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Seven Days

Wednesday, May 29
Having failed once more to achieve a tax reform program—this time based on an expanded sales tax—the Legislature votes themselves a three-week recess. They also fail to decide who'll get the merry-go-round and who'll get the monkey bars.
Turnabout at the blue line: Andrew Wilhelm, the former owner of the Knoxville Speed, who campaigned tirelessly to keep a hockey franchise in Knoxville and arranged for a group of investors to back a new team in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League, says he was dropped by the new owners like a hot rock because of his personal bankruptcy. Wilhelm kept the list of last year's season ticket holders, calling them the property of the Speed. Well, he can't be called for high sticking.

Thursday, May 30
Knox County's 14 middle schools have joined its 12 high schools in accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, school officials boast. That's good news. The less gratifying news is accreditation hasn't been extended to the 82 elementary schools in the county.

Friday, May 31
It's disclosed that sales-tax fat Sevier County is considering offering two years of free tuition to Walters State Community College to any kid who graduates from high school in the county. Such a move would leave the rest of the state to consider whether to institute a lottery to match or better the Sevier County plan or to reconfigure all its communities on a Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge model.
The Southeastern Conference votes to raise academic standards for student-athletes. What are they trying to do, wreck the conference football program?

Saturday, June 1
LSU takes away UT's men's SEC track & field title. The upset is attributed to UT athletes demoralized by the new academic eligibility standards.

Tuesday, June 4
The News-Sentinel's big front-page headline story tells its loyal readers that it was hot Monday, when the temperature reached into the 90s, even though it's only June. Watch for the "It's Cold!" headline sometime around December.

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 our winner put it, "This week's Knoxville Found is an advertisement of the most attractive of modern amenities at the ever present Orange and White Clark Motel in Powell," near where Emory Road intersects Clinton Highway. A friendly lady at the motel was willing to ask "Benny, who's older than dirt" when the motel was built, but Benny's age difference with soil was to no avail: He didn't know either. We suspect the motel is holdover from the motor lodge days of the '50s, perhaps even older. If anyone knows more of the story, we'd love to hear it. Jeremy Harrison was first to provide the correct ID. In keeping with our family theme for this issue, Allen's prize is Somehow Form a Family: Stories That Are Mostly True by Tony Early. Lavished with critical praise, the book has Early confronting "the big things—God, death, civilization, family, his own clinical depression—with wit and grace..." We hope his family helped.

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

Neighborhood Improvement (PNI)
Monday, June 10
9 a.m.-noon
City County Bldg.
Small Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
A workshop to familiarize attendees with available tax incentives and business assistance resources in the Empowerment Zone.

Mayor's Night In
Monday, June 10
5 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Mayor's Office, 6th floor
400 Main Ave.
All citizens are invited to lend comments or ask questions.

City Council
Tuesday, June 11
7 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Council will consider final approval of next year's city budget.

Making a Village?
Bearden Village plan moves forward, with some concerns

Elements of the Bearden Village plan are slowly being implemented, despite opposition from at least one person in the neighborhood.

Approved last year by the city, the plan is a broad outline for how to apply new urbanist principles to the neighborhood by making it better looking, more pedestrian- and bike-friendly, and safer, emphasizing mixed-use developments. In other words, the kind of neighborhood where people can easily walk from their house or apartment to restaurants, grocery stores, nightclubs, other businesses or a nature trail.

Resident David Williams, president of the Pond Gap Neighborhood Association, doesn't like the plan's objectives and he's trying to rally neighbors and business owners against it. But proponents of the plan say he's spreading wrong information about the plan and that his fears are unfounded.

Bearden is a unique neighborhood that includes a wide variety of income levels and shopping districts. Upper-middle-class families live not far from graduate students and those who live on public assistance. Many in the area don't have cars—including a number of handicapped people. The neighborhood is ideal for them, because all their needs are a short walk away.

Williams worries that the idealistic community that the city and some neighborhood leaders are trying to create strays too far from reality.

"This is something you would do if you're building a neighborhood from ground up. This [neighborhood] already exists," he says. "I see no reason why we have to have a bicycle trail...Sutherland Avenue, who is on a bicycle? You don't go to a copy place on a bicycle. You don't go to the grocery store on a bicycle."

Williams fears that private property and vital parking places will be taken by the city for greenways and sidewalks. And he worries that traffic-calming measures will make Sutherland and other roads more dangerous.

But Donna Young, Knoxville's greenways coordinator, says the city doesn't have any intention of doing what Williams fears. She says any sidewalks would be put in on city property, and no parking spaces would be taken (if they're currently on city right of way) without addressing a business' concerns.

"All I'm trying to do is get people to food and to school," Young says. "I can't believe he's against it. He said you can't put people through my front yard, but it's not his. For this entire project, except one easement on Carlton Towers, we are not taking one inch, one fourth of an inch, of private property. That property belongs to you and me and everyone else and the children who go to school. That's why it's called public."

Young says the plan has gotten support from four other neighborhood groups, and a diverse number of businesses, agencies and organizations, including the city, MPC, Knoxville's Community Development Corp., and the Greenway Coalition, and Keep Knoxville Beautiful.

Terry Faulkner, a Forest Heights resident and one of the key people behind the plan, says she has met with Williams a number of times and has been frustrated in trying to address his concerns. The Pond Gap group has concerns about heavy car and truck traffic on Hollywood Road, which has increased with the destruction of the bridge over I-40 in Forest Heights, and which has greatly decreased traffic in Faulkner's neighborhood. But, the neighborhood group has been resistant to the idea of a traffic circle at Hollywood and Sutherland, which would make it impossible for trucks to drive on Hollywood. "I'm unsure what it is that they want," Faulkner says.

However, Williams says the village proponents just aren't listening. "It seems like some of them want to call all the shots for Bearden. All these neighborhoods are not the same. We're different from Deane Hill; we're different from West Hills," he says. "We're just not getting a fair shake on a number of things. They're just not listening to us."

Williams gave Metro Pulse the names of a number of people whom he said are upset by the plan. However, none of those contacted by the paper said they were necessarily opposed to it—only that they wanted to know more specifics.

Some people are concerned by what they've heard from Williams. Bill Cabe, owner of Appliance and Electric Service, says he's worried he'll lose parking spaces in front of his business if the sidewalks are put in. "I don't have any place in the back where I can park cars. [Losing spaces out front] would be devastating to my business."

For now, there isn't any funding to do the things that Williams opposes. "There is no funding presently to put in any sidewalks in that area. I don't know why this has upset Mr. Williams so much," Faulkner says. "What he has done is take information saying we're going to limit turn-ins, take parking, and try to scare people to be against any sidewalks in there."

What is currently being worked on is extending sidewalks on the south side of Sutherland to UT's Married Student Housing, Young says. And the Third Creek Greenway is also being extended to Forest Park Boulevard.

Faulkner is working on three small learning parks on the greenway—a train park (with some railroad artifacts, signs and information about this area's rail history), a geological garden and a marsh and butterfly park behind the Bi-Lo.

—Joe Tarr

A New Battle at Fort Dickerson?
Neighborhood groups alarmed by proposals for development

On a recent Saturday at South Knoxville's Fort Dickerson park, bursts of second-hand light flash off the Sunsphere and shoot across the river and up through newly-hewn gaps in the kudzu that has mounted a more successful assault on this hill than the Confederate cavalry ever did. The artificial sunbursts are visible courtesy of the bushwhacking crew of Knoxville Police Department cadets who have volunteered (more or less) to spend a hot, sweaty day hacking their way through the dense growth that has overwhelmed the 85-acre city park and provided hidey-holes for furtive men seeking anonymous sex.

Via email, Mayor Victor Ashe describes Fort Dickerson as "a disaster scene welcomed primarily by deviants...short of stationing cameras around the clock and undercover police officers there, it seems to continue to attract persons who drive normal citizens away...it is a beautiful area...especially the rock quarry lake there which has incredibly pure water according to KUB tests..."

Members of several South Knoxville neighborhood groups labor down below the old Civil War earthenworks at the crown of the hill, filling truckloads of garbage bags with trash and debris. They are determined to take back the park, but several of them have a new worry on their minds. They're worried by word that the Ashe administration seeks to solve its Fort Dickerson problem with a plan to sell off part of the park for development by a for-profit institution called South College (formerly Knoxville Business College, now under new ownership). And they're angry that nobody has talked to them.

"What we, the neighborhood, would like to see is a bona fide, wheelchair-accessible overlook like you would see at Norris Dam, or in Chattanooga at the Bluff View Arts District," says Doug McDaniel, president of the Lindbergh Forest, Taliwa, Woodlawn Neighborhood Association and publisher of Restore Knoxville. "It would be awesome for tourists to be able to come up, get a full, cartographic map experience that illustrated the siege of Knoxville, and maybe have spyglasses where you could peek at different historical parts of Knoxville, from Bleak House to Fort Sanders. It's the best damn view of downtown Knoxville and the river front, and it's covered with kudzu. This is a number-one tourist attraction that doesn't cost $100 million. It just needs to be unveiled, and properly marketed by the tourist commission. That will get tourists up there and drive out the illicit drug and sexual activity at the park."

As for the potential private development, "We don't need it, don't want it," says Patti Berrier, who is a member of the Old Sevier neighborhood Steering Committee. "This is a historic area; one of the few Civil War sites left in Knoxville, and we need to preserve it."

Her friend, Diana Conn, is working alongside the roadway and is also foursquare against any plan to sell off any part of the park. "We need so much in South Knoxville," she says. "And this park could be a jewel if the city had shown any commitment to making it one." She observes that there are no restroom facilities at Fort Dickerson, which is connected to Chapman Highway by a narrow, poorly marked road that the neighborhood groups would like to see made more accessible by having it moved and aligned with the Woodlawn Pike intersection.

Down closer to Chapman Highway, another clot of KPD cadets are working in the parking area fronting a railed concrete platform that looks out over the brilliant blue waters of the abandoned Vulcan quarry down on the far side of Fort Dickerson hill.

Ashe says Development Director Leslie Henderson is "handling discussions " with potential developers Lawler Wood. "Whether anything will occur or not is unclear...I am firmly committed to preserving the Civil War earthworks as an education site...It has tremendous potential for park and educational uses including [S]outh [C]ollege....but it remains very unsettled as to whether anything positive will occur. This is the first time in 24 years that anyone has come forward with any credible idea on its use...it seems to me that a use which protects and promotes its history, allows for educational use along with greenways and park uses should be seriously explored and then I will decide whether to make any recommendation to [C]ouncil."

Developer Jon Lawler says it is the unique beauty of this site that got his firm interested in looking for ways to develop Fort Dickerson Park, which was donated to the city by the family of S.B. Luttrell in the late 1950s and whose historical sites are protected by H-1 overlay zoning. "In the whole development process, so much of your early time is spent just getting together with important people who can help you begin to think outside the box about things. And it's just such a different piece of property—many times we've looked at ourselves and said 'Goll-ee, this is so unique. It's going to take a lot of different entities working together.'"

Lawler Wood got involved last November. But Lawler says the planning "...goes as far back as when the city was looking for locations for the convention center and everybody was brainstorming. All kinds of stakeholders and important people in the process were getting together. We wanted people who would think outside the box, so to speak. At the same time, the Chamber Partnership was working with South College, looking for a campus-like atmosphere and we thought they would be a good user for the property. We wanted to identify a strong, positive presence to serve as the anchor and drive out a lot of the negative activities so the property will be seen as safe, approachable and usable."

Conn, Berrier and McDaniel wonder why representatives of their groups were not considered "important " enough to have been included in the Fort Dickerson plans.

Of the neighborhood groups, Lawler says "...their involvement is really critical. The second phase will be to identify the major stakeholders and involve them in the process—this thing is so much in its infancy."

—Betty Bean