Metro Pulse/Urban Renewal

501 Arthur Street
2,000 sq. ft. retail/office
Two 2-bdrm apartments
$110,000
Contact: Vic Dyer
Coldwell Banker: 584-4000

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by Matt Edens

Drive-throughs, curbside drop-boxes, and plenty of "free" parking—curious, isn't it, how so many of the things businesses do to be accommodating, aren't so much about accommodating us as our cars. For most people, the Ozzy and Harriet promise of American middle-class suburbia has given way to a harried world of child-chauffeuring soccer-moms who rack up enough minivan mileage to impress a long-haul trucker. We've gotten to where the only thing "father knows best" is how to get to the bank, post-office and dry cleaners on his lunch hour without making a left hand turn across Kingston Pike.

In this modern world, where essentially every human activity beyond a few basic bodily functions involves strapping ourselves into 1,500 or more pounds of steel machinery, is there anything more fraught with irony than the modern concept of the "convenience store?" First off, implicit in the growing popularity of "one-stop shopping" is the admission that driving from store to store along a crowded commercial corridor like Kingston Pike has become a frustratingly dysfunctional exercise in futility. And the convenience store, relegated to its arterial or collector behind the mandated landscape "buffer" until it's too far to walk from the cul-de-sac, is itself just another place to drive—surrounded by gas pumps, parking and a big, bright sign to attract passing motorists until it becomes precisely the sort of thing most subdivision homeowners' associations fight tooth and nail to push even farther away.

It's a vicious cycle that has almost killed off a venerable American institution: the corner store. Seventy-five years ago, a majority of Knoxvillians could walk down to the corner to pick up a loaf of bread, a newspaper, maybe a hotdog or ham sandwich. Some still can. A few traditional corner stores survive in downtown and other center-city neighborhoods. But as the populations and relative purchasing of most center-city neighborhoods declined, so did the institution of the corner store. There are empty ones scattered all across the center city, buildings like this one in the middle of Mechanicsville. A neighborhood landmark since 1915, it not only provided truly convenient shopping, it also offered another thing you don't find much in modern suburbia: affordable housing. Still does, actually, the two apartments upstairs are each currently leased for $325 a month. Rehab the ground floor as office or retail space and you could have a nice little investment (eligible, BTW, for Federal preservation tax credits). Or you could rehab the whole thing into one of the neatest live/work spaces outside of downtown. Who knows, downtown seems to be defying loud predictions of its demise, so why not the corner store too?