Comment on this story Seven Days Wednesday, June 23 • An environmental group releases a study that ranks the Great Smoky Mountains as the country’s most polluted national park. The good news is that the organization also rated the Smokies as the nation’s most scenic landfill. Thursday, June 24 • Our Little Polish Sausage department: The News Sentinel reports that Victor Ashe is sworn in as ambassador to Poland. It’s a reportedly new experience for Ashe, who was accustomed to being sworn at as mayor of Knoxville. Friday, June 25 • An Associated Press report says that high-volume service stations will face big increases in the fees they pay to maintain underground gasoline storage tanks. Yet another reminder that everyone pays through the nose whenever too much gas is passed. Saturday, June 26 • West Tennessee GOP congressional candidate James L. Hart is reportedly calling for eugenics to cut birth rates among the “less favored faces” (non-whites). Opponents call for similar measures in hopes of cutting birth rates in the Hart family. Sunday, June 27 • New University of Tennessee president John Petersen tells the Sentinel that lightning struck a tree in front of his new home the day he moved to Knoxville. Local clergy believe the bolt was probably intended for scandal-ridden former UT president John Shumaker, but somebody forgot to send the Almighty a change-of-address when he slunk out of town. Monday, June 28 • More good news/bad news with the environment: The bad news is that 30 percent of the state’s rivers and streams are too polluted to support aquatic life. The good news is that your in-laws just went swimming. Tuesday, June 29 • The News Sentinel reports that members of the state board of accountancy refused to fire their boss, director Darrel Tongate, despite Gov. Phil Bredesen’s recommendation that they do so. A reporter sought the board members for comment, but found that most had departed for extended junkets in exotic tropical locales. 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 cephalopod pictured decorates an observation deck at Fort Kid, Knoxville’s finest destination attraction for children. We heartily congratulate Eleanor McDonough for locating the octopus and are thrilled to hook you up with an official promotional wristband from the recently released film White Chicks. This blue and white striped band of terry cloth will make you da bomb. Meet Your City A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP Thursday, July 1 • 5 p.m. • City County Building • Large Assembly Room • 400 Main St. Beer Code Amendment to allow use of parking areas for outdoor serving areas within the C-7 Zone CITY COUNCIL MEETING Tuesday, July 6 • 7 p.m. • City County Building • Large Assembly Room • 400 Main St. Regular meeting

Concert Discord
Market Square Live! endeavors to get on its feet

Noting that Sam Bush’s Sundown in the City performance on June 24 would conclude the Market Square concert series, some local promoters and business owners busied themselves organizing a similar concert series to be held in its stead.

Preservation Pub and Earth to Old City owner Scott West envisioned that the series would be “seamlessly integrated into Thursday nights” beginning July 1. The series was entitled Market Square Live!, five local and regional acts were booked, permission from the city granted, fliers distributed, people hired, and the financially dispirited Bijou Theatre even selected as a beneficiary of beer and wristband sales.

“We were going to make it virtually indistinguishable from Sundown in the City,” says Michael Gill, coordinator of KMA’s Alive After Five and Bluegill Entertainment. “It made perfect sense to present the shows on Thursdays and to start the very next week after Sundown concluded.”

But the night before the big production meeting was to be held, the promoters’ plans were derailed.

“Apparently there was an objection to us leaping onto the coattails of Sundown and saying let’s keep those Thursday concerts going,” Gill says. “I got word that AC Entertainment intends to bring Sundown back in September, and Ashley [Capps] had a problem with us presenting the shows at Market Square on Thursdays, something about interfering with or confusing the branding of Sundown in the City.”

West says that Capps, founder and head of AC Entertainment, feared another Thursday night series “could potentially dilute the Sundown in the City brand.”

Capps says he doesn’t object “at all” to the concert series itself, but rather objected to it being on Thursday nights.

“I suggested that they move it to another night,” Capps says. “We’d had a really good partnership with everyone on the square and wanted to preserve Sundown’s integrity. We’ve worked for six years trying to get it its own identity, and we were concerned that [another concert series] might cause some confusion in the public’s mind.”

Market Square Live! coordinators West and Gill claim to harbor no ill feelings towards Capps. “Ashley Capps is our friend,” West says. “AC Entertainment is a great asset to Knoxville, and Sundown in the City is a tremendous force in downtown revitalization.”

But not everyone is as complacent about the reversal of plans—and income. “It really chafes my ass when things like this happen,” says Mark Arnold, who has worked with AC in the past and was slotted to be stage manager for Live! “Knoxville has such a wealth of music history, music talent, a vibrant music scene and all the potential to be as big a music town as Austin, Nashville, Athens or Chapel Hill, but pitiful, selfish self-interest step on it and don’t even bother to wipe their feet.

“It’s even more of an insult when you know how hard the city of Knoxville, Mayor Haslam and the Department of Special Events have bent over backwards to make Market Square a showcase to promote Knoxville as a city of American music heritage and downtown Knoxville/Market Square in particular,” he adds.

Capps maintains that his objection to the new Thursday night series was a request and not a mandate. “I don’t have the power to say who can play on that stage, and I wouldn’t be so arrogant or asinine as to tell anyone that they shouldn’t or couldn’t do something. People can do what they want to.”

Director of Special Events for the city, Mickey Mallonee, says there is no charge to book the Market Square stage, and that “depending on logistics you can book it right up until the day before.” Mallonee confirms that the stage was reserved for Market Square Live! and then cancelled.

“It would have been nice to be able to capitalize on the momentum of Thursdays at Market Square, but we didn’t want to offend [Capps] in any way, so we canceled our Market Square Live! shows,” Gill says.

“There are folks who might be more financially concerned, but I was just out some sweat and tears, no blood fortunately,” Gill says, though he admits feeling a bit “embarrassed,” seeing as he’d already distributed handfuls of fliers listing the Live! lineup during Sundown shows.

All the scheduled bands had to be notified of the cancellations, including Robinella and the CCstringband, Mem Shannon and the Membership, Big Bill Morganfield, King Johnson and Carbon Leaf.

“We did have to cancel those dates with the bands,” West says. “However I suspect Robinella will appear in the fall Sundown line-up, because they have a long-standing good relationship with AC Entertainment.”

The reality of Sundown’s autumn return has been ambiguous all along. AC reported earlier in the spring that no fall edition of the series was being planned, although many people still assumed that the mid-summer break of previous years would occur in 2004 as well, with concerts resuming upon cooler weather and the return of UT students.

Non-communication appears to be at the root of the problem. Newspaper ads claimed that Sam Bush would be “The last Sundown 2004 show!”

“No one ever actually asked us if we were going to continue Sundown,” Capps says. “I had mentioned to people that we wanted to.”

Capps says now that Sundown will definitely return in September, most likely Labor Day, and that AC Entertainment is working on booking two or three local artists and two or three national artists. “We’ve talked to Robinella’s people,” he confirms.

“We thought it would be better for all concerned not to wear people out on Thursday nights,” Capps says. “We noticed that attendance lagged in July and August, so we thought we’d give people a breather, and then come back in the fall. So we’re working on doing that.”

Though promoters have not yet settled on a day for Market Square Live!, the concert series is a definite dot in the horizon. “Now we’re looking at other evenings to present Market Square Live! to help out the Bijou and to keep people coming to Market Square during the summer,” Gill says. “I’m lobbying for Wednesdays, but that hasn’t been agreed upon yet.”

If the fledgling Market Square Live! can get established, West says he envisions that the festival will bring “thousands of visitors into downtown Knoxville to experience a free cultural event in the beautiful outdoor setting of Market Square’s pedestrian plaza.”

Even Capps concedes, “It would be better for Market Square if they had something different and fresh out there.”

—Ellen Mallernee

Lunch with David Hutchins
KCDC’s new prez holds forth

David Hutchins, president of Hutchins Associates architecture firm, was recently voted, in a somewhat controversial and divided election, president of Knoxville’s Community Development Corp.

We asked him to lunch to chat about where he’d like to lead the agency during the next year. Hutchins picked a wonderful hole-in-the-wall called Taco de Mexico on Beaumont Avenue. Hoping to turn Metro Pulse on to one of Knoxville’s hidden treasures, he was a little upset to find out we already knew about the place. Hutchins used to live a short distance from here in Old North Knoxville. He renovated an old home there, “back before it was fashionable,” in the early ’80s. Now he lives near West Town Mall in the Rocky Hill neighborhood.

With pork burrito in hand, Hutchins sits down at one of the restaurant’s tables to talk public housing policy.

Local housing authorities are in a tough spot these days. Poverty is on the rise, and much of the private rental housing available for low-income earners is often substandard with extremely high utility costs. Yet the federal government is not funding any new public housing projects.

As a result, many public housing authorities are trying to reduce the housing stock they manage, while at the same time trying to help the thousands of people who have come to rely on them for places to live.

“We’ve decided to reduce our dependence on HUD funds. Year to year, there’s no way to know what [level] you’re going to be funded at,” Hutchins says.

KCDC hopes to do this in a couple of ways. For one, the agency is looking for funding that doesn’t have stipulations or restrictions that often accompany HUD money. It’s also looking to farm out some of its experience to other, smaller public housing authorities in East Tennessee, which could in theory bring in money.

“We’re in the top 10 percent size-wise of all public housing authorities. That gives us resources and experience that any average-sized public housing authority is years away from developing,” he says. “A lot of public housing authorities are just trying to build another duplex.”

Like many other housing authorities, KCDC has shifted some of its clients out of public housing developments and into the Section 8 voucher program, which gives recipients a stipend to use toward rent in the private market.

That program has plenty of critics, however. They say often Section 8 clients often end up getting lumped into the same poor neighborhoods, creating new ghettos. Some claim developers take advantage of the program, providing cheap but hardly livable space for the poor. And because some of the houses are so inefficient, the utility bills become exorbitant, crushing the residents’ credit. KCDC has a stricter inspection than HUD, but local housing advocates say there are still problems.

“I’m sure we could improve on that program, either by increasing the frequency of inspections or being more thorough,” Hutchins says. “At the same time, I’d be more interested in having the city codes department be more vigilant in identifying blighted property.”

Critics have accused KCDC of being heavy handed in the way it makes decisions with public housing. The agency created bitter feelings among some in the way it administered a Hope VI grant in Mechanicsville and went about the process of getting a demolition permit for part of Austin Homes (the later of which is still being fought by residents in the housing project). Hutchins is sympathetic, but he doesn’t offer a clear way to resolve the conflict or improve KCDC’s reputation.

“I can see both sides of the story. You’re taking someone’s home away. They may have lived there 40 years. They don’t want change; they were happy where they were,” he says.

But Hutchins says the KCDC is forced to modernize its property. That includes reducing density at many of its existing housing projects and trying to modernize the buildings as much as possible, which he says will provide a better environment for residents. The housing agency needs to integrate its developments into the community. “We’re trying to change to resemble market rate housing,” he says. “We don’t want to be the housing of last resort.”

But shouldn’t that be the role of public housing? “We don’t want our properties to carry the stigma of public housing,” he responds.

The main thing Hutchins wants to address during his term is pushing the Jackson and Depot Avenues redevelopment plan forward, particularly work on the mostly vacant McClung Warehouse buildings which line Jackson Avenue and are visible from Broadway. The Owner is Mark Saroff. Although KCDC was given the responsibility to move the plan forward, it was given no funding for acquisition, something Hutchins calls an unfunded mandate from the city. But it’s vital for downtown to save those buildings.

“Enough pressure needs to come to bear on that property owner to redevelop the buildings or unload them to someone who is [going to redevelop them]. I know there are people willing to rehabilitate those buildings. The 100 block of Gay Street is almost tapped out. It’s the next logical step.”

Saroff couldn’t be reached for comment.

KCDC also needs to play an important role in the redevelopment of Five Points, the East Knoxville neighborhood. Nearby Walter P. Taylor Homes could be renovated and connected to the neighborhood. He suggested possibly putting apartments for the elderly nearest to the planned grocery store.

“That grocery store is not a silver bullet for the resurrection of Five Points. It’s clearly a step in the right direction, but it’s going to take more. We want it to be a springboard, not just a one time dead-end investment. How do you leverage that [public] money into private investment? There’s great leadership at KCDC who understand the challenge and go to work every day thinking about it.”

—Joe Tarr

July 1, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 27 © 2004 Metro Pulse