Comment on this story Seven Days Wednesday, April 7 • State senators learn that Thomas Meredith, one of the candidates for the vacant University of Tennessee presidency, used state cash to purchase expensive Oriental rugs and hire pricey decorators at his last job in the Georgia university system. Given the profligacies of other recent UT presidents, we’re not sure whether that makes him more or less qualified for the job. Thursday, April 8 • Local police estimate that a record 10,000 people turn out for this year’s inaugural Sundown in the City event on Market Square. The count is suspect, however, since the officers keeping track reportedly ran out of fingers and toes. Friday, April 9 • A four-day Shooting for Women conference for female gun enthusiasts kicks off in Nashville, with featured courses on self-defense, target shooting, hunting, and gun collecting. The event also serves as a precursor to next weekend’s much-ballyhooed Knitting for Men festival. Saturday, April 10 • News flash: The Rubber Duck Race on Fort Loudoun Lake, once a popular Boys and Girls Club fundraiser, may resume in August thanks to a new state law permitting charity raffles. Organizers decide the annual event really was everything it was quacked up to be. Sunday, April 11 • A Knoxville News Sentinel story reports that air quality testers have discovered mold and other unhealthy biological contaminants growing in several state legislative offices. Some suspect that similar growths may yet be discovered in the craniums of several state legislators. Monday, April 12 • Two of the University of Tennessee’s 12 presidential candidates, including the aforementioned Thomas Meredith, withdraw their names from consideration. Meredith doesn’t give a reason for his withdrawal, but observers speculate it may be tied to Knoxville’s dearth of pricey interior decorators. Tuesday, April 13 • The News Sentinel reports that Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Flux Isotope Reactor has been temporarily shut down due to a leaking seal. Officials assure that no other semi-aquatic mammals are involved. Knoxville Found 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 memorial pictured was erected on the lawn of the City County Building in honor and remembrance of our Vietnam veterans. Congratulations to Ed Anderson for pinpointing the location of the monument. In recognition, we are pleased to present you with a preview copy of The Cold War, KAL-007 & Communism: Intelligence Secrets Revealed by Randy Luethye. Thanks for your entry, Ed, and keep your eyes peeled for this week’s captured curiosity!

Market Square Redo Phase II

The city pushes ahead on the Walnut Street Garage

The city is close to finalizing a renewed deal to erect the Walnut Street Garage behind the old Watson’s Building as the second phase of its Market Square redevelopment project, Mayor Bill Haslam’s Economic Development Director Bill Lyons says.

The contract with Kinsey Probasco to develop the garage, along with residential and retail components, has been held up since the election of Mayor Haslam to see if the cost to the city could be held below the original projection of $14 million, Lyons says.

John Kinsey, one of the principals in the development firm overseeing both the Market Square phases, says estimates “came in under that,” but declined to say how much because the figure “hasn’t been presented to the governmental body yet.”

Lyons says the city and Kinsey Probasco are still negotiating the final terms of their agreement, but he says, “It should be wrapped up in a few days.” He says the garage construction will be put out for construction bids and that Knoxville’s Community Development Corp. will hire a project manager and oversee construction. Kinsey Probasco will continue development of the retail space and condominium residences in the three-story brick and stucco building, Lyons says. [Metro Pulse publisher Brian Conley’s firm, Cardinal Enterprises, is a partner with Kinsey Probasco in both phases of Market Square redevelopment.]

Dan Tiller, chief development officer for KCDC, says the structure will contain about 655 parking spaces, including a still-to-be negotiated number of spaces for the 12 condominium units that will take up 15,930 square feet of the second and third floors on the Walnut Street-Union Avenue corner of the building. They will be served by an elevator and common hallway, with indoor access to the parking, Tiller says. Below the condos at the same corner, 8,940 square feet of space is set aside for commercial leasing.

The need for the new garage adjacent to Market Square, planned to accommodate tenants and customers of the businesses that occupy the revitalized square properties, was demonstrated dramatically last Thursday. A crowd estimated at from 7,000 to 10,000 persons jammed the square and its perimeters for the inaugural 2004 event in the Sundown in the City concert series’ return to Market Square, after a year away in the Old City to allow for reconstruction.

Lyons says the city wants construction to get underway as soon as possible but that no date for completion has been projected yet. Tiller says the plans are for the condos and businesses to be built concurrently with the garage, so that they would be completed on the same schedule.

—Barry Henderson

Urban Sensitivity

A downtown park’s redesign gets mixed reviews

In Charles E. Krutch’s 1978 will, he left the city money to purchase a small park that “shall not be used or developed as a playground, but as a quiet retreat with trees, shrubs, flowers and other plantings for the pleasure and health of the public.”

That property was Krutch Park on Market Street, which was redesigned and expanded as part of the Market Square redevelopment project. The results so far have gotten mixed reviews, particularly because of the number of ornamental and exotic species that were planted there. Others complain about the abundance of concrete.

Mike Fowler, of Ross/Fowler, which designed the renovations, says his firm worked from comments it gathered in public meetings. “What we heard in community forums when people sat down to talk about Krutch Park was there were all kinds of issues about safety, visibility and homeless. Several women said they do not feel safe going into the park,” he says. “We felt we were hearing the fence needed to go, the park needed to be more open and yet maintain the planted feel.” People also wanted to see more grass downtown.

Metro Pulse asked a couple of plant and gardening enthusiasts and experts—Ed White, a master gardener who salvaged many of the trees and shrubs in the old Krutch Park and Market Square, most of which were sold at charity sales; Kim Davis, who operates the website downtowntrees.com and advocated to save the large oaks in Market Square; and Todd Witcher, who works at Ijams Nature Center—to tour the park and give their thoughts. (None of them were looking to pick fights with Fowler or the city, and none of them condemned his work.)

They were impressed with some aspects, mainly some of the plant choices, but disappointed with others.

What they really liked about the old Krutch Park was the closed-in feeling it had, offering a shaded sanctuary in the middle of downtown.

White misses the old feel of the park. “The redesign abandoned the ‘quiet refuge,’ the creation of a self-contained place with secret discoveries around each corner, for a ‘plaza’ look and feel, open and broad with the plants more decorations than defining the place itself,” White says.

But removing the fence around Krutch was the overwhelming consensus of the Kinsey-Probasco public charettes in June 2002. Fowler says that the park will regain much of that closed in feel, as the trees grow. The sugar maples planted along Market Street are known for canopy. “Give it time. We’ll start getting that back in two or three years. What happens as the maple matures is it unfolds. The shade will come back,” he says.

Davis didn’t like how symmetry was emphasized, particularly in the Krutch Park addition on Gay Street. “In the beginning they were talking a lot about symmetry and people complained so they stopped using that word, but you can see it’s still like that,” she says. (Davis’ lobbying to save the oaks in Market Square broke up some of the symmetry and long sight lines.)

The new park design incorporates some native trees, shrubs and plants. The sugar maples are native, as well as the willow oaks (which Fowler called “one of our best native urban trees”) lining the buildings in the new section. Others are doghobble, itea, inkberry hollies, aromatic sumac and varieties of ferns.

There are non-native and ornamentals that have been planted, including yews, hollies, hydrangeas and hypericum (St. John’s Wort). One non-native plant, sea oats, were planted by accident, and will be replaced with the native river oats. With some species, the city relied on hybrids of native and ornamental plants, such as with the rhododendron and azaleas. The magnolias in the park—an early bloomer this spring—are an Asian variety. But it was leftover from the old Krutch and simply moved, with others planted to match it, Fowler says.

Fowler defended the use of hybrids or ornamentals, saying “Most native plants are geared for an environment that’s not easily repeatable in an urban situation. We tried to pick native plants that given some care can survive.”

A lot of the openness is due to the focus on native plants, Fowler also says, because there weren’t many evergreens they could use that would do well in the setting. So in the winter, the park will be more open.

Witcher understands the difficulty of finding native plants for urban parks. “One of the problems being a landscaper in this type of situation is the heat and sun. A lot of natives don’t do well,” he says. Native rhododendrons, for instance, usually can’t survive in the heat of the valley.

Still Witcher would have liked to see more of an emphasis on natives. “There are native plants that work in urban settings just as the non-natives the city used in Krutch Park, and it would have been nice if those native plants had been used instead the non-native.” Ross/Fowler did a lot of the landscaping at Ijams and he’s impressed with the work done there.

White says most of the non-natives fall in the category of “groundcovers, ferns, vines, perennials and bulbs.” Of the 17 varieties planted, he counts only six that are native. “There are lots of unused natives I’d have preferred in addition to what’s now being used, though, ironically, many of the ones that need conditions closer to a forest floor would have been easier with the old design,” White says.

“It’s a standard practice to have mass plantings of things simply from a practical aesthetic viewpoint: ‘statements’ need to be bolder and coherent from long views for public consumption,” he says.

“In most ways I think the failures I see are either failures of imagination, failures of proper funding (concrete over plants and habitats), or failures of faith,” White adds in the email. “A lot of it probably has to do with the rush job, even though they fell dramatically behind schedule. They could have—should have—convened a small committee, for instance, to evaluate plants and the habitat choices that follow, bringing in native plant/habitat specialists. They probably could’ve done that with pro-bono help, and without adding all that much time to the process.”

Fowler is perturbed by the ongoing scrutiny. The work he’s done here has drawn a good deal of it, more than he’s used to.

“I wish all our urban landscaping would have importance. What happened with Market Square was a very open process. What goes with public process is an obligation to be informed. If we’re not informed it diminishes our participation,” Fowler says.

The park is far from finished. More plants will be put in as well as some plaques. Some of the maples might have to be replaced if they don’t survive. And the park will change as it matures.

“We have to wait a couple of months to see. It could look different,” Witcher says.

—Joe Tarr

April 15, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 16 © 2004 Metro Pulse