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Seven Days

Wednesday, April 24
KACP refuses to let President Tom Ingram take six months off to help Lamar Alexander's Senate campaign, saying, "he needs to be here 24/7." Ingram, of course, had earlier stated his desire to work 24/7 on Alexander's campaign. In light of his wish to be 48/7 in two places at once, Ingram also informs the Chamber that he won't run for mayor, although the notion is "tempting." Anybody know if Universe Knoxville features a cloning machine?
Andy Wilhelm, owner of the Knoxville Speed, files for bankruptcy. Despite being reduced to listing his pets among his personal assets, Wilhelm is determined to keep a hockey team in Knoxville. Rumor has it Wilhelm's dog and cat will form the nucleus of his next team.

Friday, April 26
Echoing Mayor Ashe on city taxes, County Exec Tommy Schumpert announces he intends to recommend to County Commission that taxes not increase this year. As long as state funding to the county doesn't change, that is. We're not holding our breath.

Saturday, April 27
Early voting results have been disappointing so far. Hey, people! We're electing a sheriff, circuit court clerk, and several commissioners and school board members. So get out and vote already! On the other hand, what should be the biggest race of all, for county executive, features Mike Ragsdale running unopposed. Maybe there's no point in voting, after all.

Sunday, April 28
While other parts of East Tennessee were bombarded with everything from golfball-size hail to tornadoes, Knoxville got off pretty lightly, suffering only a few localized squalls. Knoxville also witnessed the finale of the Dogwood Arts Festival. Hey, I only said we got off lightly...

Tuesday, April 30
On the eve of the 20th anniversary of Knoxville's World's Fair, C. H. Butcher, Jr., dies after a fall in his home in Canton, GA. His conviction on a plethora of fraud charges related to the failure of his Southern Industrial Banking Corp. has always overshadowed his and his brother Jake's achievements in helping get the Fair to Knoxville. Now, perhaps, would be a good time to acknowledge that, despite many failings, not to say cheating, lying, and stealing, the Butcher brothers did some good things for Knoxville. Perhaps.

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:
As downtown workers, patrons of Market Square businesses and attendees of Sundown in the City concerts should know, last week's Knoxville Found photo was of the bell tower atop the pavilion on—yup—Market Square. Councilman Rob Frost was actually the first to correctly identify the structure, which is meant to evoke the old Market House, but Rob's a perennial winner, so we're skipping over him. (Sorry, Rob.) Next fastest on the keyboard was Tina Rowlings, who also hails from Rob's Fourth and Gill neighborhood. Tina gets a copy of Romantic Tennessee, which "meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines." We're swooning already.

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

Downtown Revitalization & Cooperation Panel Discussion
Saturday May 4
9:30 a.m.-noon
East Tennessee Historical Society
Lucille S. Thompson Auditorium
600 Market Street
Sponsored by the League of Women Voters, City People, k2k, Knox Heritage, and Nine Counties/One Vision. Representatives from PBA, MPC, KCDC, and KAT, among others. Moderated by Annette Anderson. RSVP by May 3 at 984-6599.

MAYOR'S NIGHT OUT
Monday May 6
5-7 p.m.
West Hills Elementary School
409 Vanosdale Road
Mayor Ashe and city department representatives will meet with anyone with questions or comments on city services.

CITY BUDGET HEARING
Thursday May 9
8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
KUB board room
sixth floor, Miller's Building
445 S. Gay Street
See the city's web site for a departmental schedule.

EZ Living
The Empowerment Zone keeps going, for now

In some ways, Knoxville's Empowerment Zone program is exactly where it's supposed to be. The agencies involved in coordinating the complicated initiative have formed community advisory groups, gathered data and recommendations for improving Knoxville's center city neighborhoods, and are moving toward selecting some of those proposals for funding.

But as a meeting Monday night at the Moses Center in Mechanicsville demonstrated, the continued existence of the program is increasingly threatened from all sides. Some activists in the communities that are supposed to be served by the Empowerment Zone remain dissatisfied with the entire process. Changing federal regulations have forced local agencies to drop some EZ proposals. Some local officials are raising concerns about the program's viability. And to top it all off, President George W. Bush recently pledged to kill the Clinton-era program altogether.

"I think it would be wise to look at the real possibility that there will be no further federal funding," City Councilman Joe Hultquist warned the crowd of about 80 community organizers at Monday's meeting.

Still, the meeting demonstrated that a lot of work has already gone into the program, which is overseen by the non-profit Partnership for Neighborhood Improvement (PNI). The group's executive director, Terrence Carter, acknowledged the relative slowness of planning and action since Knoxville first received an EZ designation in 1999. But, he cautioned, "I think part of the problem with the process in general is that when you don't see it yourself, or you don't know [what] the person next door [is doing], you don't think it's going on."

Knoxville's Empowerment Zone encompasses 16 square miles of the center city and surrounding neighborhoods, stretching from Fort Sanders to Burlington and Old North Knoxville to Vestal. The area is divided into six geographic zones. Knoxville was one of 10 cities to receive EZ designation in the second round of the program's grants. (Most of the first-round grants went to much larger cities.) Cities across the country submitted proposals detailing the needs of their disadvantaged neighborhoods. Theoretically, each EZ city was to receive up to $100 million over 10 years. But each year's allocation is dependent on Congressional approval, through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

"It's always been from day one that there was no guarantee of X amount of dollars in any year," Carter says.

Consequently, Knoxville to date has received just under $20 million. Of that, $7.5 million has already been spent or committed to projects identified in the initial plan as first- or second-year undertakings. Those include: a career center at Pellissippi State's Magnolia Avenue campus; a loan program to help create or expand small businesses; and redevelopment of industrial "brownfield" sites, including the Coster Shop property off I-275.

The next task is to set priorities for the rest of the available funds, in each of the six EZ zones. To that end, PNI hired the Center for Neighborhood Development to set up Zone Advisory Councils (or ZACs—it's difficult to talk about the Empowerment Zone without resorting to acronyms). The ZACs, made up of residents, business owners and other concerned community members, met frequently from late last year until this March, when they submitted lists of possible projects for funding to PNI.

Although proposals varied from one ZAC to another, there were common themes: housing, entrepreneurial development, youth and family programs, infrastructure. PNI's Planning Committee, made up of representatives from each ZAC plus members of local neighborhood groups, spent the last two months evaluating and ranking 37 proposed initiatives.

Brent Minchey, a member of the central ZAC (which includes Fort Sanders, downtown, and Morningside) says the next step is recommendations to the PNI board to fund qualified programs. But the Planning Committee also plans to "create task forces and committees to look for funding sources for the things that don't meet [EZ] guidelines."

Meanwhile, outside all that dizzying alphabet soup, the EZ faces significant challenges:

* First, there are the obstacles posed by HUD itself. After questions about how some of the first-round EZ cities spent their money, the federal agency tightened its guidelines for EZ funding. Under the Bush administration, the scope has narrowed even more to an exclusive focus on "economic development." For every $35,000 of EZ funding, cities are supposed to be able to show they created at least one permanent job. This means some quality-of-life initiatives—for example, the conversion of blighted properties to affordable housing—have been put on hold.

To date, PNI says its loan program has given out about $431,000 to local small businesses, creating 94 jobs in the zone.

* Members of the Black Business and Contractors Association remain skeptical about how EZ money has been spent. They note that of the major contractors receiving program funds—PNI, the Center for Neighborhood Development, Pellissippi State—none are minority-owned. This has been an ongoing controversy for the past few years, and the BBCA has filed a formal complaint with HUD. Carter says PNI met with the BBCA and HUD officials in March, but there is no resolution yet.

At Monday's meeting, Umoja Abdul-Ahad and Zimbabwe Matavou, who have been among the most outspoken critics of PNI, renewed their accusations of unfair distribution of funds. The Rev. Joe Smith, PNI's new chairman, replied, "We have made some mistakes. And the fact is, we are learning from them."

* Meanwhile, President Bush has made it clear he wants to discontinue further EZ funding and replace the program with a $22 billion package of tax incentives. That worries PNI. "What we have said was that's fine, but without the EZ grants the folks who don't already have a business won't be able to access the tax incentives, no matter what," Carter says. But he says lobbying efforts in Washington have helped build "bipartisan support" for some continuation of the EZ program.

PNI does expect to receive at least another $3 million, which was approved in this year's federal budget but is still working its way through HUD.

* Hultquist also warned that the involvement of EZ funding in the Coster Shop project might endanger the program. The city of Knoxville used about $2 million in EZ money to pay for site preparation at the old railroad yards, which the city hopes to convert to a new industrial park. The city has since repaid $1.5 million to the EZ fund. But with controversy surrounding the disposal of rubble and other materials from the site, Hultquist implied Monday the bad press could hurt all of PNI's programs.

"There's a real chance that will have made it much more difficult for any future federal funding to be assigned," he said. He warned PNI that it should start thinking about spending its remaining EZ money as carefully as possible.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

Sprankle Flats?
Home Federal calls for the wrecking ball

As expected, Home Federal applied for a demolition permit for the Sprankle Building on Union Avenue; it happened on Tuesday. And as expected, the city turned it down, citing the mayor's recent nomination of the property under the city's stringent new H-1 historic-zoning overlay initiative.

The bank announced its intention to demolish the five-story, circa 1904 apartment building about a year ago; all its tenants have left, with the exception of Pete's Coffee House, which has occupied one of Knoxville's oldest restaurant spaces since the '80s. Pete's has plans to move into city parking-garage space down the street. Another, smaller building next door is also affected by the plan; it's still home to the Union Ave. Barber Shop.

Mayor Victor Ashe says he spoke with Home Federal president Dale Keasling on Tuesday, shortly after the bank applied for the permit. "I asked them to reconsider their mission," Ashe says. "I told him we can resolve this parking issue. And if they're looking at expanding, they ought to look at other areas to expand—or rehab this building.

"Keasling said they'd think it over. If we find ourselves on opposite sides, I told him the city would resist as strongly as we could. We're spending millions to rehab Market Square, rehabbing Miller's, recruiting Plasti-Line—we won't sit by."

Like the J. Allen Smith and/or Coughlin house, the building is known by two names. Preservationists tend to call it the Sprankle Building, its original name. Prominent developer Benjamin Sprankle, a pioneer in the residential development of the Bearden area who in later life was instrumental in bringing TVA's headquarters to Knoxville, built the building and was one of several eminent Knoxvillians who once lived there.

However, Ashe says that in the corridors of Home Federal, the building is known as the "Park Hotel," a subtle slur that may be confusing. The original Park Hotel faced Walnut, and was condemned and torn down over 10 years ago. However, sometime in the middle of the 20th century, after suburban flight had drained downtown of its most affluent residents, the Park acquired the space in the Sprankle, which became known to some as an annex to the Park. The Park/Sprankle complex, under the name of the Park Hotel, became known as a haven for prostitutes. Ashe doesn't think the Park period should affect citizens' opinions of the building. Several beautifully renovated buildings downtown, including Sullivan's Saloon, were once brothels.

Except for its thriving Union Avenue streetfront, the upper floors of the Sprankle have been chastely empty in the decade that Home Federal has owned it, its upper windows boarded up. For months, citing the belief that the building was dangerous, the bank declined repeated requests by preservation-friendly architects and politicians to survey the building.

However, Ashe says he toured the Sprankle about two weeks ago. "It's structurally sound," he says, an opinion confirmed by architect Duane Grieve, who was in charge of the Miller's restoration project. "There's a fairly putrid odor," Ashe admits, largely thanks to the fact that the abandoned floors were never cleaned out. "But I went through Miller's before we renovated it. It was in worse shape.

"To have a gaping hole there—like the Riviera space on Gay Street—that's an ugly eyesore that detracts from downtown. If that building's torn down, it's a dark day in Knoxville's history."

Ashe, who confesses that he's a Home Federal depositor, praises the bank's corporate citizenship. "They're our hometown bank, and they've been a significant positive presence in other areas. We wish that they would once again step up and say historic preservation is important.

"Here we are, spending $1 million to build an addition to the history center—while we're talking about tearing a historic building down, one block away. The inconsistency is breathtaking."

Home Federal has little to say about the project for the record. But Keasling acknowledged that the bank, which currently employs about 250 downtown, most of them in nearby buildings facing Market Street, is anticipating "future expansion."

"We don't have definitive plans," Keasling says. "We know at some point we will need that [site]. We just don't know when that will be." He says they haven't determined what to do with the site in the interim.

Home Federal's vagueness about the future of their property is especially annoying to the mayor. "They say, 'Ultimately, we will build a new beautiful building,'" says Ashe. "But there are no drawings, no picture, not even a concept of this 'beautiful building.'"

Keasling says the bank would leave it up to the H-1 process, which ultimately winds up in City Council, to determine whether the building is historic and worthy of preservation. The H-1 public process begins with a hearing before the Metropolitan Planning Commission on May 9. "If it's historic, we'll have to abide by that," he says. But then adds, "It doesn't mean we will restore it."

—Jack Neely

Keeping Quiet
UT administration won't reveal transit service plans

Mum's the word on a possible turnover of University of Tennessee transit services to Knoxville Area Transit (KAT) or Connex TCT, a private transit provider headquartered in Knoxville. Campus van drivers, dispatchers and secretaries say their jobs would be threatened if UT contracts out its internal transportation, and the United Campus Workers union is asking the administration to disclose its plans for those jobs. But the university's assistant vice president for operations, Jeff Maples, says state law prohibits him from discussing the contents of the two proposals the transit committee has received.

The university plans to overhaul its current transit system as part of its Master Plan for campus development and pedestrian-friendly improvements. UT supplies van services for disabled students as well as night and weekend safety vans for all students. (KAT operates the trolleys to downtown and buses to off-campus housing.) Maples says the turnover will come sometime within the next two years and may come as early as this fall. A transit committee made up of staff and students will make a decision on the proposals within the next month, he says. He declined to identify how the changes might affect current transit workers.

Van driver Joel Burnette says the request for proposals (RFP) suggests switching UT's internal transit from a call-on-demand system to a route system. He predicts this could reduce the current driver workforce of about 35 down to perhaps 4 or 5 drivers. An official in the university's purchasing department did not answer a request to see the RFP.

UT's code of silence isn't sitting well with union members, who say it's emblematic of a long-standing indifference to their needs. On Secretaries' Day, April 24, about 40 campus workers and 10 students gathered at Hodges Library to demand that the university not contract out transit jobs. They also reiterated previous demands for a living wage and a representative on the board of trustees.

"Do they care people are suffering under their leadership?" Linda McMillan, a secretary in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology and the protest's master of ceremonies, asked the crowd. "They don't. We have to make them."

The protesters then marched to Andy Holt tower, where McMillan and United Campus Workers corresponding secretary Chris Pelton hoped to present acting president Eli Fly with 1,000 signatures in support of a living wage. Fly was unavailable, so the pair presented the petition and their concerns about transit services to acting vice-president and executive assistant Sara Phillips.

"I don't know anything about that... I can't comment on this," Phillips said, noting she would pass the petition on to Fly.

UCW co-chair Sandy Hicks says if the university contracts out for transit services, it will be the latest in a series of privatizations that have resulted in lost jobs, lowered pay and loss of benefits. She emphasizes that the administration failed to communicate adequately with its employees about such changes. Four or five years ago, the university discussed merging its housekeeping services with Rental Properties, Hicks says. Workers found out about the discussions, not from their employer, but from the News-Sentinel. The university eventually decided against the merger.

Hicks says when UT eliminated the housekeeping division of Physical Plant, transferring those jobs to a private company, at least one worker didn't know of the administration's plans until she was laid off.

"She went on vacation, and when she came back they told her she didn't have a job," Hicks says.

—Tamar Wilner