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Seven Days

Thursday, March 11
•The University of Tennessee men’s basketball team loses to Alabama 84-49 in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament. No punchline necessary; anyone who saw the game already knows the joke.

Friday, March 12
• Former state official Joanna L. Ediger surrenders to authorities after her indictment on fraud charges related to a contract awarded to friends of her old boss, former Gov. Don Sundquist. Prosecutors admit that they first seek out “lower-level participants” in such cases, in order to turn up the heat on guilty parties at the top. Meteorologists report unseasonably warm temperatures in Sundquist’s home in Blount County.

Saturday, March 13
•The News Sentinel reports that the Metropolitan Planning Commission has approved a $180 million “town center” project on Northshore Drive, a combination retail/residential/office complex intended to provide the amenities of urban living to people who dwell outside the city. In addition to a 20-screen movie theater and 450 apartments, town center features will include subsidized crackhouses and a fine selection of commuter panhandlers.

Sunday, March 14
•The UT Lady Vols are picked as the top seed in the women’s NCAA tournament, and bracketed to play Colgate on March 20 in Tallahassee, Fla. One of the perks being a number one seed: getting to play first-round games against teams named after toothpaste.

Monday, March 15
•Knox County Health Department officials announce that 21.8 percent of local school children are overweight, far more than the national average. Meanwhile, Board of Education members consider measures to alleviate overcrowding in schools. We suggest serving only Atkins-approved cafeteria lunches and solving both problems at once.

Tuesday, March 16
•In a study released Tuesday, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America named Knoxville the worst city in America for people with asthma. Look for a sharp increase in inhaler boutiques across the region. In a related story, the number one nickname for local children is “Wheezy,” edging out “Tubby” by one vote.

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:
The sign pictured is posted on a telephone pole atop Sharp’s Ridge on Bruhin Road. The sign boasts a scriptural passage from the book of Revelation, chapter three. Praise Christopher Karow for his keen powers of observation, and being the first to correctly identify the exact location of the sign. We are overjoyed to present you with an advance copy of the Addison Groove Project release, Allophone. We can only assume that it’s some kind of hippie, patchouli-fest set to music (it’s still in the cellophane), but you might like it. If so, way to go!

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

KNOX COUNTY COMMISSION
Monday, March 22 • 2 p.m. • City County Bldg. • Main Assembly Room • 400 Main St.
Regular meeting.

For the Books
Pondering a new library

The concrete-and-glass Lawson McGhee Library has been called one of the best modernist buildings in Knoxville, and after 35 years it’s holding up pretty well. Its only problem is that it’s packed to the gills. That’s why the library director, the county mayor, and a reported 84 percent of county residents agree they need to build a new and much-larger library.

Since we built that library, the population of the county it serves has grown by more than 40 percent; the library’s collections may have grown faster than that. They’ve already gotten rid of the card catalogue and the rent-a-picture department. What else do you throw out? Videotapes of Danny Kaye musicals? Cookbooks featuring high-carb dishes? Technical specifications for TVA’s dams? The 1970 census, perhaps?

The answer, of course, is that you have to keep it all, or as much as possible. That’s a library’s job: to keep and to accumulate more. Clutter is a good library’s stock in trade.

As the library was straining its seams, the county annointed an ambitious new director, Larry Frank, who has pointed out what librarians already knew: that Knoxville’s main library is, by national American Library Association standards, less than half of the size it should be to serve its metropolitan area. “We have 15,000 volumes down in the basement,” he says. “Nobody can get to them.”

There seems to be overwhelming support for a new downtown library. A recent county-commissioned survey of more than 800 Knox County residents indicates 84 percent approval for a new library. That figure pleases Frank. “In most places, 60 percent is pretty good,” he says. “I think even 52 percent would be good.”

Meanwhile, breezes of envy have blown in from the west. Nashville has demonstrated the public-library-as-municipal-showplace. Their new beaux-arts style temple of knowledge awes architects, hillbillies and scholars alike. Several days ago, Mayor Mike Ragsdale and a delegation of county commissioners took a field trip to Nashville. “What an astounding facility,” gushes Ragsdale spokesman Mike Cohen. “Not just how beautiful it is, but what it does for downtown, the number of people it draws.” He says Ragsdale spoke with Nashville library director Donna Nicely and with Gov. Phil Bredesen, who was mayor of Nashville during the library’s planning, about the public-private (but, from the sound of it, mostly public) partnership that produced the $60 million project.

The big questions for Knoxville’s library, of course, are how big does it need to be, how much will it cost, and where will it go.

The current library is two blocks west of Gay Street, but in recent months Frank and others have indicated a strong preference for having a library on Gay’s main corridor. This week he adds what may be a significant qualifier, saying he prefers a site “on, or with access to, Gay Street.”

For months, the presumptive site has been the block bounded by Gay, Church, State, and Cumberland, still known, more than a year after the daily vacated it, as the News Sentinel block. Though part of its Gay Street commercial frontage is deemed historic, and may indeed date to before the Civil War, the largest part of the block is taken up by the old News Sentinel building, owned by the city and planned to be demolished in any case.

However, this spot isn’t the only candidate. Frank affirms that one other is the lonely State Street site, left at the altar by at least three extravagant public suitors in the last decade; it’s cleared of buildings, already owned by the county, and, in spite of a county-run surface parking lot, ready for new construction.

“The old News Sentinel site is very much part of the picture,” Frank says. “Other sites are part of the picture. State Street, that site has a lot of possibilities. So many people have said so many different things. If you can find a place on Gay Street, it would be ideal.”

Others are rumored, including the Gay Street block mostly occupied by the Pryor Brown Parking Garage and surface parking. Cohen says it’s too early to rule out. At the moment, at least, conversion of the convention center to a library is not in the works.

As for further details, including ballpark estimates of either the square footage demanded or the likely cost of the facility, Frank, Cohen, and others are mum. “It’s too early,” Cohen says, adding that Ragsdale will make a detailed announcement in an address May 4.

Frank says all he knows for sure is that “there will be a new main library, and it will be part of the Capital Plan. It will be a centerpiece of that plan. There’s a lot of preliminary work to do. I’m putting together suggestions as to what it should entail, in space, collections, staffing, but it’s all very preliminary.”

Much of that advance work is being done by the architectural firm of Bullock Smith, who are coming up with a rough plan. The firm won’t necessarily be the library architect; that’s one of the many details to work out in the next few months. “There’s an architectural firm to be selected,” Frank says. “It will probably be local, but I asked for a national consultant to the firm who was experienced in major urban library programs. We want a building that will make a statement.”

Frank pictures the Knox County Library to be, like Nashville’s, a model. “When you build a model library, there’s an expectation of model programs,” he says. “There’s got to be a balance. Build a world-class library, you’d better have world-class programs.”

He’s realistic about expectations. “This is a very conservative area,” Frank, an urban Midwesterner, has noticed. “My challenge is to look at what’s best for the area. You want to go for the ideal. If you don’t, that less-than-ideal program is going to be reshaped.”

—Jack Neely

Time, Date, Place
Convening downtown

It’s Friday afternoon, and we can’t help but notice a bunch of chairs being set up in Market Square, but we haven’t heard about any big events going on. Turns out it’s for the Student American Veterinary Medical Association conference, which drew college students from around the country.

It is an odd thing to suddenly catch a glimpse of your home from an outsider’s perspective, and realize your world is not exactly what you think it is.

Catching a smoke in Krutch Park on the sunny afternoon, three students approach me and asked me to take a picture. “Sure,” I respond, “Where do you want it?” “In front of this tree,” the woman with camera says, motioning to a young tree in full blossom. “Where are you from,” I ask. “Minnesota,” they say.

Later in the evening, I walk out of the packed Downtown Brewery after a couple of beers. The temperature has dropped and a chilly wind blows down Gay Street, as five young college students stand in front of the Miller’s Building. One of them wears a tiny leather skirt, and she shivers in the cold. “I hate this town,” one of them yells. “I want to go home.” As I pass, they turn and start walking in the same direction. “Are you veterinarians?” I ask. They eye me warily, as though they shouldn’t be talking to strangers, as though I’m on the make. “Not yet,” one answers finally.

“Do you know where there’s a Wendy’s or something around here?” one of them asks. I point them in the direction of the Tomato Head, to the Christmas lights draped across the awning, and say it’s great. “We don’t want anything too expensive,” they say. “It’s not.”

I head home wondering what will become of Knoxville, if it ever becomes the convention magnet we’ve bet so much on.

—Joe Tarr