Metro Pulse/Editor's Corner/Building Trust

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It's always easier to tear things down, isn't it?

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

The more things change, the more they stay the same. And vice-versa:

If you never thought you'd see the day when representatives of Metro Pulse, the Knox Area Chamber Partnership, k2k and the University of Tennessee would all show up at the same place together, put this date on your calendar: May 9, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The aforementioned entities, whom you may recall have not always been close chums, have formed a working coalition of sorts under the name Knox Voices. They, or I guess I should say we, are sponsoring a public dialogue forum next Thursday at the Old City Hall on the corner of Summit Hill and Henley Street.

The idea is to encourage people who are active in Knoxville's civic life (by which I mean you, them, us) to do a better job of talking and listening to each other. We all know about the sad state of communication in this city between people and institutions who are theoretically working toward common goals. What grows out of that lack of simple human conversation is distrust and misunderstanding.

You could maybe think of this May 9 forum as a "therapy session for the civically obsessed," as one of our planning group put it. The idea is to bring together people who are interested in civic issues and talk honestly about our differences and, we hope, similarities. There will be a handful of speakers (Tom Ingram, Carlene Malone, Leslie Terry, Bill Lyons, and Saadia Williams), but most of the meeting will be a chance to break up into small, informal groups and meet some people you might not otherwise get a chance to talk to. Public officials are as welcome as CEOs, and schoolteachers are as welcome as starving artists. When it's over, you can wander down to Market Square for Sundown in the City and be reminded again why Knoxville is worth all the trouble.

I had a chance to visit the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City a few months ago, home of the high-tech space theater that was the inspiration for Universe Knoxville. U.K. backers have repeatedly insisted over the past year that their project is like the Rose Center, only better, a totally immersive virtual reality experience, blah blah blah. Most of all, they have said, it is definitely not a "planetarium." Well, I don't know from virtual reality, but I did grow up going to the planetarium at the Rochester Science Center, and, uh, guys? The Rose Center is a planetarium. Really. The big dome, the projector rising out of the floor, the stars on the ceiling, the whole deal. Don't get me wrong, it's an impressive planetarium. But it's definitely a planetarium. Just for the record.

I don't know what the outcome will be of Home Federal Bank's efforts to tear down the buildings it owns on Union Avenue. But I do know that block pretty well; my office window looks out on it, and I walk it often. I understand concerns about the bank's need for future expansion and so forth, and if they were ready to put a nice, big, occupied building on the site, then it might seem conscionable to tear down the existing structures. But in the midst of the city and county's multi-million dollar investment in downtown (a downtown that has already been rendered half-asphalt by past demolitions of historic buildings), it is mind-boggling that an institution that bills itself as civic-minded and community-oriented can contemplate flattening half a city block for a handful of employee parking spaces—especially when there is an entire block of parking spaces right across the street. Do Home Federal employees melt if they get wet?

As for Cherokee Country Club, well, you'll note that in the above paragraph I mentioned "an institution that bills itself as civic-minded and community-oriented." Cherokee, at least, makes no pretense about any of that stuff. Still, it's pretty jaw-dropping that the club's directorate was willing to strong-arm the Legislature to jettison historic preservation codes across the whole state just to knock down one house. Now there's a nice achievement for the club history books. But I suppose they probably don't keep history books—who cares about all that old stuff? Fore!

To end the column on a more upbeat note, and to recognize that there actually are some civic-minded civic organizations out there, it's nice to see the Junior League's plans for a "Downtown Knoxville Heritage Marker Program." The women's group is teaming up with Knox Heritage to place plaques around downtown that will "recognize the city's architecturally and/or historically significant structures..." Good job. Maybe they should also mark all the parking lots where architecturally and/or historically significant structures used to stand—and give the names of the people who tore them down.