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The Bijounnessee?
Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale made a novel proposal in his budget speech last week: that the boards of Gay Street’s two historic theaters, the Bijou and Tennessee, should be consolidated as one. The announcement prefigured word of the Bijou’s likely bankruptcy.
“Having two boards running two historical theaters two blocks from each other just doesn’t make sense,” says spokesman Mike Cohen. “You need two copiers, two phone systems, two secretaries—we could cut those expenses in half.” The 1909, 750-seat Bijou has in recent years concentrated on live drama; the 1928, 1,600-seat Tennessee, now in the throes of a multi-million-dollar renovation/augmentation that will render it a performing arts center with capacity for major symphonic productions. Ragsdale isn’t ready to propose any details of how the theater boards might merge.
“There will have to be people on this board who have it as their mission in life the Tennessee Theatre, and people who have it as their mission in life the Bijou Theatre,” Cohen says. “We have a long way to go, and a lot of details to work out, but we want people to understand we need to move in that direction.”
Exhausting All Avenues
There are ways to get vehicle emissions testing in place in the localities that need it most, and the Legislature is working on one of them. Quietly passed by the house last week is a bill to authorize the state’s Air Pollution Control Board to require counties that don’t meet the EPA’s air quality standards to institute such auto tests. That’s us, folks.
Unclenching Clinch
The newly completed exterior of the East Tennessee History Center’s Gay Street extension looks great, matching the 1872 Custom House so well that some may assume it was all built at once.
As workers took put the finishing touches on the exterior and took down the scaffolding and the fence around the hardhat zone, though, they accomplished something almost as astonishing. Without fanfare, they reopened Clinch Avenue. It used to be nearly 24 blocks long, from Central Avenue downtown to the railroad tracks past 23rd Street on the western fringe of Fort Sanders. It was closed to automobile traffic a year or two before the 1982 World’s Fair, and didn’t reopen until the convention center project was completed almost two years ago. By then, the history-center project was underway.
Now, although it’s still partly impeded by the Tennessee Theater construction project, for the first time in almost a quarter of a century, Clinch Avenue is open all the way through again.
Ear to the Grind
The new Gay Street coffee shop Downtown Grind opened a WiFi hotspot last weekend. It also got its cafe tables set outside, giving it the Euro look, along with another chance to use the Internet from the sidewalk.
May 13, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 20
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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