whether he's been retained to help institute a special income tax on ORNL employees.

Tuesday, April 16
Central Parking Corp. reveals increased rates at two city-owned parking garages it manages. The move comes about a month after Central tightened its near-monopoly on downtown parking by buying eight surface lots. A company spokesman says there are no immediate plans to raise rates at the newly acquired lots. The operative word is "immediate." June is such a long way away.

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:
Goodness, does everyone in Knoxville have a tattoo? Given the tremendous response to last week's Knoxville Found, we're inclined to think so. Scads of you wrote in to say that the photo of the bowling-balls-and-pins art installation/retaining wall/monument to whimsy is in front of Saint Tattoo, 1020 N. Broadway. But credit for being the first in what became a torrent of correct identifications goes to Rebecca Rhea Banks, who got her tongue pierced there. Rebecca's rapid response earns her The Experiment: An Exploration of Perception and Focus, a book that promises to show how to "build your inner spaceship and explore the limitless inner space within you." Have a fantastic voyage...

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

HISTORIC ZONING COMMISSION
Thursday April 18
8:30 a.m.
City County Building, Small Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
The H-1 overlay for the Sprankle Building is scheduled to be considered during this meeting.

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday April 22
2 p.m.
City County Building, Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Regular monthly meeting.

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Monday April 22
7 p.m.
Girls and Boys Club auditorium
220 Carrick St.
Updating the Central City Sector plan. Major topics for discussion will be neighborhood conservation and historic preservation, community facilities (including parks and open space), economic development, future land use, and various modes of transportation. Call 215-2500 for more information.

MAYOR'S BUDGET LUNCHEON
Tuesday April 23
Noon
Lakeshore Park
Use the new park entrance off of Lyon's View.

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Wednesday April 24
6:30-8 p.m.
City County Building, Small Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Workshop on developing policies and criteria for locating future cellular towers/antennas.

KNOXVILLE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORP.
Thursday April 25
11:30 a.m.
Montgomery Village
4530 Lewis Rd.
Monthly board meeting.

Cherokee's Big Club

Council inaction dims preservationists' hopes

Prospects for preserving the historic J. Allen Smith home adjacent to Cherokee Country Club are not looking good.

After failing to muster a majority on City Council for an historic overlay (H-1) zoning ordinance that might have protected the house from demolition, Mayor Victor Ashe got Council to postpone action on the matter Tuesday evening. Instead, Ashe called for mediation between the city and the country club, which owns the house and wants to tear it down to make room for additional parking and a golf practice green.

Intense lobbying against the ordinance by influential club members left only three of nine council members firmly in support of it—Rob Frost, Joe Hultquist and Vice Mayor Jack Sharp. A fourth, Barbara Pelot (in whose district Cherokee sits), was reportedly prepared to support the overlay but preferred postponement. Two others, Mark Brown and Larry Cox, were reportedly on the fence, while Steve Hall, Nick Pavlis and Ed Shouse, opposed the ordinance.

Whether the mediation process that Ashe proposed will lead to any accommodation seems problematic at best. Discussions between the club and emissaries for the city have been unavailing ever since the club bought the house in 1999. But pressures from preservationist groups, such as Knox Heritage, and public relations considerations may at least oblige club leaders to come to the table.

"We're certainly going to consider whatever is out there. We have open minds," was all that Cherokee's president, Frank Addicks, was prepared to say. But that's more than seemed to be the case when the club sought and got a court order directing the city to issue a demolition permit for the house. Not even City Council adoption of the H-1 ordinance would have altered the effectiveness of the court order.

In issuing the order last Friday, Circuit Court Judge Dale Workman ruled that an existing ordinance under which the city had refused to issue a demolition permit is invalid. That ordinance provides for a moratorium on demolitions when an application for H-1 zoning is pending. Unbeknownst to the club when it applied for a demolition permit in February, the mayor had personally applied for H-1 zoning on the property on January 17.

On Tuesday, all parties agreed to a stay of Workman's order, pending an appeal by the city to the State Court of Appeals. Beyond that, it's understood that the country club's hierarchs have agreed to hold off on demolition for six months, in any event, to allow the city time to make them a proposal. If the city wants to preserve the Smith house, these hierarchs believe, then the city ought to be prepared to pay to do so and also to accommodate the club's parking needs. The estimated cost of restoring the run-down house for just about any use is on the order of $2 million. For all the affluence of its members, the club isn't about to pick up the tab for rehabbing a building it doesn't want.

The mediation process that Ashe proposed would involve the use of professional facilitators and be patterned after the process that led to the adoption of new zoning standards for Fort Sanders two years ago. The city's director of administration, Ellen Adcock, has already been in touch with two of the Fort Sanders facilitators about serving again. They are John Leigth-Tetrault, president of the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation, and John Doggette, director of the Community Mediation Center here.

"In the case of Fort Sanders, the facilitators met with all the shareholders every month for about two years to iron out guidelines for what became our NC-1 zoning ordinance," Adcock says.

Preservationists, including a number of members of the country club, have fought hard to protect the J. Allen Smith house from demolition. The Italian Renaissance revival structure was built in 1913 by the founder of the company that bore his name and created White Lily flour. It's also considered one of the finest residential works of one of Knoxville's most renowned architects, Charlie Barber.

Since the late 1970s, however, it's been surrounded by an expansionary Cherokee Country Club. And Tuesday's City Council stalemate, coupled with the court order, suggest that the city will be hard pressed to keep the country club from expanding once again. The city still has one thing the club needs, however, and that's a zoning change to permit the use of the Smith property as a parking lot. Therein may lie the best hope for some compromise that would avert the wrecking ball.

—Joe Sullivan

(Editor's Note: Joe Sullivan is a member of Cherokee Country Club)

Bravo!

The first-ever Italian Festival is a hit, and a hint

Many who blundered into the Italian Street Festival on Gay Street Saturday were overheard to say that the beleaguered Dogwood Arts folks had, at long last, finally figured out the elusive "Festival" part. Dogwood Arts has tried every year for decades to attract revelers for the downtown events that give it the right to be called a festival, but for the last several years, the DAF has suffered from disappointing crowds. Downtown itself is usually identified as the culprit.

But here, right on Gay Street between Main and Church on a sunny Saturday, were the people the DAF has been missing all these years. They came for a variety of good pizzas and pastas, a variety of interesting music (string quartets, barbershop, choral groups, pretty much everything except country or rock), a variety of fine crafts, Italian herb plants, antiques, and books—plus wine, beer, rare cigars, roaming tenors, and occasional Renaissance swordfights. And a big History Channel exhibit. (That sideshow-style attraction was reportedly impressive, but we didn't get to see it, because the lines were always too long. Besides, we would have missed some swordfights.) Most surprising of all, there were big crowds; the crowd that came out for opera and la dolce vita outnumbered any crowd that came to Market Square last week for the corn dogs and '70s cover bands that someone up there persistently thinks is what Knoxville wants.

However, though the fair was theoretically under the umbrella of Dogwood Arts, insiders say the DAF organizers had bailed out on the project several weeks ago. The Street Fair was wholly a project of the Knoxville Opera Company, as part of Knoxville's first-ever Rossini Festival.

The opera company's performances of Rossini's Signor Brushino and Puccini's Suor Angelica at the 750-seat Bijou that afternoon were sold out. Many were turned away at the door. How the overwhelming attendance at those performances would affect the street part of the festival was what most worried opera director Francis Graffeo. "I was afraid we'd have empty streets during the performance," he says. But there was little perceptible change in the size of the crowd eating and drinking and shopping in the street.

"We were hoping for hundreds," says Graffeo. "We got thousands." They didn't get a headcount, but he has heard estimates ranging from 3,000 to 5,000. Some of the vendors sold out before it was over.

Though Graffeo says the idea was partly inspired by opera festivals he's helped plan in the Denver area, he insists the lion's share of the credit belongs to the opera's production manager, Don Townsend, who put the thing together. Heartened by the success, they're already planning for another one next year.

—Jack Neely