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Seven Days

Wednesday, September 11
It's September 11. Think, reflect, hope.

Thursday, September 12
A couple hundred angry protesters rally to protest the state's selection of the Orange Route for the Interstate beltway around Knoxville. A host of Vol fans threatens to break up the anti-Orange rally, but they are held at bay by an impromptu gathering of SEC football officials.
A report from the governor's office declares that Tennessee is lagging behind the nation in the development of biotechnology. That's because a lot of Tenneseans thought "biotech" referred to the sensitive subject of incest.
An MPC-generated plan to control cellular telephone tower locations nearly bogs down over the question, posed by an attorney, of the definition of a "ridge." Uh, this is Knoxville. Look around.

Friday, September 13
A proposal advanced by new County Exec Mike Ragsdale to revise and expand the search for a new library director fails to gain initial approval by the library board for lack of a second. Who do the board members think Ragsdale is, Carlene Malone?

Saturday, September 14
TVA defends its plans to sublease Nashville office space it doesn't need at a loss of $4.3 million over five years in order to save $4.8 million over five years. The question: Does the $300,000 difference go into the pension account of former TVA Chairman Craven Crowell, who ordered up the Nashville offices?

Sunday, September 15
A train wreck in West Knox County forces evacuations of thousands of residents, fleeing a sulfuric acid cloud. Nobody points out that your everyday acid rain cloud, which is decimating the Great Smoky Mountains' forests, is the daily equivalent of a train wreck.

Tuesday, September 17
Work gets underway on a condo development in Maplehurst near Neyland Stadium to cater to the whims of football fans seeking luxury accommodations on home-game weekends. Finally, an appropriate place for the term "Vol-halla."

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:
Last week's photo got a few wrong guesses and a few correct answers. The funky car image (which, for some unknown reason, makes us think of the Grateful Dead song "Truckin'") is on the wall of a combination Texaco/Wendy's on Northshore near the north-bound off-ramp from Pellissippi Parkway. Its purpose to us is as mysterious as the corporate impulse to meld gas and ground beef into one saleable image. Cristin Roettger of Knoxville, who lives out that way, was first to correctly identify the photo. To honor Cristin's serendipity, we offer up a "Genuine Asleep at the Wheel Brand Smelly Tree Ornament." Its instructions indicate that "when the holidays have passed, hang your tree ornament in the Buick." Well, the holidays are long passed, so we hope Cristin has a Buick in which to hang her smelly tree ornament. (The scent is Royal Pine®, by the way.)

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

TVA OPEN HOUSE
Thursday, Sept. 19
5-8 p.m.
Bearden High School
8352 Kingston Pike
TVA seeks public input on a proposed deed modification that allows the sale of three land tracts on Fort Loudoun Reservoir.

COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday, Sept. 23
2-7 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular monthly meeting.

LIBRARY BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Monday, September 23
5 p.m.
Meeting Room
Lawson McGhee Library
500 W. Church Ave.
Regularly scheduled meeting.

KNOX HERITAGE PUBLIC INPUT MEETINGS
Wednesday, Sept. 25
3-4:30 p.m.
Professional Development and Technology Center
801 Tipton Ave.
5:30-7 p.m.
Dogwood Elementary School
705 Tipton Ave.
Share opinions and ideas on the future of historic South High School.

KNOX AREA TRANSIT CITIZENS' ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Thursday, Sept. 26
1 p.m.
Downstairs Meeting Room
Lawson McGhee Library
500 W. Church Ave.
Regular monthly meeting.

Big Business
Knoxville entrepreneurs create a haven for the big-boned

Knoxville, not usually known as a trendsetting town, may earn that title with the creation of a nightclub designed especially for overweight people.

A firm called MK Ventures, LLC has purchased a building at 9246 Park West Blvd., near Cedar Bluff Road, and plans to open a club there in mid-October. Although the idea of a "plus-sized" clothing store is not unusual, Sugar Plum's may well be the first entertainment venue targeting the overweight to open east of the Mississippi. Big Beautiful Women, a social organization for full-figured females and their friends, hosts weekly dance parties in a Georgia hotel. But they do not own and operate their own club.

"Right now [large women] are having to travel to Atlanta to find a venue they feel comfortable in," Sugar Plum's manager Jim Birch says. "[At regular clubs] they're hesitant to get on the dance floor, hesitant to get involved in contests."

One similar business that Birch is aware of is Club Curves of Los Angeles, which its owner calls "the only full-time, permanent nightclub [for overweight people] in the world." The club is designed for "full-figured women, and all of the men who like them," according to its website.

"The regular club environment does not want them," Club Curves president and CEO Shadoe Gray says. "We have faced years of discrimination. What we're trying to do is put it in society's face, the same way the first gay bars have."

Birch says Sugar Plum's will cater to men and women, but he sees women's concerns as the driving force.

"Men truthfully are not as concerned as women," he says. "As a large guy, I don't go in and think about how small other men are."

Sugar Plum's will feature a happy hour with live entertainment from 5 to 8 p.m., and a DJ playing current and retro hits from 9 o'clock onwards. The cover charge will be $3 from 8 p.m. until closing time. An experienced chef, new to the Knoxville area, is developing a menu of sandwiches and other items that would be served in the nightclub's 125-seat space, Birch says. He says he is currently pursuing beer and liquor licenses, and he plans to open a games room.

Gray says her venture has been successful, with lines snaking out the door many nights, and she plans to open a "flagship" branch in Las Vegas within the next year. Future locations also include San Diego and New York, and more than 900 people have expressed interest in opening, operating or investing in franchises throughout the United States and the world, she says. Memphis is on the list of cities that she is considering, but Knoxville isn't.

"There will be those who like—what did you say their name was, Sugar Plum's?—those who try to do the same thing [we did] without six years of research and several years experience," she said with a nervous laugh. "I wish them luck."

Birch does have previous experience operating nightclubs, including Uncle Sam's, a 27,000-foot disco he opened in 1975; the University Club on the Cumberland strip and Impressions Supper Club, both open in the 1980s; and Reunions Restaurant and Bar, open in the late 1990s.

While Birch aims to create a welcoming atmosphere for the heavyset, he says the thin will not be turned away.

If Sugar Plum's catches on, it wouldn't be the first successful business in Tennessee that targets the overweight. In 1960, a Memphis woman named Catherine Weaver started a clothing store for the overweight. Today, Catherine's Stores Corp. has more than 400 locations, most of them in mall locations (including West Town Mall).

—Tamar Wilner

Agee Park at Last?

Memorial to Knoxville's Pulitzer-prize winner on its way

A longtime dream of local musician/poet R.B. Morris and artist Eric Sublett may soon be realized. With the blessing of the James Agee Trust and the buy-in of major players such as the University of Tennessee, the city of Knoxville, and the East Tennessee Foundation, Agee devotees like Sublett and Morris are one step closer to getting an Agee Park on the corner of James Agee Street and Laurel Avenue (currently a UT-owned surface parking lot). Sublett, who, with Morris, is a member of the Agee Park steering committee, says, "A year from now, UT's parking garage on 11th Street will be done, and they're going to tear up the asphalt and sow grass [on the site of the proposed park].... The University of Tennessee [will own] the property, and the city of Knoxville is going to maintain the property."

Kimberly Chamberlain, an urban planner at UT and another member of the steering committee, sees this as a fitting tribute to the Pulitzer-prize winning author who lived in Fort Sanders as a child. "How often do you get to take an asphalt parking lot here and turn it into a green space?" she asks rhetorically. "That's why we're so excited about this. We can finally be proud as Knoxvillians that we're doing something to honor James Agee."

These developments are confirmed by UT Vice President Phil Scheurer, Director of City Administration Ellen Adcock, and Paul Sprecher, trustee of the Agee estate.

According to a letter from Sprecher to Jon Coddington, an architecture professor at UT and member of the park's steering committee, the James Agee Trust "is fully supportive of [the] use of the James Agee name in whatever activities are required to make the park a reality."

"This has been on the drawing board for a long time, and it's still in the beginning stages," says Adcock. "Lawyers are writing up the legal document for ownership, maintenance, and public service. And this is not just the city and UT. Lots of organizations are involved, and I think it will be a better project because of it."

Scheurer acknowledges that work is ongoing on the legal agreement between the city and the university, and adds that UT is committed to reverting the parking lot to green space. "We're confident that this group can raise the funds to develop the park," Scheurer says. "But, once our parking garage is completed next August, [the parking lot] will become green space, regardless."

To begin raising funds, the agreement between the city and the university and the involvement of the East Tennessee Foundation was critical, says Sublett. "We couldn't raise any money until we had all those entities on board. As of [the steering committee meeting] Aug. 5, we've had all those groups in."

Terry Holley, vice president of programs and rural development for the East Tennessee Foundation, explains that the foundation will act as the nonprofit entity for the park, as well as set up the fund into which park donations will be placed. After these are collected, the Foundation will disburse them as a grant. Holley says, "We hope we could eventually find [an individual or organization] that could set up an endowment for the continuing maintenance and operation of the park."

Agee Park steering committee member Morris says, "There are some people and organizations who have said they are interested in donating to an Agee Park, and now we can get that process going soon."

Indeed, it appears the arrangements could not have been more timely. When Saturday's Agee Amble (see this week's Ear to the Ground) stopped at the Preservation Pub on Market Square, owners Bernadette and Scott West and Gregg White announced that the pub would donate $5,000 to the park fund. Says White, "Culturally, Agee is the most significant figure to come out of Knoxville. And a cornerstone of our business is helping the community culturally, so we thought this would be a great way to contribute."

Perhaps a positive Agee vibe is going around: Another member of the park steering committee, UT English Prof. Michael Lofaro, who chaired an Agee conference here in 1988, has been selected to edit a new volume of Agee's Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, A Death in the Family. He's only just begun to work with the Agee Trust on it, "so we can't really project a release date, though I'm hoping for 2005." In comparison with the first version, Lofaro says the new edition "will be substantially different. We're trying to get closer to Agee's original intent." Among others, changes will include "adding three new sections, and reordering some of the existing text."

Meanwhile, the park steering committee will continue to meet. Vice President Scheurer has invited the steering committee to a working luncheon Oct. 1 related to the park's development.

Regarding future development of the park, Morris and Sublett make a point of saying that there is no design as yet, and they will be working with other committee members and continuing to gather community input on it. According to Sublett, their only desire is for the park to "physically... create [a sense of] continuance that will hopefully hold together the center of Fort Sanders in a historical and permanent way."

—Scott McNutt