by Joe Sullivan
Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam is committed to building a cinema on Gay Street, but it’s due to go on county-owned property. Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale is committed to building a new downtown library, but its preferred location appears to be the former News Sentinel site that’s now owned by the city.
At the same time, the city is in the process of picking a new site for a transit center that Haslam “decoupled” from the cineplex. The State Street site that the county acquired for an abortive jail is a logical choice. And county officials have been encouraging its selection, in part because the federally-funded facility could house a new Discovery Center—something else Ragsdale backs but is hard-pressed to fund.
In the past, less-than-harmonious relations between city and county governments might well have impeded their working together on these and other matters. But with Haslam and Ragsdale at their helms, a new spirit of collaboration pervades the City County Building.
While the details of a cinema-for-library property swap have yet to be addressed, “There’s a general understanding that it all can be worked out,” reports the city’s director of economic development, Bill Lyons. Where the transit center and everything that might go in it are concerned, Lyons is known to be talking—on just about a daily basis—with Ragsdale aide Mike Cohen, who’s the county’s point person on State Street site development.
Lyons stresses that several sites are being considered for the transit center, and the selection process will provide for public input. But he adds that “there’s no reason to act like this is a blank slate thing. We don’t want to drag it out, because it’s a high priority to the mayor.”
Until Haslam decoupled it from the cinema in February, the transit center had been due to go on the 500 block of Gay Street. There, it held the potential for getting federal funding for a facility that could house the cinema. But Haslam concluded that the process of getting the federal approvals involved could stretch out construction of the cinema unduly. So he put it on a separate, albeit more expensive to the city, fast track.
“We’ve made a big investment in Market Square, and we have to bolster that with something that will bring people downtown after 5 o’clock,” Haslam says. He’s currently looking to two prospective cinema operators for cost estimates because “they know that better than anyone else.” A complicating factor is determining how much preservation of the facades of the historic buildings on the block would add to the construction costs. “I need to know if you tore them down here’s what it would cost, and if you save them here’s what it would cost, and then it will be our call,” he says. Operating projections are also needed for purposes of justifying the city’s investment, all the moreso if the city is on the hook for losses, as seems likely.
Wherever the transit center gets relocated, it carries with it the same potential for covering at least some of the cost of whatever gets incorporated into it, within the limits of a $17 million congressional authorization—retail development, a parking garage, entertainment or cultural attractions, you name it, are all among the possibilities.
For my own part, I believe a Discovery Center is the optimum choice. What passes for one now lags far behind its counterparts in other Tennessee metropolitan areas in offering children hands-on, interactive exhibitry that can whet their desire to learn.
The board of directors of the East Tennessee Discovery Center recognizes these deficiencies, which start with space constraints. With only 13,500 square feet split between two inauspicious locations, the center doesn’t have nearly enough room to offer the diversity of learning experiences that would appeal to kids of all ages as well as their parents. That’s reflected in the fact that the center drew only 43,000 visitors last year, compared to more than 200,000 drawn to its counterpart in Chattanooga and 600,000 to Charlotte’s.
The Discovery Center’s board chairman, Dick Krieg, envisions a new 40,000 square-foot downtown facility that would cost about $8 million to build and a like amount for state-of-the-art exhibitry. The board is preparing for a fundraising campaign ambitiously aimed at covering the latter from private contributions, but it’s going to take public sector funding to build the new facility.
County officials view its incorporation into a transit center on the State Street site as optimal, and they also see the transit center contributing to the site’s development in other ways as well. A UT student housing complex is another major element of overall development plans for the expansive site, and adjacency to the transit center would facilitate getting students back and forth between their residence and the UT campus. Indeed, it could be an important selling point in getting the commitments that are needed to make the residential development happen.
Collaboration between the city and the county is key in all of this. And Knoxville is fortunate to have two mayors who are collaboration-minded.
March 18, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 12
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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