Metro Pulse/Citybeat

Comment
on this story

Seven Days

Wednesday, July 31
County Executive-elect Mike Ragsdale confirms on the day before the election that he'll hire Mike Cohen as his communications director. Does that leave any doubt that Ragsdale wants to bring warring elements of county government together? Cohen has been the full-time spokesperson for both Mayor Ashe and Knox County Schools.

Thursday, August 1
Sheriff Tim Hutchison beats challenger Jim Andrews by a narrow margin in the county election. Maybe he should hire Mike Cohen too.
The News-Sentinel runs a huge sports page picture of new Florida football coach and former UT assistant Ron Zook autographing what appears to be either a football or the Vols' 2002 playbook.

Friday, August 2
High winds rake the state, knocking out power and felling trees. It wasn't really weather-related. It was the effect of the Republicans trying to show unity after the bitter primary election.
Saturday, August 3
The Tennessee Valley Fair announces that this year's themes will be patriotism and education. Somebody should tell the Fair it's too late to run for governor or senator or County Commission or the school board or...

Sunday, August 4)
The Metro Pulse slow-pitch softball team drubbed Tomato Head 20-19 in withering heat before a crowd of 11 wildly cheering fans. Editor-player- manager J.F. "Jesse da Fox" Mayshark cracked a two-out, walk-off single in the bottom of the 10th inning to drive in the winning run. Mayshark is exercising his free-agency and heading to Noo Yawk next month. Say it ain't so, Jess.

Monday, August 5
A state dye test shows that a contaminated sinkhole in South Knoxville definitely feeds into local waterways. City officials ask the state for clearer definitions of technical terms like "sinkhole," "contaminated," "dye," "water" and "South Knoxville."

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:
Who says the meat-packing industry doesn't appreciate fine art? Possibly nobody, but if somebody ever does, Travis Meats, Inc., will easily refute that assertion. Last week's Knoxville Found, a stylized relief sculpture of a bull, adorns the side of Travis's plant on Clinton Highway in Powell. Not to imply that crop circles and cattle mutilations are connected, but this week's prize is "The Signs Survival Guide," which comes complete with a sheet of tinfoil-wrapped cardboard to prevent the aliens from reading your mind. Of course, if this week's winner, Linda Gray of Knoxville (she claims), happens to be one of the "gray" aliens UFOlogists say have visited us, we'll be giving away our only hope of survival...

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

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Thursday, Aug. 8
1:30 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Historic zoning overlay for the Sprankle Building is on the agenda, again. (Unless it gets postponed, again.)

KNOXVILLE REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION PLANNING ORGANIZATION
Friday, Aug. 8
10 a.m.
Maryville City Council Chambers
400 W. Broadway
Maryville
TPO Executive Board meeting.

KNOX COUNTY ELECTION COMMISSION
Monday, Aug. 12
4:30 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Room 327
400 Main St.
Certification of election results will be conducted.

A Near Miss
That's what the Junior Olympics are giving the downtown

Convention center promoters justified its construction as a way to rejuvenate downtown and touted the AAU Junior Olympics as the second-biggest attraction on the KCC schedule. But 10 days into the games, several downtown restaurateurs and merchants feel as if the event has left them at the starting block.

Pete Natour and his family operate the two closest restaurants to the convention center, both of them less than two blocks from the Hilton. Pete's Cafe, on Locust, welcomes the athletes with a big banner. Both diners usually sees a good lunch crowd, but Natour says, as far as AAU tourists, "We haven't seen anybody." He's heard that a Sevierville caterer is serving them overpriced breakfasts, lunches, and dinners on site.

Something a lot of Knoxvillians didn't gather when they heard about the triumphs of the new convention center, and its role in landing this year's Junior Olympics, is that most of the events weren't to be held in the downtown area.

The alleged 35,000 visitors haven't been conspicuous. In a couple of embarrassing situations downtown last weekend, Junior Olympians were outnumbered by reporters looking for them. But we thought they might be worth the trouble of a search, just to get their impressions. Once we found them, impressions were generally positive.

Pauline Chavez just arrived at the Holiday Inn with her family of four; they're going to be here the whole week. They drove in from Belton, Texas, for the tae kwon do events. They've just been looking at the textured-concrete waterfall that cascades beside the stairway. "That's really, really beautiful," she says. "My husband said, 'I bet you it looks great at night.'" They're going to come back to have a look.

Her first impression was of traffic on I-40. She says when they tried to change lanes, people actually made room for their car to merge. "That really shocked me," she says. "They don't do that in Texas."

When we caught up with the Johnny and Faylene Cook family from Vero Beach, Fla., they'd been here for about 24 hours. Son Johnny Jr., a teenager, just got out of a karate competition. He came in eighth in his first match, but seemed pleased with his standing, and had higher hopes for another competition the next day. The Cooks are generally impressed with the convention center. "I think it's beautiful," Mrs. Cook says. Her less-effusive husband allows, "It's very clean." Johnny Jr. is annoyed that the lights flickered off and on during his match, but said it was generally a nicer, though somewhat smaller, facility than his last national competition in Salt Lake City.

His father adds that their hotel, the Hilton, is more convenient to the convention center than some places they've visited. He likes the looks of the city. "It's a nice-looking town," he says, gesturing toward the YMCA. "I like the brick buildings."

Johnny Jr.'s especially fond of the Chocolate Factory, which they found only by exploring on foot. He asks what there is for kids his age to do downtown; it's a tough one.

Faylene expresses some frustration at not knowing much about the town, where to go for restaurants and entertainment. She's specifically disappointed in the goody bag they got when they registered. "There was not a lot in it," she says. "There was nothing about the downtown."

Johnny Jr. makes fun of its scant contents. "A sandal. A magazine. A shirt," he says. The closest thing to a restaurant guide, they said, was some Domino's coupons. To find out where to go for a meal, they had to ask around. None of them has heard of the Old City.

Some participants arrive in teams of rowdy teenagers. An Olds Silhouette cruises down Clinch Avenue. Painted on the windows, Just-Married style, are the phrases Lake Erie Jr. Olympic Wrestling Team, and Flash Us.

However, most of the visitors seem to be here in families. This past weekend, the most family-oriented event downtown was at Volunteer Landing. Alongside the usual attractions of restaurants, a gift shop, the riverboat and the train ride, there was also a creditable outdoor arts and crafts festival that's a good deal more interesting than most, with live entertainment, pot throwers and face-painters. It was probably the most family-friendly attraction downtown last weekend, but few Junior Olympians made it down.

A conductor on the Three Rivers Rambler reported they'd gotten only a few Junior Olympics riders all weekend, maybe 15 or 20 a day. The people running the booths said they hadn't noticed any significant tourist presence. Crowds were small, they said, and overwhelmingly Knoxvillian.

One exception was Steve Toombs, a Junior-Olympic father from Rosemont, Minn. Toombs was down with his daughter, Laura, a Pentathlete, and they said information in their complimentary package directed them down to Volunteer Landing. "We've decided we like waterfronts," says the prairie dweller. "It's our first time in Knoxville. It's beautiful. It's a really pretty town."

Though he admits that "we weren't quite prepared for the heat," he adds, "Our only regret is that we have to leave tomorrow."

A couple of families from Louisville, Neb., are staying at the Hilton; we caught them as they escorted three girls to a trolley stop. "Coming into a big city like this, with 15,000 athletes, this huge of a thing, has been, wow." One mother raves. "I'm impressed." They've been here for three days, but haven't seen the convention center. They say they've had a hard time finding places open downtown for dinner (they've walked around Gay Street and Church, and once ate at Chopsticks, but seem unfamiliar with Market Square, Volunteer Landing and the Old City), and have been doing most of their dining on Cumberland Avenue, especially at the Smoothie King.

Back at the convention center, what will be the adjacent park is a broken landscape of red clay, with piles of large white pipes. It won't be finished until sometime next year. Peering over the rail of the newly widened Clinch Avenue viaduct are three adults with four young children. A man is pointing out to various spots over the dirt landscape of an old World's Fair, as if maybe he knows it from long ago. One daddy says to another, "While we're here, we need to go to the Lost Sea," he says, in a Northern accent. "Because when are we going to be in Knoxville again?" The other man answers with condemning cheerfulness, "Never."

—Jack Neely

Up a Tree
Market Square plans take woodland detour

At a public meeting Monday night to discuss redesign plans for Market Square, two things became apparent: the biggest sticking point for critics of the plan is the future of six trees at the south end of the Square; and nobody seems sure what's supposed to happen next or who's supposed to do it.

"It's a pretty complex issue," muses David Dewhirst, a major Square property owner and a partner in the Kinsey Probasco development team that is redesigning the Square's public space. "Who's in charge? Well, there's a lot of different parties that play a role."

The tree furor revolves around Kinsey Probasco's proposal to remove a half-dozen sawtooth oaks from the south end of the Square, along with a handful of maples from the center, and replace them with linear rows of trees down either side of the entire Square. Property owners and Kinsey Probasco's design team say the new landscaping would improve sightlines and make the Square easier to navigate from side to side. They also note that it would increase the actual number of trees on the Square by 50 percent.

But some vocal tree preservationists insist the current trees—planted sometime after the historic Market House was torn down in the early 1960s—should stay.

"Those trees create a sense of place," says Kim Davis, a North Knoxville resident and historic preservation enthusiast. "It's a place a lot of people enjoy. At Sundown in the City shows, I see families, I see hippies [laughs] sitting under those trees, playing under those trees, enjoying that place. Any day during lunch, you can see people escaping the urban landscape and escaping the sun, sitting under those trees, having lunch under those trees, enjoying that place. That's important."

The tree controversy came to a head Monday shortly before Kinsey Probasco's meeting, when Mayor Victor Ashe's office released a statement from Ashe asking the developers "to take a second look at the old trees..." Ashe was responding to concerns raised by the Knoxville Tree Board, which encouraged saving the six sawtooth oaks as well as 10 willow oaks along Market Street also slated for removal in the Kinsey Probasco plan.

(Although no one would say so for the record, Ashe's last-minute reconsideration created considerable consternation among Kinsey Probasco supporters. As recently as last week, the mayor was telling people—including reporters—that he had no problems with the plan. Compounding the confusion was the fact that Ashe was out of town Monday on one of his frequent travels.)

In June, City Council approved a contract with Kinsey Probasco for development of Market Square and Krutch Park. Work on the public spaces began with a two-day "charrette" (a public design session) in late June. More than 100 property owners, architects and interested citizens participated in the brainstorming. The plan presented Monday, which includes extending Krutch Park eastward to Gay Street and replacing the Market Square pavilion with a smaller permanent stage, drew on those ideas.

The removal of the trees was debated extensively at the charrette. "I'm the one that asked the question, 'Is there any way to keep the trees?'" Dewhirst says. "At the end of the night, after all the discussion, I became convinced that the best thing to do is the way the plan is now."

But with objections raised and the mayor's voice in the mix, the problem now is that no one seems to know who has the authority to approve or disapprove Kinsey Probasco's plans. The developers are technically under contract with Knoxville's Community Development Corporation (KCDC), which is in turn under contract with the city.

Dewhirst says, "I think KCDC has to approve the concept plan before construction can start."

But Bill Lyons, the chairman of KCDC's board who shepherded the Market Square plan through a series of public meetings last year and early this year, says, "I think right now, [Kinsey Probasco] are funded.... I don't really think technically Kinsey is required to get anybody's approval for anything."

And even if the developers do present their plan to KCDC, Lyons says they can expect approval. He said he and KCDC executive director Alvin Nance are "completely on the same page" with Kinsey Probasco. "We're completely happy with what they're doing."

On the other hand, Lyons says the developers will probably feel compelled to address the mayor's concerns. "If the client isn't happy, legalisms aside, this whole process isn't going to work."

Dewhirst agrees. He was planning to meet with other members of the Kinsey Probasco team on Wednesday.

"We've basically been given an instruction to go and do an alternative plan," Dewhirst says. "So I think that's what we're going to do.... We need to look at it both ways and put down to the best of our knowledge the advantages and disadvantages of both plans."

But he's concerned about bogging down the project in revisions. Kinsey Probasco hopes to have the public space completely revamped by next April. "We could spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with a different landscape plan that could suck a lot of attention away from the zillion other things we're supposed to be doing," Dewhirst says. "Just wait until we get into the facade [design] issue. It'll make the six trees look like toothpicks."

He adds, "I guess we're going to find the future interesting."

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

Hello, Mary Lou
Consultants help Horner back to office

After the May elections, there wasn't a local political pundit in town betting on Mary Lou Horner to win another term as occupant of County Commission's 7th District Seat A. Common wisdom was that the preternaturally-sassy Horner's days in office were numbered. Her longtime seatmate, Leo Cooper (7th District Seat B), had been defeated in the Republican primary, while Horner squeaked out a narrow primary victory over two novice opponents (one of whom illustrated his property rights platform by allowing pigs to run loose in the yard of his Maynardville highway business). She lost her home precinct at Halls and, taken together, Horner's opponents outpolled her. The winds of change were blowing, and Horner was in danger of being blown away.

To make her situation even more precarious, her Democratic opponent, Mary Lou Kanipe, looked strong coming out of an uncontested primary. The Bearden High School principal was an articulate, attractive candidate who was supported by the education establishment and seemed poised to exploit some of the perceived weaknesses of the flamboyant incumbent, who has never been shy about offering opinions on a wide range of topics. Horner was a decided underdog in the Battle of the Mary Lous.

But between May and August, Horner tried something new—professional campaign help. Enter Louis "Tripper" Lowentritt and Shawn Steadman, a.k.a. Lowe & Tritt. Until a couple of years ago, these two young marketing specialists had concentrating on selling corporate imagery for retailers—Sew-n-Vac, Ross Furniture, Blue Ridge Mountain Sports. Two years ago, however, they took on their first political campaign and devised a media strategy for Mike Moyers, who was running for Knox County Law Director. Moyers won, and his campaign got noticed.

One of those who paid attention was Scott "Scoobie" Moore, who had run unsuccessfully for the state House of Representatives that year. When Moore decided to make a run against Leo Cooper this year, he called Lowe & Tritt, who came up with a campaign built around the slogan "A fresh start." It was designed to turn Moore's relative youth and inexperience into an asset in his race against the seasoned veteran Cooper, who is the Commission chairman and a longtime small-business owner and educator. The Lowe & Tritt strategy worked, and Horner and her supporters got the message.

Some politicos winced at Horner's unorthodox royal blue yard signs featuring a brassy, Lucy Ricardo-ish caricature topped off with a shock of flaming red hair and the slogan "Honk for Horner."

"We didn't run your typical old-time political campaign," says Steadman, who concentrates on the graphic design elements of the job and came up with the laughing head. "We treated Mary Lou as a brandable image. She is a true character, and we took advantage of that. We pointed out the positives. She represents her district well and does it with style and vigor."

Like attorneys who can argue either side of an issue with equal fervor, Steadman and Lowentritt switched over to defend one 7th District incumbent in the general election after toppling another in the primary. In May, they were selling change. In August, they sold an incumbent with a long track record and a highly identifiable persona. On election night, they were feeling very little pain. They also represented state Rep. Steve Buttry, who fended off a strong primary challenge, and Wendell Hall, who was defeated in his run for the 19th District state House seat. Lowe & Tritt batted .750 this season, and may well be heard from again before the year is out.

On Monday after the Aug. 1 election, a wordless message appeared in the front section of the Knoxville News-Sentinel. It was the grinning, red-headed full-color cartoon caricature of the face of Mary Lou Horner that had adorned her campaign literature and her "Honk for Horner" yard signs. Only there was one difference—this Horner head was winking.

—Betty Bean