Letters to the editor:
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Under Our Noses

Knoxville started out as a major trade center in the early days of steam locomotive commerce. There's no reason that our city cannot once again become a major trade center...on a global basis now. A lot of people's hopes and dreams for Knoxville and this region can start coming true if we will just make it happen. I have been incessantly proposing a way to make it happen since last June.

Jack Neely's article ["A Stroll in the Park," Citybeat, May 1] provided an occasion for me to take a really serious second look at all the details of the imminent World's Fair Park renovations. As a result, I have repented of the notion that the only logical place for the proposed Knoxville International Trade Plaza & Festive Mall is directly in "the back yard" of the Convention Center and the soon-to-be-renovated Holiday Inn World's Fair. The renovated Court of Flags, with its flags of the 22 countries that participated in the 1982 World's Fair, provides us with a living list of the first 22 nations that should be invited to come back to Knoxville as exhibitors in the anticipated International Trade Plaza & Festive Mall.

As a permanent anchor attraction for downtown Knoxville, the International Trade Plaza & Festive Mall will meet the essential requirement that Mr. Edward Baker of Executive Hotel Management articulated last October in a letter to Victor Ashe. It will help us "...create a desire to visit [Knoxville] and to experience the uniqueness of [our city.]" It will be an attraction of worldwide appeal...to nations, corporations, conventioneers, tourists, and "locals" as well. The Trade Plaza & Festive Mall project also meets the criteria for a successful destination attraction that I first articulated last June: unique in all the world, and simultaneously intuitive to Knoxville and nowhere else. So where, now, you ask? State Street perhaps...and/or the south shore of the river. Water taxis are a really cool way to get where you need to be over water.

If I have repented of a mistaken notion about where the Knoxville International Trade Plaza & Festive Mall should be built, perhaps now several other potential key players will also repent of their initial resistance to the project. After all, y'all are not insane.

You can trace the evolution and rationale for the Knoxville International Trade Plaza & Festive Mall project at this website: http://www.esper.com/jcoates/attractions.htm.

Joel D. Coates
Knoxville

Review Concerts, Please

Your editorial "Making Room at the MP Inn," April 24, to the several people who suggested that you review concerts, as you do theater and film, was that the (live) concerts were over and gone by the time you publish as a weekly, whereas your reviews of continuing performances were useful to readers who might want to pass up or attend the shows you critique.

I would urge you to reconsider this attitude because it gives particularly short shrift to the live performance of local musicians, most of whom cannot afford to mount much more than a single performance at a time. Your publication's review of those single performances would go a long way to establishing the reputation of a local artist and encouraging audiences to come out for a show the next time that musician or group of musicians appeared live again. Do we have to wait for them to record a CD before their performances merit the attention of a review? Somehow, it seems particularly ironic that a live performer has to be either canned or repetitive to warrant review. Think again, please?

Theresa Pepin, administrator
Performing Arts & Lecture Series
Knoxville