The open fields at the corner of Kingston Pike and Cedar Bluff Road may be worth $20 million. But they're tied up in knots involving a church, a widow and a lot of strange glossy brochures.
by Joe Sullivan
The choicest piece of undeveloped property in the Knoxville area sits astride Cedar Bluff Road at its intersection with Kingston Pike. The 45 acres of farmland at what some West Knoxvillians consider the city's epicenter of the future may be worth as much as $20 million or more, but it's not for sale at any price.
One big reason is that the owner is a 102-year-old widow who has been domiciled for more than a decade at Little Creek Sanitarium. A sale prior to her death would generate millions of dollars in capital gains taxes on property that Kaptola "K" McMurry and her long-deceased husband, A.R. McMurry, acquired in two stages in 1939 and 1944. Upon her death, however, the property would be exempt from both capital gains and estate taxes because her will is believed to leave it to a tax-exempt organization: namely, First Presbyterian Church.
Yet, even as she lingers on, a perplexing proliferation of glossy brochures heralds a grandiose development of the property as a shopping and high-rise office complex called Center Place of America. The printing bill alone on these brochures is conservatively estimated to run at least tens of thousands of dollars. And they depict a phantasmagoria of futuristic towers with low-rise retail protrusions and gobs of parking—the total cost of which could exceed $250 million.
Along with touting this visionary scheme as "the most significant Hub Center in the United States," the brochures heap scorn on other types of commercial development. Malls, big-box retailers, downtown Knoxville and New Urbanist concepts of mixed-use development are all derided in bullet points such as:
 "The stand alone 'Fortress' requiring long distance walking just to go in and then more walking inside...is dying!"
"Every American is now a Vehiclean...[and Center Place of America will] cater to and please...Vehicleans who insist on driving-up-to where they are going and PARK FREE...instead of negative, unwanted and unsaleable misnomer 'pedestrian friendly'."
"VEHICLEANS DO NOT DRIVE INTO CITIES! Each has become an obstacle course!"
On one of the brochures' panoramic aerial pictures of the property and its environs a directional sign points eastward toward "Knoxville's Former 150 acre 'City Center Bluff'—now Federal-State-County-City Government Center where you PAY TO PARK! 10 MILES."
Just who's behind all this hyperbole and where they actually stand with it is one element of this story. Behind that lies the story of a remarkable woman whose farm exemplifies West Knoxville's evolution from pastoral to rampant commercial over the half century that she lived on it.
K. McMurry's Legacy
When the A.R. McMurrys bought the 24 acres of their farm that lies east of Cedar Bluff Road in 1939 and built their lovely stone-and-clapboard farmhouse on it, there wasn't anything except other farms around. While the McMurrys took their farming seriously, they also had other pursuits. In addition to being married, they were partners in the A.R. McMurry Construction Co., which was one of Knoxville's leading builders of that era. The Church Street Viaduct, the North Wing and the St. Joseph Wing at St. Mary's Hospital, McCord Hall and the Animal Science Building on the UT Ag Campus all bear the McMurry imprint, among many others.
When A.R., who was many years her senior, died in 1956, K. continued to run the construction business on her own for 15 years while at the same time overseeing a farm that included 40 to 50 dairy cows, numerous chickens and a huge vegetable garden. She was also a connoisseur of roses and served for half a century as a rose competition judge at the Tennessee Valley Fair.
The McMurrys had no offspring of their own, which perhaps accentuated her attachment to the children of A.R.'s younger brother Ben, who was an architect and co-founder of the Barber & McMurry firm that continues to bear his name.
"I have many happy memories of days on the farm," says her niece, Ann McMurry Simpson. "We used to go there for Sunday dinner when I was growing up, and it seemed like a long drive way out into the country. Aunt Kap [as her niece referred to her] was a remarkable woman. She'd given names to each of her cows, and they would come when she called them. At least, it seemed that way."
As West Knoxville's growth mushroomed, K. McMurry began getting lots of calls from developers—to the point where she may have begun swishing them off like a cow does flies.
"If she would have sold the property to anyone, it would have been to me," says Bill Fortune, who'd spent most of his career in the construction business and had known the McMurrys well prior to forming FMP Development in the 1980s. FMP developed the Market Place shopping center just to the west of her property and sought to include its western segment in the development. "She said she wanted to leave the property to First Presbyterian Church, and that was the end of that," Fortune recalls.
Enter Elliott Kane
By the late 1980s, K. McMurry's health and faculties were failing, and she needed someone to look after her affairs. That someone became Elliott Kane.
Kane, a hefty man who is now 80-ish, is the son of the man who founded Knoxville's first advertising agency. Kane worked for his father until Charles Smith Kane's death in 1956, but the agency didn't last for long thereafter. During the 1960s, Kane did some public relations work for coal magnate B. Ray Thompson, including production of videos. He also had a firm, Kane Craft, whose principal line of business is understood to have been designing and marketing bookcases for libraries.
Since Kane declined to be interviewed for this article, not much can be said with certainty about his career or how he became acquainted with K. McMurry. It's believed by mutual acquaintances, however, that they got to know each other primarily through association at Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church when Robert Ferguson was pastor there. Both were deeply devoted to Ferguson, and when he moved to First Presbyterian Church in 1976 they, among other Cedar Springs congregants, moved with him.
"Elliott and I would drive Mrs. McMurry to Sunday evening services at First Presbyterian, and he also took the lead in arranging with an attorney the terms of her bequest of the property to the church," recalls Wallace McClure, a developer and former elder of the church.
When asked about the nature of their relationship in a brief conversation that ended testily, Kane proclaimed that "I am her agent and attorney-in-fact."
Center Place or Bust
The hype for Center Place of America has reached a crescendo in recent months. At least 10 glossy mailing pieces—each one seemingly more grandiose than the one before—have been widely circulated, and at least that many more are understood to be in the works. But there's nothing new about the concept. At least as far back as 1993, Kane was trying to proselytize developers both locally and nationally with slick promotional materials. While several who were contacted view the brochures' content as totally beyond the realm of reason, hardly any are prepared to say so for publication, lest they hurt their chances for coming to terms with Kane on a more realistic development plan.
Kane is known to have spurned numerous proposals for big-box developments on the property. Doug Horne of Horne Properties got nowhere in the mid-1990s with an $8 million offer to locate a Super Kmart on the 21-acre western parcel. Ditto for an attempt by Oliver Smith IV to acquire it for a Lowe's. While Kane's aversion to big boxes may be commendable, his back-of-the-hand has swept more broadly. Within the past few months he dismissed a proposal by architect Charles Smith for a retail complex that would be centered on a park-like town square with parking on the perimeter. Smith works closely with large-scale developers throughout the country and as far away as Australia and Brazil.
The executive director of the Metropolitan Planning Commission, Norman Whitaker, is sympathetic toward Kane's vision—up to a point. "I think some verticality and some mixed uses would be a good idea in that location, but the size of these structures is out of scale with the market," Whitaker opines.
What the MPC chief really hopes for is a development based on the city's TownCenter (TC-1) zoning ordinance that was adopted last year. Under TC-1's New Urbanist standards, a mixed-use development would start with a town square at the center, immediately surrounded by retail and office buildings, but then extend concentrically to encompass multi-family and then single family residences on the perimeter. The ordinance also includes stringent requirements for off-street parking, wide sidewalks and greenways.
One developer who is eager to proceed with a TC-1 development in Knoxville is Bob Talbott. His firm, Holrob, has become almost synonymous with development in Bearden, but Talbott says Bearden is already too built out to accommodate a mixed-use (live, work, shop) development on any scale. "The McMurry property is a wonderful location for it, and we at Holrob would love to do a TC development there," he states. Since more walking and less driving is a key tenet of New Urbanism, it's hard to imagine that a Holrob proposal will sit well with the "Vehiclean" Mr. Kane.
Beyond generating a lot of mailing pieces, just what is Kane doing to pursue his vision for the property? Answers aren't easy to come by.
Kane refers all questions to Stan Moore, who is identified in Center Place of America's literature as its executive director. It's understood that Kane hired Moore some years ago to manage the McMurry farm, and Moore also has a ranch of his own in Roane County where he breeds and trains collies to herd sheep and cows.
Moore declined this journalist's request to meet with him and to get a tour of the McMurry property. "We don't have a story right now. When something happens, I'll notify you," he says over the telephone. When asked if he intends to develop the property, Moore responds, "We don't have any developer. We're actively searching for one." To acquire the property? "No, it's not for sale. It would be a ground lease."
Under a ground lease, a developer would gain control of the property for a term typically running from 50 years to as long as 99 years. But this form of conveyance, as opposed to a sale, can hinder the financing of a development. That's because inability to pledge the property itself as collateral on a loan tends to reduce the amount that can be borrowed and raise the interest rate.
Developers who've dealt with Kane and Moore in the past don't think they're attuned to the intricacies of development or its financing. "Elliott Kane is not a developer and doesn't know much about development or how to make a deal," says Doug Horne, whose sentiments are widely shared by others—but not for attribution.
Some don't believe Kane really wants to do a deal, even if he knew how. "Elliott's goals are more toward the continual marketing of the property rather than the development of the property, if you get my drift," postulates McClure.
Other senior members of First Presbyterian Church come to his defense. "He's done an unbelievable job of looking after [McMurry's] affairs with no compensation," says one, who doesn't want to be quoted by name. At a time when TDOT was planning to let drainage resulting from the widening of Cedar Bluff Road spill onto the property, Kane succeeded, after a lot of travail, in getting TDOT to build two underground culverts to Ten Mile Creek—with the capacity to handle the run-off not only from the roadway but also from prospective development of much of the McMurry property. Kane also managed to get curb cuts for access on both Cedar Bluff Road and Kingston Pike during what his brochures herald as a "decade of pre-development." He and Moore are also known to have attended seminars on land use at heady places such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Estate planning attorneys believe that a ground lease of the property could be justified under present circumstances, particularly if a trustee believed its value had peaked and might decline. With the advent of the much-larger Turkey Creek development to its west, the McMurry property may not be as choice as it once was. However, appraisers who were consulted believe it's still worth on the order of $500,000 an acre, which is the going rate for land at Turkey Creek.
The James Park Bible Class
Every Sunday morning at 9:30 some two-score pillars of First Presbyterian Church assemble for the James Park Bible Class, which bears the name of the church's venerated pastor from 1866 to 1905. The class consists of men only, and their average age is upwards of three-score-and-ten. Elliott Kane was once a regular, but he seldom attends these days. Ill health is not believed to be a factor, but rather, ill feeling toward the church.
The disaffection reportedly arose when Carswell Hughs succeeded Robert Ferguson as pastor in 1989. Ferguson was a conservative evangelical whereas Hughs' views are more liberal, theologically and otherwise. While none of the members could furnish a copy, several recall receiving lengthy letters from Kane attacking liberal church doctrine in general and Hughs in particular.
Whether that has any bearing on his handling of McMurry's property or its disposition isn't clear. Though none have seen her will, the church's elders all believe it leaves the property to the church. When this journalist made that assumption in his abbreviated conservation with Kane, it drew a blustery retort. "Who told you that? That's scuttlebutt," Kane thundered. "What's in her will won't be known until after her death."
Assuming property worth some $20 million and perhaps other McMurry assets do go to First Presbyterian, it's believed to represent by far the largest bequest or donation of any sort a church in Knoxville has ever received. It remains to be determined what use will be made of it or what McMurry's will may stipulate in that regard. Some favor establishing an endowment and only spending its income stream. Others fear that such endowed enrichment could turn a blessing into a curse, and they favor donating the entire amount to worthy causes.
"A church should be a giving organization committed to helping others. If its members lose that sense of mission and start spending money on themselves, then a church can decay," McClure cautions.
So the future of First Presbyterian Church as well as the course of West Knoxville development could be on the line as the McMurry saga continues toward a highly uncertain conclusion.
May 23, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 21
© 2002 Metro Pulse
| 
