Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Raising Hell in Alice Bell

It's the neighborhood issue that won't die, and it has become a hot button debating point in the 2003 mayoral election. On Monday Sept. 15, the Alice Bell/Spring Hill Neighborhood Association (ABSHNA) will resume its regular meetings after a summer hiatus. At the top of the group's agenda will be an update on the latest stirrings of Washington Pike property owner Harold Byrd, whose repeated attempts to rezone his land from office to commercial have kept this community on orange alert for more than a decade. Several City Council candidates are expected to attend.

Plans to reconfigure Valley View Drive, which empties into Washington Pike, have stirred Byrd to start lobbying for yet another rezoning attempt.

Beginning in the late '80s, area neighborhoods and business interests forged a negotiated agreement—enforceable by a legally binding and regularly-reviewed sector plan—to limit commercial development to the east side of Washington Pike in the area of the then-East Towne Mall. The west side of the street was zoned to allow office use as a buffer for the Alice Bell neighborhood, one of the few areas inside the city to have gained population in the last census. However, since 1990, the community has had to beat back seven attempts to rezone the Byrd property—most recently in 2001, when influential developer Holrob Investments attempted to rezone it for a Target Store (relocate it might be the more accurate term, since opening a new store at this location would have triggered the closing of the Fountain City Target, which, in turn came about at the expense of the Williams House, an ornate brick Victorian mansion that had been a Broadway landmark since the 19th century and was reduced to rubble to make way for Target).

The 2001 Alice Bell battle was a bitter one, with dozens of high-profile business leaders writing letters to Council members urging them to approve the rezoning. Holrob hired lawyer Arthur Seymour Jr., lobbyist Joe May and pollster Bill Lyons to promote the cause. The homeowners were forced to hire a lawyer of their own. The ensuing battle has become a signature issue between mayoral candidates Madeline Rogero and Pilot Oil president Bill Haslam in their joust for neighborhood support, with Rogero pointing out that Pilot executives Jim Haslam III and Jeff Cornish wrote letters asking City Council to overturn the Metropolitan Planning Commission's ruling to deny the rezoning. Ronnie Collins, ABSHNA president, says the mayoral candidates would be welcome to attend Monday's meeting, which could turn into a lively affair.

Frankly, This Sucks

Political pundit Frank Cagle, whose WNOX morning talk show we complimented in this column not long ago, has been canned by the brass at Citadel Broadcasting. Cagle, a newspaperman who'd only been doing radio for a few months, was evolving from right wing shock jock status to the best local political talk on the airwaves, has slowly but steadily been gaining a following among local political junkies. On Wednesday, for example, he featured Sandra Lea, author of Whirlwind, an exhaustive, if disjointed, chronicle of the fall of the Butcher banking empire. Lea is working on a new book tracing the still-considerable Butcher assets since the fall. Cagle has about a week to go before he walks the plank at WNOX, so you better catch him quick.

The good news is that sources say he is "talking" to Tony Basilio at WXVL, "The Network," the AM 850 station owned by Doug Horne.

Also departing WNOX is controversial news director Tom Graham.

Driving Mr. Victor

So who picked up Mayor Victor Ashe at the airport on his return from his recent African safari? Ashe, on return, was doubtless chagrined to learn of the arrest of his chauffeur, Knoxville Police Department officer Steve Humphrey, who had ferried Ashe around in a city-owned vehicle for years. Humphrey was charged with DUI on Sept. 4 by a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper who pulled him over saying he spotted the city-owned SUV weaving his way down I-40. The trooper said Humphrey failed field sobriety tests and refused a blood test, which means an automatic suspension of his driver's license. He was driving the vehicle he used to transport the mayor.