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Seven Days

Wednesday, Nov. 12
A state "Safe Schools" grant of almost a quarter-million dollars to the Knox County Schools system is announced in Nashville. The money is to be used to reduce the threat of violence and crime in the schools. In some quarters, that's known as buying "protection."

Thursday, Nov. 13
An Associated Press account of trips TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough made to Japan in 2001 and 2002 says he's been accused of violating federal rules by going business class at a cost of more than $6,000 per flight. By comparison, that's over $5,000 more for each flight than Gov. Phil Bredesen spent on his recent coach-class trip to Japan. Oh, well, when you have a debt the size of TVA's, what's $10,000 here and there?

Friday, Nov. 14
Ronnie Davis, the state representative from Newport who served nine terms in the Legislature before being caught up in misconduct allegations, is taken to a federal detention center in Kentucky on charges of conspiracy and drug trafficking. Whatever happened to the good old days when such activities were left to Tennessee sheriffs?

Saturday, Nov. 15
The accounting firm that will pick (at random) the lucky number next Saturday when someone will be tapped as the 25 millionth fan to pass through the portals of Neyland Stadium is the same company that says attendance at Neyland for the Mississippi State game is 104,000. Uh, if the firm didn't notice the 25 or 30,000 empty seats, what kind of accounting has led it to conclude that UT's reaching the 25 million fan mark?

Sunday, Nov. 16
The News Sentinel's lead editorial, written by its editor, Jack McElroy, comes out strongly against the Knox County Commission's then-pending "God" resolution, concluding that its readers don't need commissioners telling them what they believe. Attaboy, Jack. Attaboy.

Monday, Nov. 17
Gov. Bredesen opens the hearings on the state's $21 billion budget to the public, live, via streaming video on the state's website for the first time. What the heck, Tennessee's budget is less than TVA's debt, anyway.

Tuesday, Nov. 18
The published list of nominees for the UT presidency includes a man from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Given ousted president John Shumaker's scandalous relationship with the woman president of Alabama-Birmingham, what joker put in this nomination?

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:
Jimmy Descant's metal sculpture Model VR-20 Shot Down In Ecuador, Jr. sits in the window of the fabulously funky letterpress shop and gallery, Yee-Haw, on Gay Street in the heart of downtown Knoxville. Hundreds of people must walk past this shop daily but only one reader, who didn't include her or his name in the email, correctly identified the sculpture location. You know who you are, so get back in touch with us to claim your prize.
Descant's work will be featured along with many other local and regional artists' work during Yee-Haw's annual Art for the People Holiday Show that runs from Nov. 21 through Dec. 23 at the Woodruff's Building, 5th floor. Yee-Haw's Julie Belcher assures us that there will be "something for everyone." See you there.

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

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday, Nov. 24
2 p.m.
City County Bldg.
Large Assembly Room
400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

Filling in the Hole
State Street's parking lot is allegedly temporary

For the better part of a decade, it's been our Field of Broken Dreams. First considered for a pro baseball stadium in one of several failed efforts to keep the Knoxville in the now-lamented ball club once known as the Knoxville Smokies, the large lot between State and Central Streets on the east side of downtown was later cleared of its large, mostly industrial brick buildings for the extravagant but abortive justice-center project. Later still, it was hailed as the perfect site of the mega-planetarium project touted as Universe Knoxville.

Laid bare after its early 20th century buildings were torn down, the lot became known as Red Square, a name whose origin was more obvious before grasses started growing up in the clay, and it began to look more like the Serengeti.

No more. For the last few weeks, backhoes and bulldozers have been swabbing back and forth, surfacing the area with tons of fill dirt for its immediate destiny: a surface parking lot. It should be ready to park 239 cars before Christmas.

The lot development comes at a crucial time, as the city prepares to break ground for the Market Square-related construction of a retail-residential-parking complex on the Walnut Street surface parking lot three blocks due west of here. That parcel is still known, four years after the demise of downtown's last department store, as the Watson's Parking Lot. The Ashe administration is said to have hopes of breaking ground on the project before the mayor leaves office in December.

County Mayor Ragsdale's spokesman Mike Cohen emphasizes the State Street lot's temporariness. "We plan to build it as cheaply as we can," he says. Contrary to early reports, it will be asphalted, not graveled; Cohen says that was an engineering decision.

Even with few frills, Cohen says the cost of the project will be substantial, $4-to-500,000. More than half of that, Cohen says, goes into the extensive landscaping required on what had been a fairly steep hill between State and Central. Many tons of fill were required to level the lot, which will be closer to the elevation of State than Central.

The cost of the lot has yet to be determined, but Cohen says much of it will likely go to monthly commuter parking, perhaps at $55 a month; he mentions TVA. Some TVA employees will be displaced by the Walnut Street construction.

He says the lot will probably not be attended and may be operated on the honor system to minimize costs. He adds that county planners are concerned about unfair competition with existing parking concerns. "I don't want to cheat somebody who's been in business for a lot of years," he says. He has checked with the operators of a comparable Old City lot, just a couple of blocks away, and says they're not bothered by the prospect of what may be functionally free parking here.

Daytime rates, he says, will be comparable to those of the neighborhood. Currently, metered city streetside parking next to this site along Central costs commuters only about $1.20 a day, and it's often not fully used. Adjacent parking garages, the city's State Street garage and the old Promenade, charge $3 and $4 a day respectively. There are a few small surface lots nearby, all of them commuter lots accessible by permit only. With the completion of the new lot, State Street will be devoted almost entirely to parking from Clinch Avenue to Summit Hill, the equivalent of almost four blocks.

Cohen emphasizes that the parking lot is a short-term fix. Among modern downtowns, surface parking lots have a reputation comparable to psoriasis.

Meanwhile, the architectural firm of Bullock Smith is considering long-term uses for the State Street site, based partly on suggestions gleaned from a major effort to gather suggestions from the public earlier this year. Some are talking up the block as the best site for the new public library, now in its earliest planning phases. Others have promoted health clubs, apartment buildings, and a (different) stadium. Some, especially those with an interest in uncoupling the Gay Street cineplex from the federally funded transit center, would rather see the long-anticipated transit center there; though that was roughly its original purpose when, around 1920, Knoxville's first bus station was located here, the Ashe administration has firmly rejected that option, citing consultants' studies.

For the most likely options, the dirt recently added and the coming asphalt to make it a level and convenient surface parking lot would be removed in construction-related excavation, perhaps within a year or two. Downtown is a complicated place.

—Jack Neely

Discovery Center on the Web
A wealth of obscure tidbits for kids

Even if you already know there's air in marshmallows, and you have an idea what makes Uncle Willis snore so loud, the East Tennessee Discovery Center's new website may have something fresh in store for you and your kids. The website also leads colorfully to the center's core exhibits, too.

The giant hissing cockroach of Madagascar is only one of many, um... unique animals to be found at ETDC. And if the likes of leopard dragons, bearded geckos and big bugs aren't among your favorite specimens of scientific inquiry, you're still likely to find something of interest in this museum/educational outreach center with separate outposts in the Candy Factory at the World's Fair Park (health) and on North Beaman in Chilhowee Park (science).

Founded in 1960 as the Students Museum, ETDC is a nonprofit that provides both classroom instruction and hands-on science exhibits for kids and adults alike. Other points of interest at the Chilhowee science center include computer labs, an interactive model of the space shuttle, giant "whisper dishes," and the Akima Planetarium. The KAMA Health Discovery Center on the Candy Factor's fifth floor is available through appointment only, and is geared specifically for student groups.

Both centers keep mostly "normal" business hours, and charges range from $4 for non-senior adults to free admission for children two and under. For specifics, as well as for information on scheduling group visits or touring the planetarium (which hosts only two shows daily), log onto the ETDC website at www.etdiscovery.org.

The website is a new feature for ETDC, and includes a kids' page with games, articles, and experiments, as well as absolutely vital tidbits of scientific information. Who knew that the average human body contains more than 60,000 miles of blood vessels, for instance, or that air rushes through the nasal passage at approximately 100 mph during a typical sneeze? Just ask that giant cockroach: he knows the score.

For further info, call 594-1294.

—Metro Pulse Staff