Metro Pulse/Commentary/If You Let Them Build It, They Will Come

Comment
on this story

Plans can be good, of course, but not always necessary

by Glenn Reynolds

As long as I've lived in Knoxville, people have been talking about downtown redevelopment. We've seen some projects put in place—the "mall" behind the Woodruff's building (where the Downtown Grill and Brewery is), the brick sidewalks and wrought-iron lampposts on Gay Street, the Convention Center—and others talked about but never built, like Universe Knoxville, Renaissance Knoxville, and too many others to remember. None can fairly be called smashing successes.

But in the time I've lived here, some things have gone right. Coincidentally, they're things that don't have the government's stamp on them.

The biggest success by far in downtown redevelopment was the growth of the Old City from a few scattered restaurants into an actual nightclub and restaurant zone, one that gained mention in The New York Times and that actually drew tourists from distant cities, as well as musical acts from all over the world. The Old City wasn't the result of a big Downtown Development Plan overseen by bigshots and people hoping for construction contracts. It was an outgrowth of many small projects coming together, driven by individual entrepreneurialism in the absence of an overarching plan.

Strangely, as soon as the city and county did seem to notice the Old City, the boom phase came to an end. (Some of my musician friends at the time suspected a conspiracy to drive businesses to the waterfront development. I doubt it—but if that was the plan, it failed spectacularly.) Once again, we got some bricks and some wrought-iron lampposts, but not much else, while an intrusive police presence and assorted bureaucratic hassles put people out of business, and put an end to the explosive-growth phase. The Old City hasn't really grown for 10 years.

As I've watched the endless debate over making downtown grow, it seems to me that there are two problems. One is that most of the plans I've seen have looked, well, kind of weak. The other is that there's a fixation on having a plan.

Plans can be good, of course. But the original, vital downtown—the one that people have been trying to re-create for over 30 years—didn't get that way because someone had a big plan. It was vital because it was a good place for people to open businesses that offered a lot of things that other people wanted. And it was that way because the factors of transportation, economics, and regulation were all favorable. If we want downtown to be vital again, maybe we should think about creating that sort of an environment again, instead of just putting up a big building with some skywalks.

Free parking—a major subject of discussion in Metro Pulse—might play an important role. I notice that businesses that want my money, like malls and grocery stores, seem to offer free parking. And I notice that most people hate paying for parking. Rather than looking for hotels to condemn, why doesn't the city condemn a bunch of downtown parking lots, and then reopen them as free parking? That would help the "transportation" part. So would making the downtown area, from the Old City all the way to the riverfront, pedestrian-friendly. Just try walking from the Old City to the riverfront (heck, try walking from the City County Building to the riverfront) now. You'll find that "try" is the operative word.

On economics and regulation, well, there's a lot that could be done there, too. Everyone I know with a small business complains that it's hard to get a straight answer from codes enforcement and health inspectors. The feeling is that—especially if you're in an older building, and if you're not a big corporate operation—you're not going to get much help, and you'll probably face a lot of unnecessary hassles. Health and safety are important, but it's not true that the more hassle businesses undergo, the healthier and safer the citizenry is. Problems with beer and liquor permits don't help, either. Things aren't as bad as they are in New York, where people are opening "underground" restaurants to escape burdensome regulations (and demands for graft from regulators). But I don't know anyone who thinks that the business environment downtown is actually appealing.

Opening up some free parking and reorganizing—and motivating—the city and county bureaucracies to be more streamlined and business-friendly is no small task. But neither is building a white-elephant convention center, or a new hotel in an already over-capacity market, or some new "destination" attraction. Of course, unlike a new hotel or convention center, a more business-friendly downtown won't produce any big buildings fitted with brass plaques bearing the names of politicians, or much in the way of lucrative construction contracts.

On the other hand, it might actually work.

Glenn Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee, and writes for InstaPundit.com, MSNBC.com, and TechCentralStation.com.