Metro Pulse/Insights/Transit center

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by Joe Sullivan

Preservation of an historic block of Gay Street is being jeopardized by the prospect of demolitions to clear the way for the city's proposed new transit center.

As presently planned, the transit center would be built on the east side of the 500 block of Gay Street in the space between the Farragut Building and the Fidelity Bankers Trust Building. City officials are clear that, with the possible exception of their facades, all of the structures in between need to be razed to accommodate the $17 million new facility. These include the now-vacant buildings that once housed the S&W Cafeteria, a Walgreen's that was a focal point of desegregation sit-ins in 1960, and radio station WROL where Roy Acuff got his start in the 1930's.

"Common sense would tell you that you can't build a transit center or a cinema or anything else that would go in it if the present buildings have to be kept in their entirety," says the city's director of administration, Ellen Adcock, who's overseeing the transit center project. "The conditions of the buildings are poor and there's not a great deal left in them that's significant," she adds.

Yet the buildings are all on the National Register of Historic Places; and the State Historic Preservation Office, which would have to approve their demolition, has recently determined that they are "contributing" to the city's Gay Street Historic District.

Local preservationist groups have yet to be heard from in any concerted way. But the executive director of Knox Heritage, Kim Trent, says, "Our disposition is to say let's do everything we can to save the buildings or at least keep the facades in order to preserve the streetscape."

The issue promises to come to a head later this fall when the city is planning to hold public meetings on the transit-center project at which preliminary design work will be presented. Adcock says the preliminary design calls for "a large inviting entrance" to the facility on Gay Street with a large amount of public space inside that would serve as a "community gathering place, just as the S&W was sort of that gathering place in the past." Escalators would lead down to a lower level, fronting on State Street that would serve as the city's bus transit hub.

While the design work contemplates an entirely new structure whose exterior would be consistent with the adjoining Farragut and Fidelity Bankers Trust buildings, Adcock insists that no decisions have been made on demolition of the existing buildings or their facades.

"We truly have to keep an open mind," she says. "This administration has always been strong on preservation, so we're going to have a soul-searching public process with the help of the Metropolitan Planning Commission and Knox Heritage." Complicating the process is the fact that the transit facility is due to get $13.6 million in federal funding, subject to the approval of the Federal Transportation Administration. The FTA also places a premium on historic preservation along with a host of other criteria in evaluating a project, and Adcock says, "We're going to have to jump through all the hoops to see what should be done with the historic structures."

Clearly, though, the new facility can't go up on the site unless the old buildings come down. The same goes for the cinema that's due to be incorporated into the transit center. The cinema's pulling power is deemed crucial to the redevelopment of nearby Market Square, and after considering alternate sites for it, the square's developer, Jon Kinsey, recently advised the city to keep it located on the 500 block of Gay.

Kinsey's original redevelopment plan called for preserving the facades of the buildings on the block and using the landmark S&W building as the cinema's entrance. But subsequent transit center planning has superceded this design to the point where even the facades would be non-functional.

Still, their retention would at least preserve the external appearance of the block and represent a compromise between form and function. Adcock says that keeping the facades, while feasible, would complicate construction of the new facility and add to its cost.

While professing open-mindedness on their retention, she favors an approach that would commemorate the history of the buildings in a different way. What she has in mind are exhibits in the new facility that would bring out what went before. "We'd like to capture the essence of the S&W, depicting events that took place there and perhaps at Walgreen's, although that could bring back painful memories for some," she says.

Of course, a clash could be avoided if the transit center were relocated to another site. But Adcock recoils against this notion. "We'd have to go back to the feds and ask to start all over again. I wouldn't want to try to defend that, and it could jeopardize our federal funding," she says. More than $800,000 in mostly federal dollars is being spent on planning for the new facility, including environmental and traffic studies as well as architectural work—most of which would have to be duplicated in the event of relocation.

The city has also put close to $2 million into a reconfiguration and extension of Krutch Park to provide a pedestrian connection between the cinema and Market Square. That money, too, would be squandered if preservation of the existing buildings forced relocation of the cinema, regardless of whether it's incorporated into the transit center or built on a stand-alone basis as some of its boosters would prefer.

One can question why the city didn't resolve preservation issues before proceeding as far as it has and spending as much as it has on the assumption that the buildings on the 500 block would be torn down. But at this point a lot is riding on getting the transit center and cinema funded and built by a targeted completion date that already stretches into 2006. So preservation may have to take a back seat to progress.