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Seven Days

Wednesday, June 25
A federal court of appeals decision informs TVA it is "free to ignore" EPA orders to clean up its power plants' smokestack pollution. Gee, seems like the court could have told them something they didn't know.

Thursday, June 26
The first 2003 Sundown in the City concert draws so many people to its substitute site in the Old City that some have to be turned away temporarily at the gate. Sort of gives new meaning to the term, "back to 'square' one."

Friday, June 27
Tommy Hilfiger Corp. says Goody's Family Clothing of Knoxville will pay Hilfiger $11 million to settle a suit claiming Goody's sold fake Tommy stuff. Ah, for the days when product labels were on the inside of the goods and fashion statements were made with style, not names.

Saturday, June 28
News Sentinel columnist Frank Cagle gives us the "short answer" to the question of the ultimate outcome of the campaign to get a new hotel built to serve the convention center. "Nothing will happen. But it will take several years," the cagey Cagle says. Sounds as if he may have polled the entire power structure of the city.

Sunday, June 29
Our own Sen. Bill Frist says he would ban homosexual marriages if he could, to somehow keep "criminality" from being "condoned" in the home. Really? We've condoned criminality in the U.S. Capitol so long now, how could it hurt bringing some of it home?

Monday, June 30

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory names a new director. The move quells the growing rumor that that's what Victor Ashe will do when his term as mayor ends at year-end.

Tuesday, July 1
Some Tennessee lawmakers raise questions about "leadership issues" at the University of Tennessee. It might be an even better idea to raise similar questions about the General Assembly.

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:
We need to confess right up front that last week's Knoxville Found, which was taken by someone other than our regular photographer, was an apparent casualty of our changing of the guard. The frank truth is that we don't know who took the picture of a beat-up van in front of an abandoned liquor store, or why, or why we ran it as a Knoxville Found. We did figure out where this image is, or was: it's on Woodland, in North Knoxville, near I-275. However, the van's not even there anymore.

The only one who came close is Stephen Henderson, who identified this not-so-odd oddity as being on "Woodlawn Ave." (close, but no tacky promotional item, Stephen; Woodlawn's in South Knoxville).

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

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday, July 8
7 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting

A Road Less Traveled
How about I-640?

Every day, 108,000 cars and trucks funnel through a four-lane stretch of Interstate 40 that slices through the heart of downtown Knoxville.

This section of highway, right where I-275 and the James White Parkway intersect, has been the scene of countless accidents and bottlenecks.

TDOT has been planning on expanding and making the road safer for more than 20 years. The current $150 million plan calls for I-40 to be expanded to six lanes and a five-lane connector road called Hall of Fame Drive built through downtown.

But some local residents question the logic of expanding a highway that has been blamed for much of the problems downtown has faced over the past several decades.

"If it wasn't there today, we wouldn't build it. So why rebuild it? It harms historic preservation and it doesn't encourage economic development," says Bill Pittman, a Fourth and Gill resident opposed to the project.

One alternative seems to be getting local support: requiring truck traffic to use I-640. Taking it a step further, some would like to see all I-40 "through" traffic diverted to that bypass road, with the current I-40 becoming a parkway for local cars and delivery trucks.

Hundreds of residents came to a meeting on the project last week to learn more details of TDOT's current plan. Agency officials want to begin condemning property for the project late this year and start constructing Hall of Fame Drive—an extension of the Fifth Avenue Connector from Broadway to Summit Hill Avenue—by the end of next year. There is no schedule for the I-40 improvements, but it's expected they'd be complete in a decade.

Expanding I-40 would give the road a capacity of 180,000 vehicles and accommodate traffic growth for 20 years, says Bill Moore, TDOT's chief planner.

David Orr of the Sierra Club was at the meeting to pitch the alternative idea. "We want safety now, not 10 years from now," he says.

Orr says TDOT's proposal will further separate the downtown from its surrounding neighborhoods, increase traffic and noise pollution, and disrupt economic development at a time when the city is trying to revitalize downtown and its older neighborhoods. The widened, raised roadways for the project—including the section of James White in the Old City—will create larger "dead zones" in the city, where economic development is difficult and people feel unsafe.

"We think the wrong question was asked from the outset. Instead of asking what's the best design for the residents of Knoxville, TDOT asked 'What's best design for the truck traffic for the next 20 years?'" Orr says. "All this does is speed traffic up and encourage more traffic."

If I-40 traffic is immediately diverted to I-640, such a drastic construction project won't be as pressing, Orr says, and TDOT could take another look at its plans. It might be done by simply forbidding truck traffic through that stretch of I-40 or by designating I-640 as I-40.

Since they're federal highways, such a measure might require congressional approval. But Orr says it's been done in other cities.

TDOT is opposed to the idea. "I don't know how those 108,000 cars would get downtown," Moore says. Moore didn't have any exact figures but he estimates that a high percentage of the 108,000 cars are local trips, going to and from different parts of the region. TDOT estimates about 15 percent of the vehicles are trucks. Even if you could divert through-trucks onto 640, many would still use the route through downtown, since they're making deliveries in here.

There are about 60,000 to 70,000 vehicles traveling on 640 each day, Moore says. At six lanes, most of that roadway can handle up to 180,000 cars a day. However, there's a stretch at the junction with I-275 that is only four-lanes, reducing its capacity.

Jeff Welch, of the Transportation Planning Organization, says that moving traffic onto 640 won't solve the problem. "There are other residents and businesses located on 640," Welch says. "The whole issue of movement of goods is a critical issue nationwide. The problem is not going to go away, so I don't think that's a long-term solution."

Truck traffic is increasing so much in part because businesses and factories do not keep inventories they once did. "Trucks are your mobile warehouse," he says.

"The long-term solution is to encourage more goods to be moved onto rails," Welch says. "Until there's a push for a national rail system, we're going to have to live with a lot of trucks on our interstate system."

Local advocates of the diversion idea are not being deterred. It was discussed at a debate between mayor candidates Bill Haslam and Madeline Rogero—Rogero says she supports it.

The Fourth and Gill Neighborhood Association has been working since the mid-'90s, trying to get TDOT to change its design for I-40. Rather than an elevated roadway, the neighborhood wants a depressed roadway, which would create less noise and wouldn't be as ugly. TDOT has rejected this idea because it would cost more and create some drainage problems, Moore says. Larry Fitzpatrick, an engineer who designed a depressed roadway alternative, says the drainage problems can be solved.

But he says diverting traffic to I-640 would also work. The state has funded downtown revitalization efforts but now is funding a project that will hurt those efforts. "You've got money at cross purposes," Fitzpatrick says.

"I think downtown deserves [preservation efforts]," he adds. "You've got James White Fort right down here where it all started. Let's show a little respect."

—Joe Tarr

Development Necessity
IDB ressurrected for hotel financing

Until this past year, the Knoxville Industrial Development Board had held only perfunctory annual meetings for going on two decades. Within the past three months, the board has met five times, and its meetings are going to become even more frequent in the months ahead.

What's spurring the revivification of this formerly moribund creature of the city above all else, is its pivotal role in procuring a new headquarters hotel to complement the city's new convention center. The projected cost of the 400-room hotel envisioned is $60 million. That's in addition to $20 million of city funds that Mayor Victor Ashe has recommended—$5 million for the site and $15 million for an 800-space garage.

The reason the IDB has been selected to oversee the undertaking is that it has the means to issue tax-exempt bonds to finance the hotel for which the city and its taxpayers won't be on the hook. The bonds would be backed solely by the hotel's revenue. In the judgment of the city's hotel consultant, Donald Hunter, such tax-exempt revenue bonds represent the lowest-cost way of borrowing the $60 million and perhaps the only one that makes the development feasible.

Tax-exempt borrowing authority was the reason for the IDB's creation in the first place in 1983. Then, as its name connotes, this authority was used to finance industrial projects. But the IDB was really just a conduit for letting private businesses obtain lower-cost financing than they would if interest payments were subject to federal income taxes. In 1986, Congress revoked the tax-exempt status of these types of deals, and the city's IDB became a shell.

By walking some fine lines, the hotel financing can still qualify, and hewing to those lines will be one of the board's many challenges as it begins negotiating with prospective hotel developers.

To fortify the IDB for the task, Mayor Victor Ashe has made several recent appointments to the seven-member board. Its new chairman is Alex Fischer, who's in charge of economic development and technology transfer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and prior to that was deputy governor and commissioner of community and economic development in former Gov. Don Sundquist's administration. Other new board members include Katie Bell, director of community relations at TVA, and Don Parnell, a consultant who was formerly executive vice president of the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership, and prior to that was executive director of the Metropolitan Planning Commission.

Another challenge facing the board will be adhering to the fast-track timetables that Ashe has set for getting a hotel deal approved before he leaves office in December. In June, the IDB issued a request for proposals from five developers whom Hunter had selected from a longer list of respondents to an earlier RFP. The five are Lawler Wood of Knoxville; Garfield Traub Development of Dallas, Faulkner USA of Austin, Hyatt Development of Chicago and Portman Holdings of Atlanta.

July 18 is the deadline for their submissions, and they will be voluminous. The board has set Sept. 2 as the target date for making its selection after reviewing them and interviewing the firms that respond.

Perhaps the most daunting challenge of all will be negotiating terms with the firm selected. Everything from debt and equity financing plans to hotel booking policies for conventions to a host of other issues will be on the table. As is almost always the case with such negotiations, the devil is in the details. Even though they are unpaid, all seven board members intend to be at the table, and it's hard to imagine how they can fulfill their day jobs while the negotiating is going on.

As Hunter reviewed the timetable at an IDB board meeting Monday evening, board member Vince Keller observed, "This is a little like the calm before the storm." When asked how long the negotiations might take, Hunter said, "It could be as short as three to four months, but in some cases it has wound up being years."

Indeed, there is no guarantee that the negotiations will ever lead to anything. Hunter's analysis on which the feasibility of the new hotel was based assumed 70 percent occupancy and a $115 average room rate. But other downtown hotels, who are opposed to the new one, contend that these and other revenue assumptions are unrealistic in relation to the much lower rates that now prevail in Knoxville. The other hotels are uniform in their belief that it will take a lot more than the $20 million city commitment that Ashe has recommended in order to make the proverbial numbers work for investors and the hotel operator.

Whether the IDB will be prepared to go for more and whether the mayor and City Council will be prepared to approve more remain problematic. Indeed, it's not yet clear that City Council will approve the $20 million for a garage and acquisition of the site across Henley Street from the convention center that will become vacant when the State Supreme Court relocates to the downtown Post Office. A pedestrian overpass over Henley Street is also involved.

Adding to the uncertainty is a court challenge by Chattanooga developer Franklin Haney, who insists his plans to upgrade and enlarge his nearby Holiday Inn represent a much lower-cost alternative to building a new convention center hotel. Even though he wasn't on Hunter's invitation list, Haney is submitting his proposal to the IDB. And he has also filed a lawsuit alleging restraint of trade and seeking to enjoin the city from accepting any proposal "less advantageous" than the Holiday Inn's.

—Joe Sullivan