Comment on this story Seven Days Wednesday, April 28 • The American Lung Association says the Knoxville metropolitan area once again ranks among the nation’s worst when it comes to air pollution. But there’s good news, too: We also made the ALA’s supplementary list of best places to set fire to passed gas. Thursday, April 29 • A California judge rules that Knoxville Zoo officials must submit a report on the social activities of former Los Angeles Zoo denizen Ruby, an African elephant who was moved from L.A. to Knox last year. The ruling is prompted by a U.S. Humane Society lawsuit, and its concerns that the homesick Ruby now “spends most of her time alone... instead of breeding with other elephants.” Where were these people when we were in high school? Friday, April 30 • A Knoxville News Sentinel story reports that changes in government price controls will raise the cost of dairy products by more than 25 percent, proving once and for all that there is some use in crying over spilt milk. Saturday, May 1 • According to the Associated Press, Dollywood has asked that a national gay/lesbian group stop using the theme park’s logo in advertisements for a planned “Gay Day at Dollywood” event. Some observers conclude that while Gay Day at that park may not do much to promote tolerance and diversity, it will go a long way toward banishing the stereotype that gays have better taste than the rest of us. Sunday, May 2 • The Sentinel reports that some residents of the Lyons Bend community of Knoxville have been troubled by a large Black Angus cow that has been grazing wild in the area for more than a year. Sorry, but it’s hard for us to get too worried about a problem that can be resolved with a bag of charcoal and a bottle of barbecue sauce. Monday, May 3 • Another News Sentinel article tells that Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam wants to renovate and find new uses for the city’s long-dormant Sunsphere. The structure is located right next door to the new Knoxville Convention Center, after all, and there’s no reason both buildings should remain empty. Tuesday, May 4 • At an early-morning budget presentation, County Mayor Mike Ragsdale proposes a $30 increase in the county wheel tax, under the presumption that it would be more equitable than other possible tax increases. Let us propose instead a countywide graduate tax on rear ends. A rear-end tax would be quintessentially fair because (a) everyone has one, and (b) the biggest bums would have to pay more. 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: Congratulations to Brian Jordan for recognizing his own drawing. He writes, “I drew that drawing as an illustration major at UT roughly 10 years ago. The drawings were headed for the trash when my friend Tracy, the owner of the building, stuck them in his window. It’s close to the corner of South Central and Summit Hill in the Old City, right next to that boxcar restaurant on the corner and two doors down from the Rainbow. It used to be a buy-sell-trade store called Vineyard & Sons.” Exact-a-mundo! We are pleased to endow you with a copy of Sex & Guts 4, a book that “charges headlong into the sleazy world of B-movies, exploitation, rock ’n’ roll smut and the celluloid underground.” Meet Your City A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend JAMES WHITE PARKWAY – CHAPMAN HIGHWAY TASK FORCE Thursday, May 6 5 p.m. South Doyle High School CITY COUNCIL MEETING Tuesday, May 11 7 p.m. City County Building Main Assembly Room 400 Main St. Regular meeting.

NooKaBooCa on the Comeback
An Ex-Californian is reopening the popular brewery

Three years after a bank’s foreclosure on the New Knoxville Brewing Company, the state’s only bottling brewery is scheduled to reopen in early June—at the brewery’s original location on East Depot Street. A Knoxville entrepreneur bought the property shortly after it closed down, but it sat untouched until Californian Brett Redmayne-Titley recently began leasing and readying it for production.

Although he’ll be brewing several different beers, Redmayne-Titley wants to carry on the tradition of strong, complex flavors that the former brewery, which operated from 1996 to 2001, was known for. “They did so many good things that I can take advantage of,” he says. This respect for the old brewery is largely his reasoning behind keeping the same name. NKBC harks back to the original New Knoxville Brewing Company, which operated from 1886 until statewide prohibition closed its taps in 1910.

Redmayne-Titley cites “a breakdown of the social fabric” in San Diego as one of the reasons he began to look elsewhere after 12 years in the brewing business there. In Knoxville, he found a social fabric more like that of a favorite old T-shirt, homey and comfy with a strong sense of history. Plus, he shares a love of two things near and dear to many Knoxvillian hearts: beer and music. Though brewing beer is his main passion, bluegrass had a hand in bringing him here. He’s been an avid listener to WDVX for years (via the Internet), so when he came across a vacant brewery in Knoxville, he was intrigued. After a few visits, he says, “I was so taken by the people and the artistic scene here, particularly in the Old City.”

So, what about the beer? Those still suffering withdrawal from the old Brewery’s IPA blend need not fear. The new brewmeister plans to bottle a very similar version of the beloved India Pale Ale. He also plans on making a standard Pale Ale, a traditional German Hefeweizen, an English Brown, and a West Coast IPA for all the true hop-heads out there.

As far as volume, the old brewery averaged about 2,000 barrels a year. Redmayne-Titley doesn’t expect to hit that number right off the bat in the first year, but hopes to double or triple it in the future, depending on market success.

The decision to recreate the IPA by the newest incarnation of NKBC is no doubt due to its popularity and its critical acclaim; it won many awards in its heyday. The financial problems that led to the bank’s foreclosure on the brewery in 2001 had little to do with the quality of the beer. Instead, they sprang from a lack of sufficient initial capital and a fallout among investors. In addition, previous owners admitted to a lag in promotions early on. The community adulation for the product that many Knoxvillians remember didn’t come about until late in the game when additional private investors couldn’t save it.

Nonetheless, Cherokee Distributing was enthusiastic about signing on again with the brewery, so we’ll be able to find bottled IPA and a new Pale Ale on grocery shelves, as well as kegs of all five varieties in some local restaurants and bars. This all sounds copacetic, but one might question how, using the same building, the same distributor, and a few of the same concepts and beers, the new brewery will differ enough to avoid the same fate as its predecessor?

Al Krusen, former co-owner of NKBC, and its brewmeister, now makes the fine brews at Downtown Grill and Brewery, but hopes for the best. “When New Knoxville closed down, it left a hole,” he says, “A packaging brewery fills a unique niche and helps define the community.”

One fresh development the new brewery will introduce is a “tasting room” in the front of the brewery building where people can drink pints, chat, and view the brewing process, as well as local artists’ work. Redmayne-Titley lovingly calls beer a “talkative beverage” and plans to use the tasting room as a tool for direct community involvement as well as an extra source of revenue. Knoxvillian Andrew Postlewaite, who will be managing the tasting room, says they will offer to-go growlers of beer, to save late-night carousers from the 2 o’clock mad dash to Weigel’s. They are also toying with the idea of a “train beer discount”—for every time a freight train rumbles by the building, which is just around the corner from the Old City.

Both Redmayne-Titley and Postlewaite say they are not in competition with local bars, as their primary focus is on brewing, bottling, and distributing. And Redmayne-Titley doesn’t sound arrogant at all when he says with a twinkle in his eye, “I like to think the beers are going to be exemplary...because they will be.”

—Molly Kincaid

Stripped Down
Cumberland Avenue readies for renewal

Walking down Cumberland Avenue, it doesn’t take Rob Dansereau long to find something that bugs him. In the 1700 block, it’s all the vacant buildings. In the alley out back, there are those big ugly parking lots that sit empty a good deal of the time. All down the street, it’s the sidewalk that is too narrow and too close to the cars speeding up and down the road.

“The crosswalks are painted and visible, but you and I know that crossing Cumberland Avenue is like taking your life in your hands,” he says.

In the 1900 block, he points to a mangy rectangle of dirt, sand and cigarette butts, which separates the sidewalk from the street. “This is our greenspace,” he says.

Not that Dansereau is knocking the Cumberland Avenue strip. He loves the commercial district, where he’s owned businesses for about a decade and currently operates Flashback. But Dansereau knows that the strip has seen better days. He’d like to bring them back.

As head of the Cumberland Avenue Merchants Association, Dansereau is spearheading an effort to revitalize this commercial district that was once the city’s premier entertainment district. With suburban sprawl and downtown redevelopment, it’s slipped a good ways. Its vacancy rate is about 20 percent.

He blames a variety of problems. The UT students who were once the core of the strip’s customer base have spread out in recent years. Many now live south of the river, in North Knoxville and downtown, relying more on cars to get around. Some key anchors closed or moved away, including Sam and Andy’s and Spicy’s, and there’s no longer a major rock club like the Library or Barley & Hopps to draw people from across the city.

“We really haven’t done a good job recruiting the right mix. We’ve ended up with too many of the same types of places,” he says. “Cumberland Avenue is populated with bars and sandwich shops.”

There’s also been some reckless development, with too many historic structures around the strip being torn down for parking lots. And the commercial district doesn’t have the pedestrian traffic it used to. “It used to be we were more of a pedestrian-based area, but you don’t see it anymore. This is a beautiful sunny day, 70-some degrees at 1:40 in the afternoon,” he says. “But you don’t see a lot of people out.”

Of course, Cumberland Avenue still has a lot going for it, he adds, and plenty of reason to hope for better things. There’s the Copper Cellar, which he calls the avenue’s linchpin, great restaurants like the Sunspot and new ones the likes of Mellow Mushroom, Moe’s and Chili’s. There’s room for growth—the strip is bigger than both the Old City and Market Square in square footage. The new Knoxville Convention Center is just down the street. And Cumberland is one of the main routes into downtown.

The merchants are looking at a number of things, both long- and short-term, to revive the district. First is to repeal the prohibition on outdoor beer vending in the C-7 zone, which applies only to the strip. Passed in 2001, it prevents any restaurant or bar from selling beer outside in its parking lots or at a festival. A lot of restaurants and bars have noticed a drop in business—even on football game days—since the law went into effect.

“They’re not allowed to do things that are being allowed within the [Central Business Improvement District], like in Market Square, Gay Street and the Old City,” says Councilman Joe Hultquist, whose district includes Cumberland. “If you look at what’s happening downtown, there are several bars and restaurants allowed to do that on public right-of-way.”

Councilman Joe Bailey says he’s working with the administration to try to deal with the issue. He says he thinks the ordinance was passed as a way to generate revenue from the fining of people drinking on football Saturdays. “You could really round them up there on game day,” he says. “And they’re out-of-towners, and you could issue some fines.”

The merchants are pushing for a comprehensive urban design plan that would be developed with the help of the Metropolitan Planning Commission. The process would address a number of issues, including building-design standards, street design, zoning, and development incentives.

Some possibilities include making Cumberland a “traditional neighborhood development” or a “town center zone,” which are specialized zones that allow for more mixed-use developments, Hultquist says. Other possibilities including making it a business improvement district or expanding the CBID to include Cumberland Avenue, which would allow for tax abatements.

“It would be similar to the Bearden Village opportunity plan,” Hultquist says. “That could lead to further efforts and incentives by the city. I think the administration is going to be supportive.”

There are many major players in the Cumberland Avenue district—the merchants, the city, Fort Sanders neighborhood, UT, Fort Sanders and Children’s hospitals, and TDOT, among others—and Dansereau would like to see them all involved.

A few years ago the Fort Sanders Forum, a group that looked at development issues around the Fort, recommended making Cumberland Avenue a three-lane road (with a center turning lane) and widening the sidewalks. Some merchants would still like to see that happen, but because it’s a state road, it will require TDOT approval.

“That’s almost a no-brainer,” Randall De Ford, of the Historic Fort Sanders Neighborhood Association, says of the idea. “Yes, it’s going to cost something, but look at the strip—it’s an embarrassment to the city, it’s an embarrassment to UT. It’s a dump.”

One of the keys to making the strip more vital is finding a way to attract non-students and families, De Ford and Dansereau both say. There are 5,000 to 10,000 people who work for UT, another 5,000 to 7,000 people who work for the local hospitals, and a number of non-students who live in the neighborhood, De Ford says.

But compared to university towns like Chapel Hill, N.C. or Athens, Ga., UT’s strip is in sad shape, De Ford says. That’s because those other cities attract beyond the student market, he says.

The merchants have hired the PR and design firm, Clarity Works, to promote the strip for them. Carol Evans, its president, says she sees a variety of groups being targeted as customers. “You could walk out of the convention center, walk to Cumberland Avenue or walk downtown. Plus you’ve got the neighborhood of Fort Sanders. There are probably three or four groups that need to be considered,” Evans says.

De Ford is confident the strip can make a comeback. “It’s going to take people working together. That’s a challenge in Knoxville,” he says. “Now is a good time because everybody is, if not on the same page, they’re close.... It’s time to really use teamwork.”

—Joe Tarr

May 6, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 19 © 2004 Metro Pulse