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Seven Days

Thursday, Sept. 18
Records show that Knox County Sheriff's deputies had fired 28 times at a suicidal man who placed a bullseye on his chest and taunted them with a pellet gun earlier in the week. The man was hit only once in the shoulder, but not seriously injured. The six deputies are not put on administrative leave. Were they ordered to the firing range?

Friday, Sept. 19
The Knox County Health Department dispenses nearly 3,000 hepatitis A vaccinations (beginning Thursday) by closing time Friday afternoon, in response to an outbreak of the disease that may have originated at a local O'Charley's restaurant. O'Charley's corporate reps reportedly had no comment; guess the food spoke for itself.

Saturday, Sept. 20
Though northbound Hurricane Isabel landed some 300-400 miles away in the Carolinas, the Florida peninsula is ravaged Saturday when the UT football Vols storm through Gainesville with a 24-10 victory over the Gators at Florida Field. Gators Coach Ron Zook survived the onslaught, but is not expected to last the season.

Sunday, Sept. 21
Terrorist leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed reveals that Osama bin Laden first discussed plans for what would be the 9/11/01 terror attacks in 1996, and that his original strategy called for five airplane hijackings/crashes on both the East and West coasts. In the wake of these revelations, Saddam Hussein gets an afternoon's respite from the paparazzi.

Monday, Sept. 22
The Vols begin preparations for next Saturday's game versus the South Carolina Gamecocks. USC head coach and world-class po-mouth Lou Holtz launches into yet another diatribe about his 'cocks sucking.

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:
Travel north on Broadway and in front of the venerable Fountain Lanes Bowling Alley you will find a swell little Mexican restaurant, Señor Taco. And on the south side of the restaurant building you will find an equally swell mural painted in bright, vibrant colors.
Travel south on Broadway from Señor Taco, back toward downtown, and you will pass by Saint Tattoo. If you were to stop in for some body art you might see Aaron Solomon who works there and who also has a keen eye for restaurant murals.
For being the first of many correct responses this week Aaron wins a copy of David Blaine's new book Mysterious Stranger: a Book of Magic. Olé!

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

KNOXVILLE TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY
Thursday, Sept. 25
3 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

BETTER BUILDING BOARD
Thursday, Sept. 25
3:30 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Small Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday, Sept. 30
7 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Main Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

Market Square Stakeholders Get Organized

One of the impediments to the revitalization of Market Square has been the lack of any organized effort on the part of the square's property owners. In the past, to the extent that the 36 owners of parcels adjoining the square have banded together at all, it has been mainly on an ad hoc basis to ward off proposals that would have vested a single master developer with monolithic control over the uses of their property.

Now, after several months of organizational groundwork, a broad base of owners succeeded in forming a new association that's intended to give permanence to a collaborative effort to foster commercial vitality on the square. Just how much this newly-formed Market Square District Association can contribute to that end remains to be determined. But its very existence at least provides a framework for cohesive action where none existed heretofore.

The adoption of bylaws by 27 owners and the election of a nine-member board of directors are the association's only tangible accomplishments to date. Unwillingness to impose any dues or assessments on its members at this time leaves it without any monetary resources to support its efforts. But the association's president, Scott Partin, believes it can start making its presence felt in a variety of ways to help the fledgling enterprises that have already committed to about one-third of the square's 75,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space and to encourage more to follow suit.

Partin and his wife Mahasti Vafaie own the square's mainstay restaurant, Tomato Head. Still more restaurants loom large in the mix he envisions for a fully-tenanted square. "I'd foresee at least one-third restaurants, one-third gallery-esque and one-third shopping," Partin says.

The association's initial emphasis will be on scheduling more events to draw more people into the square's renovated public space. This renovation, which has turned the square into a construction zone for far longer than expected, isn't due to be completed until the end of October. Hence, Partin is focused on events for next year's warm weather months.

In addition to bringing the Dogwood Arts Festival and Sundown in the City concerts back to the square, along with retaining Shakespeare on the Square productions, the association is planning a number of new events. Foremost among them is a Saturday market that would feature the works of local artists, artisans and growers. Painting, photography, sculpture, jewelry and pottery would all be on display, as well as flowers and produce.

"The Saturday market will be our biggest effort," says Partin. "We need to create one event on our own and have it go extremely well in order to show the city and our members that we're capable of pulling things off, and then I think it will become much easier for us to get funding in the future."

Along with planning and promoting events on an ongoing basis, the association is also seeking to make the square a more inviting destination in other ways as well. One issue that it's taking on in this regard is free parking for shoppers and diners in the new 500 - 800 space garage that's due to be built just west of the square following City Council approval earlier this month.

"People's biggest complaint about coming downtown is that you've got to pay to park; so we need to make it like the rest of town by allowing people to get a two-hour free parking token when they come into a shop or restaurant," Partin says. But he acknowledges that, "The city hasn't wanted to talk about that. All they want to talk about is how expensive it is to build and run a garage."

The association is also pressing for expedited construction of a nearby downtown cinema that was an integral part of the Market Square Redevelopment Plan that City Council approved in concept nearly two years ago. But the city has incorporated the cinema, which was originally supposed to be free-standing, into a federally-funded transit center that's still in the planning stages and not due to be completed until 2006.

Without the cinema's pulling power, with parking at a premium and with the square itself reduced to a construction zone, one might suppose that its commercial development would be languishing. But such is not the case. At least eight new businesses have opened on the square within the past year, by Partin's reckoning, and several more are in the offing.

The biggest single catalyst has been the $2 million investment by Scott and Bernadette West in a renovated complex of three buildings that includes more the 10,000 square feet of retail space and 11 residential lofts. Its opening last week brought the relocation of the Wests' Earth to Old City store (from guess where) along with two new eateries.

A bookstore is due to open in October and both a grocery store and a dress shop are slated for openings next spring. All of these represent start-up ventures on the part of local entrepreneurs, and doubts remain in some quarters whether the square can really prosper without better-capitalized, higher profile merchants.

The square's largest property owner, David Dewhirst, is among the doubters, and he's holding onto the ground floor of the former Watson's Department Store until a cinema materializes. "I've got a list of strong prospective tenants who've said, 'Call me as soon as plans for the cinema are firm,'" Dewhirst relates.

One property owner who hasn't joined the new association is Susan Key, who has been a persistent critic of Market Square redevelopment plans. Key retains the rights to the name Historic Market Square Association under whose aegis she has pressed for a more concerted effort at attracting retailers to the square. But at this point Key appears to be a leader without much of a following.

—Joe Sullivan

Lockdown
Does the city cater too much to football traffic?

A few weeks ago, Brian Tankersley got off work in Townsend, climbed on his bike and headed for home. But as he approached his destination, he got a little worried. Police had blocked off the Cumberland Avenue exit of Route 129, which he'd normally take.

"So I'm not allowed to go home at that point," Tankersley says.

This sort of thing has happened to him a lot. A resident of Fort Sanders, getting in and out of his neighborhood is sometimes impossible on UT game days. It's not necessarily the traffic that stymies his traveling (although, that can be pretty bad), but the police roadblocks and traffic direction. The Cumberland Avenue exit was blocked off before the game was over, when the traffic was dead.

Last year Tankersley and his girlfriend went for a mountain bike ride during the game. But they weren't allowed back into the Fort when they drove home and spent and hour and a half sitting in traffic. Another time, they tried to leave while the game was letting out and sat in their car—just blocks from their apartments—while cars poured out on Cumberland Avenue heading west. Police wouldn't let them move.

"None of the traffic lights work anymore. They have traffic cops everywhere, but they're letting traffic leave, they're not letting anyone go anywhere else," Tankersley says. "I don't really care so much about the football thing if they want to do it. I just don't appreciate the lockdown that happens with it."

Living in Fort Sanders has always meant inconvenience and hassles on game day. But some people wonder whether the city isn't catering too much to football traffic. And it isn't just Fort Sanders that suffers.

Some of Mahasti Vafaie's worst business days at her Market Square restaurant, the Tomato Head, come on game days. "It's dead, it's horrible. Football games have never been good for business. The locals don't come because they're afraid of game day traffic and the out-of-town people can't get here," Vafaie says.

One reason might be the traffic roadblocks. At home games this year, all the roads into downtown are blocked off, she says. She took pictures of Main and Church streets blocked off.

The irony, Vafaie says, is that the city is trying to revitalize downtown, but doesn't seem to want any football fans near it. "When the work is done are we still going to be blocking roads?" she asks.

Other downtown businesses have also had problems. The city had wired off the parking lot behind the Downtown Grill & Brewery, but that seems to have been resolved, says Mark Harrison, managing partner of the restaurant. The restaurant and brewery rents a shuttle from KAT for its customers. Those who go there before the game can take the bus for free to the stadium and return afterwards. Other downtown bars have similar deals.

Harrison isn't sure there's much the city can do. But he'd like to see dedicated lanes for buses and shuttles and perhaps better information.

"We're trying our best by paying for the shuttle service and making our presence felt on Gay Street," Harrison says. "I wish we could get a sign up at the stadium saying there's plenty of parking at the promenade and at the garage on State Street. Because obviously all the people from out of town don't realize that."

Darrell DeBusk, spokesman for Knoxville Police Department, says people can access downtown from Summit Hill and Gay Street. The streets are blocked off at downtown to prevent traffic jams on Henley. "If they didn't [block off downtown streets] Henley Street and Summit Hill would be in total gridlock," DeBusk says. "We get traffic out from the football game, most of the time, in an hour and 30 minutes. If we did not take the precautions we take it would be three hours sitting in downtown traffic. That's just from experience."

"You've got 100,000 plus people coming to the games, and everyone wants to leave at the same time. You've got to do what's necessary to get people out," he adds. "We've had colleges and cities come in to review our traffic plan because it works so well."

In some college towns, football games are more of a weekend event, with fans staying through the weekend, or at least into the night. In Knoxville, there's a mad dash out of the city.

"Maybe the reason they don't hang out is they can't," Vafaie says. "It seems like once they're in their cars they're funneled out of town immediately. Maybe if we made it easier for them to hang out, they would."

—Joe Tarr