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by Joe Sullivan

Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale is making downtown redevelopment just as much of a priority as his outgoing and incoming city counterparts, Victor Ashe and Bill Haslam. Indeed, unless the city proceeds with controverted plans for building a convention headquarters hotel, initiatives on the country's drawing board could surpass pending city projects.

Multi-faceted development of the State Street side that the county acquired for a new jail that then got nixed is a Ragsdale focal point. A new children's Discovery Center and a U.S. presidents' museum are "two possibilities that excite me," he says, and he foresees "a retail component and some housing" along with a parking garage. At the same time, Ragsdale is bent on building a new downtown library whose site is yet to be determined.

The county has recently selected Bullock Smith as architect for preliminary planning of all of the above. Sizing the various components and determining how, or whether, they all fit on the State Street site will be a big part of the firm's work. (Under the terms of its selection, Bullock Smith would not be eligible to serve as the project's architect beyond this planning stage.)

Where a new library is concerned, Ragsdale says, "There's been some thought that a Discovery Center could work in conjunction with a library, but that's something we want to investigate... We want to look at all our options." When asked about building the new library on the block of State Street further south that's been vacated by the News Sentinel, he responds, "That's a very intriguing site."

Once Bullock Smith has produced renderings, Ragsdale envisions unveiling them for public comment. But he makes it clear that this is part of an action plan, not just a visioning process.

"Next spring we intend to roll out to the public a capital [spending] plan that involves a lot of different projects, not just in the downtown area but in virtually every section of the community," Ragsdale says. "We've got new schools that are desperately needed—Gibbs Elementary, Cedar Bluff Elementary, Powell Middle—and we want to take our parks to another level, maybe not in terms of more parks but in terms of what we do with them."

Ragsdale won't be pinned down on the costs of the plan or any of its component parts. But he acknowledges that it could "potentially" require an increase in the county's property tax rate, which has gone unchanged since 1999. On the other hand, he stresses that the county has been able to cut its costs by "doing a really good job of managing our resources and by taking advantage of lower interest rates."

The timing of construction of new projects could also be a factor in determining whether a tax increase will be required to fund them. For example, work on the State Street site might be held in abeyance for the two years it's expected to take for the city to build a new garage just to the west of Market Square. In the interim, Ragsdale has agreed, subject to County Commission approval, to pave the site for surface parking to alleviate a downtown parking crunch.

Public outlays for facilities to house a new Discovery Center and possibly a presidents' museum are also contingent on the success of private fund-raising efforts to cover the costs of what would go in them. While no precise lines of demarcation have been drawn yet, it's expected that not-for-profit entities would be responsible for their operation and exhibitory.

The board of directors of the Discovery Center has long recognized that it falls far short of counterparts in many other cities in offering children an experience that is both educational and engaging. A board committee chaired by Jim Begalla has placed the cost of exhibitory that would measure up at $6 million to $8 million, but raising that amount will be a big challenge.

The concept of a presidents' museum, which is still in a formative stage, is the brainchild of Knoxvillians Bruce Anderson and Danni Varlan. They have retained a consulting firm, LORD Cultural Resources Planning and Management, to give concreteness to the concept and to assess its feasibility. In addition to core exhibits about each president, including artifacts from the Smithsonian Institution and private collections, Varlan envisions an educational role for the museum addressing topics such as the exercise of leadership.

A new downtown library could well be the Ragsdale administration's crown jewel. He's convinced the present Lawson McGhee Library on Church Avenue is overcrowded and outmoded, and he's enamored of the way that Nashville's new downtown library has become a civic centerpiece. But it remains to be seen how fully he'll buy into the $55 million new facility that Library Director Larry Frank is advocating. It helps that the federal government is interested in buying the present library, which is adjacent to the John J. Duncan Federal Building.

What won't be as visible as the capital outlays recommended in Ragsdale's next budget is the $9.5 million already spent on property acquired for its aborted Justice Center. In addition to the State Street site on which a jail was due to be built, the acquisitions also included much of the east side of the 500 block of Gay Street for relocation of county courts. Ragsdale is now prepared to make the Gay Street property available to the city for its proposed transit center, into which a downtown cinema is due to be incorporated. And the county mayor looks forward to collaborating with the city's mayor-elect, Bill Haslam, in other ways as well. Indeed, a close working relationship between the two mayors may be the biggest single benefit to come out of the changing of the guard at City Hall.