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Seven Days

Wednesday, May 7
The rare "triumph of talent over politics" award for this year goes to the Dixie Chicks, who are roundly cheered in concert before 18,000-plus fans at Thompson Boling Arena. This despite lead singer Natalie Maines bringing boycotts and threats on the band over her pointed criticisms of the war in Iraq and "W" himself.

Friday, May 9
Knoxville-based H.T. Hackney chief Bill Sansom, the wholesale distributor of groceries and other items to convenience stores, says he's buying another distributor to make the company one of the nation's largest. We should be glad Hackney's located here. In the event of terrorist interference with the nation's food distribution system, we should be able to hang in there indefinitely on Moon Pies, Slim Jims, and beef jerky.

Saturday, May 10
UT President John Shumaker announces that Mike Hamilton, an assistant director of athletics at UT, will be elevated to athletic director following a nationwide search for a successor to Doug Dickey. The nationwide search, Shumaker fails to point out, consisted of Dickey and UT Trustee Jim Haslam looking over a U.S. map on Haslam's office wall and telling the prez that Hamilton was their guy.

Monday, May 12
It's revealed that the Knox County Sheriff will try out new, sophisticated digital-photo technology that can pick a single face from a crowd and identify the person. It should be invaluable in picking out fugitives and other social undesirables, according to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who says it will not intrude on the privacy of any good Americans. County executive spokesman Mike Cohen agrees, in substance.

Tuesday, May 13
Tennessee lawmaking committees of both houses approve and send to a vote legislation that would tie limits on PAC contributions to the Consumer Price Index. We've maintained all along that inflation has meant it costs more every year for PACs to buy the candidates of their choice.

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:
Ahhhhhhhh. That's better. Good Knoxville, good Knoxville. Knoxville Found is back in business. We had several responses to last week's photo, including from old favorites like Rob Frost and Wes Morgan. But first to correctly identify the arched entrance to the 1903 Ely Building at 406 W. Church Ave. was Bob Thompson of Knoxville. (By the way, although Ross Fowler used to occupy the building, we understand it's now vacant. Anybody interested in office space in a great old building?) For getting Knoxville Found up and running again, Bob deserves something special. So his prize is a mood-revealing refrigerator magnet sent from the "LRE for Life Project, © 1994 Creative Therapy Associates, Inc." We have no idea what that means or when we got it, but it sure looks nifty. Congrats, Bob. And thanks...from the bottom of the editorial prize stash.

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

KNOXVILLE UTILITIES BOARD
Thursday, May 15
11a.m.
Miller's Bldg.
KUB Board Room
445 S. Gay St.
Regular meeting.

EMPOWERMENT ZONE OPPORTUNITIES WORKSHOP
Tuesday, May 20,
8:30-11:30 a.m.
TVA Towers
Auditorium (lobby level of the West Tower)
400 W. Summit Hill Dr.
Workshop for small businesses, commercial lenders, accountants to businesses, technical providers to businesses, tax attorneys, entrepreneurs, and the general public. Register at 251-5302 or e-mail.

Dog Days on The Square
Renovation of Market Square drags on into summer

When the city fenced off Market Square last fall for renovations, the hope was that the work could be finished in time for the Dogwood Arts Festival in April. Or at least in time to host the Sundown in the City concert series.

But halfway into May the fence remains and the square is still filled with dirt, gravel, diesel exhaust-spewing trackhoes and men in hardhats. A completion date is at least two months away and it might not come until the end of summer.

The contractor, Cardinal Construction, and public officials say the delays were unavoidable, as KUB and the city administration decided to upgrade all the utilities and East Tennessee was drenched with rain. They also say the extra work will be well worth it once the square is finished.

But some merchants are tired of the work, which they say is hurting business.

"I just feel like they should be working around the clock right now," says Mahasti Vafaie, owner of the Tomato Head. "They don't work late, they don't work weekends. I know that's more expensive, but let's get this show on the road.

"If you see construction that involves a road closing or a water main break, you'll see them working through the night," she adds.

Vafaie estimates Tomato Head's regular business has been off by about 15 percent. Plus, she's lost the boon that the Sundown in the City concert series delivered every Thursday night.

Charles Jetter, owner of Gus's, says his business is down by at about 40 percent since November. "I'm really hurtin'," he says.

"They close the sidewalk off half of the time. This is not what people want to have to deal with. The ladies in high heels don't want to walk through this," Jetter says, pointing to the gravel that's replaced a section of sidewalk near his front door.

Jetter says he's also lost a good chunk of his take-out customers and the business from the Sundown in the City. He sent a letter to the city asking to be subsidized for the some of his loss, but the request was denied.

Cardinal Construction—whose president, Brian Conley, recently bought Metro Pulse, and is also a partner in Kinsey Probasco Associates in the Market Square Redevelopment Project—is reluctant to say when the work will be finished. Jason DeBord, Cardinal's project manager, says the delays were caused by a number of things.

Nobody knew for certain what they'd find once they started digging up the square, because it's so old. There were plans to replace the water pipes, but once the excavation was underway, KUB and the city decided to replace all the utilities and storm drains. And they decided to put utility boxes in front of every building.

"If a restaurant decided to go into the Watson's Building, for example, they'd have those utilities at their front door," DeBord says. "It's contemplating future development at that place without having to dig down."

"The utility work has delayed the project immensely, but it was a good decision," he adds.

Kevin DuBose, deputy development director for the city, says the extra utility worked added $800,000 to the $8 million project, but was well worth it. "The real beneficiaries are going to be the Market Square building owners. They can promise tenants new utilities and we don't have to worry about a breach in the new floor," he says.

The utility work—which Cardinal subcontracted to another company—is meticulous, DeBord says. They're using high-grade HDPE pipe, which must be fused together. And city and KUB inspectors closely monitor all the work. "It's been very frustrating. They dig and encounter something, and you have to get engineers from the city and KUB to look at it and see how they're going to work at it.... They have to satisfy a lot of people," DeBord says. "Speed isn't necessarily the best attribute for this kind of work."

The subcontractor has added a second crew and pipe-fusing machine to speed things along, he says. Asked why the company isn't working more on weekends, DeBord says, "They have worked on weekends when possible. We've had crews fusing pipe together six days a week for at least a month and a half."

But many merchants haven't noticed much activity. "I just don't see much progress in that hole," Jetter says. "It would be nice if they would put this into high gear and get it done."

Dan Tiller, chief development officer for KCDC, which is managing Market Square redevelopment for the city, says once the utility work is done, progress will be much more noticeable. "The floor will go down relatively quickly," he says.

The high amount of rain has also slowed the project to a crawl. "When you're underground working, you can't do much in clay in wet weather," Tiller says.

DuBose says the city has been happy with the contractors so far. "We've put some very strict requirements on the developer and the contractor. They can't work during lunch hours," he says. "Another requirement is they have to maintain access to all the businesses all the time. We're cracking the whip... And we're trying to make sure they're staying on their time line as much as possible."

Bernadette West, co-owner of the Preservation Pub and several other buildings on Market Square (which are undergoing their own renovations), says she understands the delay. "I just look forward to the day when it's done. It would be open right now if we hadn't had all that really bad weather," she says.

For now, it seems anyone's guess as to when Market Square will be open again. "You ask any of the guys working and they'll tell you August or September," Jetter says.

Cardinal Construction wouldn't give an expected date, but Tiller says, "The latest we have from our construction superintendent is the middle to the end of July."

"We're not giving out an exact date," DuBose says. "I've just been saying late summer." But, then he later added that he hoped the Square would be ready enough for Shakespeare in the Park in late July. "I don't know that [the square] will be exactly perfect by then," he says.

—Joe Tarr

Library Innuendoes
Speculation remains rife on system's future

Last Wednesday, after some short delays and a sunset amendment, Gov. Phil Bredesen signed Sen. Ben Atchley's Senate Bill 859. The unusual bill, now an act, gives unprecedented governing authority over the 19-branch, 240-employee Knox County Public Library System to the county executive. Because the act expires in less than three years, the only beneficiary of the new power may be Mike Ragsdale.

At first, some library allies cheered legislation to strip the ungainly board, blamed for last year's mishandling of the library-director search, of its authority. But in recent months, fueled by the fact that librarians on a statewide level voiced objection to Atchley's bill on philosophical grounds, and by suspicions of Ragsdale's long-term intentions for the library, many have turned against it. "We wanted the board changed, but we wanted the same process to be there," says Jim Ullrich, retired printer and library supporter, one of several who are uneasy with the prospect of the library becoming a department of county government.

Several librarians are also miffed at statements from Ragsdale's office that the county executive can run the library more efficiently and improve their electronic information systems. Librarians, who have prided themselves on their efficiency, insist that their computer systems, which access international databases, are already more sophisticated than the county's.

Moreover, many librarians, who say they've been warned against speaking to reporters, seem increasingly alienated from Ragsdale, and wary of his long-term goals. The concern is that Ragsdale intends to economize by combining the public libraries with public schools, parks, or senior-citizens' centers. And for weeks, rumors have been rife that one on the short list of seven directorial candidates, Mary Johns of Chandler, Ariz., was Ragsdale's hand-picked favorite for the post.

Those rumors didn't ease when, after telephone interviews, the search committee this week announced a shorter list of three finalists: Thomas Strange, of LaCrosse, Wisc.; L.J. Frank, of suburban Chicago; and Mary Johns. They'll be interviewed in person in the next few days.

Search committee chairman Steve Roberts denies that they've gotten any pressure from the Ragsdale administration—"No one on Ragsdale's staff has said the first word to us," he says—and insists that the process would make such meddling impossible.

Some library supporters were concerned to learn that Johns was in town as a consultant for the Public Building Authority on the Powell school-library proposal—an unusual combination project, since shelved. They see a Johns administration as precedent to a future libraries/schools consolidation.

Ragsdale spokesman Mike Cohen denies categorically rumors that the county means to combine the public library and the school system. "A school is a different animal than a public library," he says.

Cohen says that soon, as the search committee meets with library-director candidates, the county executive will meet for the first time with Knox County librarians in hopes of putting some fears at ease. Cohen acknowledges that the county can't handle all the library's systems better. "Obviously, there are some specialized things to the library system that they can do better than the county can," he says. "We're looking at the basic use of technology—e-mail, the internet—that the county can help with, at no expense to the library. Up to now, they've been outsourcing them. We'd like to give librarians knoxcounty.org e-mail addresses."

Cohen adds that county authority might also improve maintenance of buildings and grounds.

Librarians privately report that previous experiments in combining systems with the county's have failed, and that other cost-cutting consolidations could be made without radical restructuring of the library's authority.

Cohen adamantly denies related rumors that the county has any "favorite" among the seven finalists for the directorship. "I can absolutely personally guarantee you that Ragsdale hasn't even looked at the list of names," says Cohen. "I don't think Ragsdale knows any of these people." He says the executive has faith in personnel specialist Frances Fogerson, and is content to leave the matter up to her and the search committee.

How will the county's plans for a new county/library collaboration weather the 2006 sunset clause added by Bredesen? "We're not terribly focused on 2006," says Cohen. "We're focused on making the library system more efficient, and a positive asset to Knox County. "Once again," Cohen adds, "I'm happy to deny the rumors that we have all these evil intentions with the libraries."

Ullrich remains skeptical of the county's new governance. "It's gonna give us a number of problems. And it's gonna give the county executive a number of problems he's gonna wish he didn't have."

—Jack Neely