Metro Pulse/Commentary/It's Progress

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Downtown should be yours, mine and ours

by Matt Edens

Originally I'd planned to write about streetcars this week. It's interesting, to me at least, this nascent discussion of bringing streetcars back to Gay Street. After all, Knoxville's very first streetcar ran along Gay Street some 130 years ago. Such is progress, I suppose. Oh well, let's at least hope that if we get a new streetcar along Gay it won't be, like the first, pulled by mules.

But then two things happened. First, a roughly century-old building on Wall Avenue, just around the corner from Market Square, more or less collapsed. And then, my last column on the standoffish relationship so many adoptive Knoxvillians have with their native born cousins drew some interesting responses—an amen or two and a few folks who extolled the virtues of Knoxville—and Knoxvillians—with evangelical fervor. But the one that really caught my eye was a response to my point that Knoxville natives are a rare species around downtown Knoxville, particularly after regular business hours. It came from someone whose opinion I regard highly, whose been lurking around downtown's bars and beer-joints longer than I have.

"Last year, " he wrote, "when I began seeing a few old-Knoxville Go-Vols lakehouse types I knew having beers at Pres Pub my jaw nearly dropped off." Some of them were people he knew, people he liked and yet he "wasn't altogether comfortable about the phenomenon."

I have to confess that there are times when I'm not entirely comfortable with the phenomenon either. And, based on what I've observed of the last five years or so of occasionally raucous debate about downtown redevelopment, a lot of us who—by squatters rights, if nothing else—consider ourselves "downtowners," harbor similar feelings. Sure we want to see downtown successful, but not too successful, if you know what I mean. It may be a little run down but it's, well, ours. And a bar full of "go-Vols lakehouse types" isn't so much a benchmark of success as somehow a sign of failure (ironic considering most of us downtowners tend to pigeonhole Vol-loving, lakehouse-living West Knoxville as "exclusive" and "conformist").

Well, my fellow downtowners, it's time we lose a little of the attitude. I'm not saying that downtown's future depends on folks from Farragut driving downtown for their dinner and a few drinks (not that it wouldn't hurt if a few of you braver 'burb-dwellers gave it a try once and awhile). I still think downtown's future depends on building a strong base of middle and upper-income folks actually living in and around it. Question is: how do you get there from here?

That collapsed building on Wall Avenue illustrates the challenge. Face it, on the whole we haven't spent too much on downtown's maintenance and upkeep over the last half-century. And it shows. Not just on Wall Avenue but around the corner on Market Square where three buildings were in such bad shape that they essentially had to be torn down behind their façades and rebuilt from the ground up. Another building had to have its façade literally bolted back on, lest it tumble out into the square. And that's just the standing buildings—from surface parking lots to the abandoned industrial sites on the south bank of the river, there are acres and acres of essentially vacant land waiting to be rebuilt upon. Revitalizing downtown Knoxville isn't exactly a matter of sprucing things up with a quick coat of paint. It's going to be a capital-intensive exercise.

And where's most of the investment capital in Knoxville—or, at least, the people who have ready access to it? That's right, out in those lakehouses, watching the Phil Fulmer show. Over the last 50 years we blew the accumulated wealth of old center-city Knoxville to build it all over again to the north, south and, most of all, west. I say turnabout's fair play. It's time for the West Knoxville real estate development community to invest some serious cash downtown. Pioneer developers like David Dewhirst, Leigh Burch and Wayne Blasius have done some great things in the past couple years, but they can't do it all.

Their projects have, however, set some high standards. By welcoming West Knoxville developers downtown, I'm not advocating that we embrace every goofy idea that comes down Kingston Pike, like glass domes over Market Square or dingbat destination attractions. I think we've learned those lessons. The signs are certainly encouraging. Loft projects like the Sterchi and Emporium are one thing, but even more intriguing are some of the projects that the "Powers that Be" have pushed in the last couple years: Sam Furrow's stunning restoration of the downtown post office, the handsome addition to the East Tennessee Historical Society and the lavish revamping of the Tennessee Theater. Heck, when the county mayor recently announced the intention of building a new main library it was a foregone conclusion that it would be downtown. I'm not sure that would have been the case five years ago.

So here's the challenge to my fellow downtowners who like to think of themselves as "progressive": admit that, when it comes to defining progress, Knoxville's made, well, progress.

Now if we could just do something about the orange golf-shirts.