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Conventional Wisdom
The new Knoxville Convention Center is one of the most expensive public projects in Tennessee history. As it prepares to open, questions linger about how much it will really be worth.

The new Knoxville Convention Center is one of the most expensive public projects in Tennessee history. As it prepares to open, questions linger about how much it will really be worth.

by Jack Neely

No one questions that the Knoxville Convention Center can do a whole lot of different things. It can host a major national bowling tournament in the basement and a formal dinner for 2,000 in the ballroom at the same time—with room left over for more than a dozen presentations about antiques, terrorism, botany, hairstyling, or nuclear fusion.

Even from the mysterious outside, the KCC's a conversation-starter. Its west side, facing the still-developing World's Fair Park, is all clean modernism, row on row of glass windows cascading down five stories from somewhere above Henley Street to the very bottom of the Second Creek valley. To some, it's a modernist waterfall. To others, it looks like a giant postwar high school. To some, the lofty glass-gabled atrium facing Clinch vaguely evokes the Crystal Palace of Victorian London, the centerpiece of the world's very first world's fair. To others, the same atrium looks like the entry to a shopping mall. The Henley Street side is variegated with a Victorian-style gray-domed rotunda and three imposing metal-clad street-level windows, features that look like they might belong to different buildings altogether.

It has people talking. The diversity of perspectives on the convention center might remind you of the story of the Six Blind Men and the Elephant. Enormous and fitted with all sorts of exotic features, it does seem somehow elephantine. At this point, no one's calling it a white one.

It's a complicated question, but in the end it gets down to the central conundrum of democracy. While a lot of people are satisfied that it's all right, nobody thinks it's perfect.

Everyone we spoke with, architect or not, has some regret about the external design. They're not the same regrets, reflecting different values of the architects, engineers, urban planners, municipal promoters, politicians, and prospective conventioneers who had something to say about it. Those involved in coming up with the design say the convention center's blueprints are smudged with hundreds of fingerprints.

A Mixed Marriage

Architect McCarty was involved early on. He says he thought it was only a matter of time before the city built a convention center, and he and his father, Bruce McCarty—together they account for two-thirds of the title of the accomplished architectural firm of McCarty Holsaple McCarty—began speculating on the project as early as 1990.

"Dad and I started pursuing the project 10 or 12 years ago," the younger McCarty says. "When it first became a thought."

The Public Building Authority began working with Thompson Ventulett Stainback & Associates (TVS) of Atlanta, planners of more than 50 convention centers, and arguably the best-known convention-center design firm in the world. (TVS is currently enjoying national celebrity as the American Institute of Architects' pick for architecture firm of the year, 2002.)

McCarty and two other local firms made proposals, and TVS favored McCarty as their local partner in the deal. TVS would be the lead designers of the building, and McCarty would be in charge of managing the project and be the liaison with the community.

The firm represented the community in part, in their choice of materials for the building: Dominating the design are Tennessee marble and brick, common materials that reflect the other buildings within sight of the site.

"At an early stage, it was all marble," says McCarty of the KCC's first designs. "But that didn't suit the budget." He also didn't want to compete with the marbly KMA nearby, and finally decided that a mixed-material look akin to UT's eye-catching law school, another McCarty project, suited the convention center. "We gave it a marble base, with rough stone—we didn't want a building too slick."

It was a big challenge, because it's a building without a back. "All four sides of the building are in the public realm," says McCarty. There's no cheap side.

"The concept of how the building would work functionally, the four sides, all that was a pretty easy thing to sell." The style of the building was another matter altogether. For four months, McCarty says, it was back and forth, as city representatives, in particular PBA head Mike Edwards, PBA attorney Tom McAdams, and the mayor preferred more traditional styles, while architects pushed for something more contemporary.

He says there was a bit of a breakthrough when some city officials visited the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago, a huge 1991 project with both traditional and contemporary aspects. Though the massive brick building doesn't resemble the convention center—externally, at least, the Chicago library looks much more traditional than the KCC—it apparently gave them some ideas, including the gabled glass of the north end, and the confidence to pursue them.

"This is a marriage of traditional and contemporary," McCarty says. He admits it was a rocky marriage. Over a period of months, he says, there were 15 to 20 different designs for the building, some more contemporary, some more traditional than the final product. The lead design architect for TVS was Andy McLean, a convention-center architect known to be opposed to mundane facades. "It turned out to be a contemporary form, but with gabled-roof glass that makes it look like traditional architecture," says McCarty.

Though it appeals to some lay observers, few architects outside of MHM seem to care for that atrium. One architect, who asked not to be named, says it "looks like the entry to a Proffitt's."

Others have been taken aback by the three large gray "bay windows," odd pitted-metal seating areas jutting out toward Henley. Detractors liken them to prefab garden sheds or sarcophagi.

To be fair, local architects are rarely generous in their praise of the work of other local architects—but some we spoke to are particularly sharp about what they heard was a non-architectural process for coming up with the design. Two years ago, one idealistic young architect named Erich Snyder, interning with McCarty Holsaple McCarty, quit the prestigious firm, and Knoxville, over the issue. He was especially bitter toward the influence of McAdams, whom Snyder claimed was "more influential than a room of design professionals with 100 years of combined experience."

McAdams protests, "I don't think he understood what my role was. I was trying to help the PBA accomplish what it was trying to accomplish. One, to be sure the final design implemented what the public input indicated. Two, PBA was trying to carry out the directions of the mayor." Ashe, he said, was skeptical of building something of that size that was "a giant box of a building"; he wanted to be sure that the Henley Street frontage was coherent with the other buildings on Henley.

"It's massive," says McAdams. "It's almost twice as big as the Whittle Building. If it were sitting on a flat lot, it would dominate the landscape, and darken the sky."

McAdams insists that the design didn't change a great deal in the discussions. The park side was retained exactly as the architects wanted. "The glass end was the part that changed the most," he says. One prior design, he says, was something he and other traditionalists called "George Jetson's garage."

Mike Edwards also confirms that the process was based on populist principles. "Focus group after focus group told us they wanted a campus-like building," he says, adding that many mentioned the Whittle Building as a standard. He says the gabled entryway was meant to be a reference to the gabled 1905 L&N station down the street.

Looks Aren't Everything

Convention centers are rarely beautiful buildings. As expensive as it is to build an enormous building, it's much more expensive to build an enormous beautiful building. Some might question whether convention centers even need to be beautiful. Unlike other urban buildings, a convention center has little business attracting casual passersby, because it may have nothing to offer them inside. It sells itself to hard-headed convention planners, usually long distance, by its specifications, on what it can do on the inside—and this convention center can obviously do a great deal. "It's a tech building," says Edwards. "We listened very closely to the Oak Ridge folks. Oak Ridge told us they needed all this stuff, and we got it for them. Now, it's their turn" to step up and use the center. (To date, there's only one ORNL event on the books.)

Overfelt, who routinely touts the KCC's technological capabilities, says architectural design is not usually one of the selling points of any convention center. A groundbreaking design might have been more a point of pride for the city than a selling point for a convention center, which is there to attract bowlers, or pharmacists, or log-home enthusiasts.

But thousands of non-conventioneering Knoxvillians have already seen this one anyway, and most of them have opinions. Most critics of the design prefer to steer clear of the record, but UT architecture professor George Dodds, a relative newcomer to Knoxville, is a little bolder. "Its design is on the cutting edge of the past," he says. "Its motifs are the motifs of the 1980s." He calls parts of the Henley Street side "bizarre," mentioning in particular the gray-domed conference room on the southeast corner. All in all, Dodds says, the convention center is "a confused collection of hybrid images and references assembled into a very large building with virtually no relationship to anything except the earth on which it sits." On a more positive note, he adds, "And I hope it's going to be a wonderful addition to this city."

Others we spoke with make similar statements, either off the record or more politely. "I've actually seen a lot worse convention centers," says Jon Coddington, mentioning downtown Nashville's famously ugly one. "I'm not sure it's doing a whole lot for Henley Street—but then, the street's not doing a whole lot for it."

McCarty admits he has some regrets, chiefly that the "pop-up" vertical extension above the ballroom ended up being finished in two-toned beige stucco, not brick, which he would have preferred. He says the Henley Street side was problematic for a couple of reasons. One is merely the elevation of the site. Since its base is in a creek valley, it wouldn't be practical to build an impressively tall structure on Henley Street. Second, trafficky Henley Street itself, with its surface parking lots and plain buildings, is not a good view, so it doesn't suggest putting many windows on that side. The building is oriented more toward World's Fair Park, to enhance views of the park being prepared to serve the convention center. "All that glass makes that side look more contemporary," McCarty says. "I bet people who prefer that side are people who like modern architecture."

A third problem, he says, was a deliberate attempt to vary the Henley Street face to make it interesting to people stuck in traffic. "What a convention center is is a big Kleenex box," he says. "You don't want to make it just a glass box. We did try to give interest and variety to that side." McCarty mentions the three tall, gray "bay windows" that define where the ballroom is, a pet project of one of the TVS architects. Built of hammered metal, they already look a little lumpy in the afternoon shadows. To passers-by with and without degrees in architecture, they may be the least-popular aspect of the whole KCC.

"It probably could have been done better," says McCarty. "Maybe we went too far. Or not far enough." Overall, he defends its design as a success. "It's a class A building for just a medium convention-center budget. Design-wise, I think it's right up there." He frankly expects it to earn some state or regional design awards, but probably not national attention.

"Some cities decide they want an icon and decide they want a Frank Gehry building," he says, mentioning the post-postmodernist architect currently in vogue, famous for astonishing-looking large buildings that draw international spectators. Knoxville, McCarty says, wanted a building that would please all of its representatives in every step of the process.

"Here you have to satisfy a lot of people," says McCarty. "You have to make compromises that a true design architect wouldn't have to do if you weren't pleasing a committee of hundreds.... It's our job to understand the clients' expectations, and give them a very good building, based on what they believe. At the end of the day, we gave them something that's right for the project."

What's the Connection?

Coddington's main concern is not necessarily the building's appearance, but its practical connection to the rest of town. "Without a decent master plan to the city, it's unclear how they're going to do that in a pedestrian way."

Dodds states the same point more strongly, claiming that it's "virtually impossible" for the convention center to interact usefully with downtown. "It's a suburban building in the middle of an urban setting," he says. "It's built in a pit with a multi-lane highway between it and downtown, connected only by an umbilical cord." Built to serve one of several entrances to the World's Fair, the "umbilical cord" is a walkway over Henley Street, described as a "pedestrian skywalk" in KCC's trade-publication advertising. It was already there, but it was rotated about 11 degrees to better serve the convention center. Dodds doesn't think the walkway in itself is nearly enough; he says the convention center can only work if there are further major improvements to slow traffic on Henley Street and make it permeable by pedestrians. "If Henley is changed," he says, "it's possible to imagine the convention center working."

It's a good point. At the KCC, Henley Street is an eight-lane highway of fairly speedy traffic, much of it just off the interstate. There are signaled crosswalks, but pedestrian waits can be lengthy. Those who don't move very fast sometimes have to wait a second time at the median.

And the downtown side of Henley offers little to lure the innocent conventioneer on such a trek. It's dominated by the UT Conference Center, once a '50s department store, now a big office building (UT Press does plan to open a small streetfront bookstore there); the YMCA, which is a pretty brick building but offers little to the casual pedestrian; and, beyond, parking garages. "The Hilton garage isn't the best parking garage in town," McCarty says. "But it's across the street from it." Call him immodest, because he's referring to another MHM project, but from an urban-design standpoint, he's probably right. The only attractive parking garage built in Knoxville in 60 years, the new Locust Garage is impressively unusual among modern parking garages in that it includes retail space on the sidewalk level. Some of it is within sight of the convention center, but to date it's not occupied.

McCarty says he's most interested in how the community will respond to the building as it meets downtown. At this point, the link to downtown—which prompted the idea of Worsham Watkins' bridge/mall two years ago—is still theoretical.

Defining Knoxville

Most of the building's critics bring up various aspects of the exterior; reviews of the interior aren't as mixed. Almost everyone who has toured it is impressed. It's a light, open space that might remind you of the entrance to a big-city airport or even a modern art gallery.

PBA spokesman Mike Cohen has been busy giving tours to various citizen groups for the last several weeks. He says there are a couple of points at which people are predictably startled by a vista. First among them is the area just off the western end of the atrium in which the viewer takes in several floors of the convention center at once, across a sort of marble canyon. It will be more impressive as they install a 38 x 20-foot digitized-tile mural of a Jim Thompson photograph of Ramsey's Cascades.

Cohen adds that the city has budgeted almost $1 million for original art, in the form of painting, sculptures, and even Cherokee baskets. The first of it arrives this week. He knows little about it, but among other things he describes a large tapestry mural depicting Knoxville's skyline from the south.

Another view guaranteed to astonish is the first glimpse of the 121,000 square-foot exhibition hall, at the bottom of the convention center. Practically underground, where you might expect to find a furnace or crawlspace, it looks like the evil mastermind's industrial lair that James Bond always discovers inside a volcano in the final half hour of the movie. Elsewhere in the building above it are a 27,000 square-foot ballroom on the main level, 14 meeting rooms, three conference rooms, and a theater-like 461-seat auditorium. And it's all wired, with pretty much every kind of wire you can name, including fiber optics.

Former Knoxvillian Mark Schimmenti, now at the Nashville Civic Design Center, has some regrets about the convention center's design but chooses to look at the positive sides. "There were some things that were done that I think are really, really good." He cites the "reverse donut" design, "with the dense stuff in the middle" and circulation and outlets around it.

"We hope the site will be a link between nature and the urban fabric," says McCarty. "It's not just the urban idea or the park idea, but a marriage of the two. There's a contrast here in the duality of our community. We think we're big-time urbanists, but on the other hand we've got the Smoky Mountains."

He also suggests that maybe the old identity dilemma came into play. While the massive, brick Harold Washington Library shouts post-fire Chicago, Knoxville has never come up with as definitive an identity to emulate. "As we're trying to define what the building is, we're still trying to define what Knoxville is."
 

May 30, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 22
© 2002 Metro Pulse