Metro Pulse/Insights/Lakeshore Gardens

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by Joe Sullivan

The proposed gardens at Lakeshore Park for which Mayor Victor Ashe has recommended a $6 million outlay would no doubt be a lovely amenity for the city. But the way in which the garden funding has been brought before City Council for a vote next week is anything but pretty.

An undertaking of this magnitude ought to be unveiled and aired publicly prior to taking action on it. It also needs to be evaluated and prioritized in relation to other demands for city funding. All of this is true at any time, all the more so a time when a budget bind is forcing cuts in city services, even as major commitments for downtown redevelopment are pending. Yet no such public airing or evaluation process has occurred.

To the contrary, plans for the gardens and their inclusion in the city's budget have proceeded almost hidden from the public view. Not even City Council members could get much information about these plans at the city's budget hearings two weeks ago. Then, just prior to last week's Council meeting on the budget, garden advocates lobbied Council members one-on-one, portraying for the first time their elaborate design for a $12 million garden complex for which the city's funding would be matched by private contributions.

It's true that provision for the $6 million was included in Mayor Ashe's budget that was released on April 30—though he made no mention of the funding level in his budget speech that day. The media, starting with Metro Pulse, is much to blame for not putting the garden project in the limelight soon thereafter.

The first person to call public attention to it was mayoral candidate Madeline Rogero. In an open letter to Council members and an appearance before Council May 27, she contended that "it is very, very wrong to commit six million dollars to a project that has had no input from the public and has had no serious study as to the impact on city development efforts.... This six million expenditure will reduce the city's available debt capacity thus limiting the possibility of other economic development projects or infrastructure improvements and may threaten the completion of other economic development initiatives already in progress." Other mayoral candidates followed suit in calling for the project to be put on hold until a new mayor takes office after this coming fall's election.

In defense of his recommendation to move forward at this time, Ashe stated that, "If the issue is lack of public input, I would point out to City Council that there are other items in my capital budget that have far less public input." He singled out his recommendation to spend approximately $200,000 for the acquisition of 75 acres of property in South Knoxville for a new public park.

Two wrongs don't make a right, and while the order of magnitude of the new park outlays almost makes the South Knoxville park a difference of kind, perhaps it should be held in abeyance also.

The prime mover behind the gardens, lawyer Tom McAdams, makes the case that they have been in the works for years and were included in a master plan for Lakeshore Park that City Council approved in 1999. "It sends the wrong message when hundreds of community volunteers have put forth their time and effort and present it to you, and it's approved by Council and then after all these years of effort for you to come back and say maybe we need to rethink this," McAdams told Council.

But he acknowledges that the master plan didn't assign any specific cost to the gardens and that the scope of the project has evolved over the past four years with the involvement of an Atlanta-based garden design firm and architect Robert Stern, who is dean of the Yale University School of Architecture. Why hasn't the non-profit entity which he heads gone public with its case that the elaborate combination of horticultural and architectural elements will do everything from enhance the quality of life to attract tourism and promote economic development in Knoxville?

"We would much rather have built up support in advance, but everything has taken longer. We only got the renderings last week," McAdams says.

Not even the Knoxville Tourism and Sports Corp., let alone the general public, has been involved. "I don't know enough about the gardens to have an informed view on them," the tourism entity's president, Gloria Ray, said just prior to last week's Council meeting. Surely, such involvement needs to precede a major commitment of public funds, just as it did in the case of Market Square redevelopment plans and plans for the recently completed renovation of Caswell Park.

Making a new $6 million commitment should also be deferred until it's clear that development efforts already underway won't be jeopardized. These include a new convention center hotel and a cinema to support Market Square's revitalization. The impact of the gardens on the city's operating budget in the years ahead needs to be assessed as well, especially given Finance Director Randy Vineyard's forecast that a major shortfall is likely again next year.

All of this is not to say that the plans that McAdams and his group have devoted so much to formulating aren't worthy of public funding. But for Council to include it in the city budget that's due to be adopted next week would be premature.