Comment on this story Wednesday, Oct. 27 • A local anti-tax group says it will challenge a proposed property-tax increase in court if local officials enact it in lieu of the ill-favored new county wheel tax. Political scientists note the anti-taxers are pioneering a whole new philosophy of government; they call it “litigislation.” Thursday, Oct. 28 • A former Knoxville meat-processing plant stands in as a besieged federal building in a homeland-security drill for local emergency agencies. Beautiful. New Yorkers still mourn the loss of the WTC; Chicagoans fear for the safety of the Sears Tower; here in Knoxville, we circle the wagons around Chicken City. Friday, Oct. 29 • The News Sentinel reports on a court case involving a man arrested in a local Shoney’s parking lot with a mouth full of heroin. Maybe next time he’ll stick to the breakfast bar. Saturday, Oct. 30 • The Associated Press tells of two different suspected instances of police officers using excessive force in Chattanooga. We don’t expect much to be done about it, though. In some cities, they investigate police brutality. In Chattanooga, they rate it. Sunday, Oct. 31 • Local officials say they will need an “array of tools” to attract more Gay Street investors. We think Knoxville already has plenty of tools, but in the spirit of charity, we won’t identify them by name. Monday, Nov. 1 • Good news/bad news on the legal front: The bad news is that a national parents’ organization has given the state of Tennessee a grade of “F” in its tracking of sexual offenders. Not everyone rates us so poorly, though; the good news is that some group called NAMBLA gave us an “A+.” Tuesday, Nov. 2 • The News Sentinel reports that area Republicans hope to “ride President Bush’s coattails” on election day. In light of that information, Democrats volunteer to take the president on a tour of local truck-stop restroom facilities. Street Talk Judy Loest Editor, Knoxville Bound What is Knoxville Bound? Knoxville Bound is a literary anthology created by writers who were either born here, have lived here, or who currently live in Knoxville. The anthology features poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Where did you get the idea for such a book? The idea came when I heard an NPR interview last year with the editor of a literary anthology about New Orleans, French Quarter Fiction. It occurred to me that Knoxville has produced, and is still inspiring, a great many writers, many of whom have been published widely but who are still unknown to the majority of Tennesseans. Can you give us an example of such a writer? Certainly. A good example is David Madden who has a short story in Knoxville Bound. Madden was born in Knoxville in 1933, graduated from UT and went on to publish nine novels, one of which, Cassandra Crossing, was a CBS movie. An early novel, Bijou, was inspired by his job as an usher at the Bijou Theatre when he was a teenager. Madden currently holds a distinguished chair in creative writing at LSU where he has taught for over 30 years. Who are some of the other writers to be featured in Knoxville Bound? Some of the better known authors include Nikki Giovanni, Kelly Cherry, Alan Cheuse, Richard Marius, and, of course, James Agee. Some of Knoxville’s current published authors who contributed include Jeanne McDonald, Jack Neely, Brian Griffin, Allen Wier, Arthur Smith, Marilyn Kallet, Daniel Roop, Linda and Danny Marion, Julie Auer, R.B. Morris, and Wendy Besmann. When will it be in stores? It will be in bookstores in time for the holidays.

Hunger Strike
Muslim students spread hunger awareness via mass fasting

Families all over the world suffer from malnutrition and starvation, especially in times of famine and war. But the majority of Americans have never experienced that kind of suffering first-hand. Now the Muslim Student Association offers local students the chance to see what it’s like to go hungry for a day and to help local needy families in the process.

MSA of the University of Tennessee and TeamVols are sponsoring the fourth annual Ramadan Fast-a-thon, named for the Islamic month of Ramadan that began Oct. 15, in which Muslims fast during the daylight hours. The Fast-a-thon is part of a national event involving more than 150 organizations, and it raises donations for local food shelters and soup kitchens.

According to Second Harvest Food Bank, nearly 12 percent of Tennessee households were classified as “food insecure” from 1999-2001, meaning they did not have enough food to meet the basic needs.

“The MSA’s goal in organizing the Fast-a-thon is to raise awareness about the problem of hunger” on a local level, says MSA Secretary Tanzeela Ahmed. “In Knoxville alone, as many as 360 calls for emergency food may be placed in a single day to area food pantries, soup kitchens and other emergency food providers.”

Students who sign up for the event fast on Nov. 4, and local businesses donate $2 for each participant. This year’s donations will be given to the Love Kitchen, a local emergency food provider.“People who choose to fast probably do not have to worry about whether they will have dinner at the end of the day,” says MSA President Abdelhamid Alsharif, “but perhaps, with the few pangs of hunger from fasting, we can come to realize how that must feel.”

Last year’s Fast-a-thon, with 834 sponsored fasters, raised $1,668 for the Love Kitchen. This year, the MSA hopes to get at least 1,000 people on board for the event. MSA members set up booths on campus for pledge sign-ups, attend campus organization meetings and provide a sign-up page on their web site, www.MSAKnoxville.org, to recruit participants.

MSA Vice President Saimah Hameedudin is an avid participant in Ramadan and finds that this sacred month is a new experience each year. “My body has to adapt to the 11 months I haven’t fasted, and, although difficult at times, the benefits are innumerable. The fast encompasses a plethora of spiritual experiences that are not just limited to one’s relationship with God, but with one’s relationship with those around him or her. Compassion, empathy and gratitude are values we hope fasters, first-timers and Muslims alike, will gain,” Hameedudin says.

At the event’s conclusion, fasters are encouraged to break the fast by joining local Muslim families for a traditional meal. During the dinner, several speakers will address the topic of hunger in Knoxville, and the event will conclude with an open discussion of the participants about their fasting experience.

—Melissa Elkins

Synergy or Subsidy?
Officials ponder the pros and cons of a parking plan

City Council’s recent approval of a 10-year parking lease with an Alabama condo builder was lauded as a means of bringing additional cheap parking downtown...for the most part. But a few dissenters say the project raises knotty questions as to whom the city should offer incentives, and under what circumstances.

Council approved 7-2 a plan that would enable Cityscape Development Group, LLC to develop a parking lot in the gravely stretch beneath the Gay Street Viaduct at the corner of Gay and Jackson Avenue. The new 300-odd-space lot would provide 200 spaces for the city to lease at its discretion, plus an additional 100 or so spaces for Cityscape to provide for tenants of a planned 109-unit condo development at Jackson and Gay. Cityscape would earn a $55 to $60 a month per space from the city for the duration of the agreement.

One downtown businessman—Eric Ohlgren of Heuristic Workshop Inc.—as well as Councilmen Joe Hultquist and Steve Hall, comprise the early resistance to the lease.

“I felt like something should be said because everyone else would be glad-handing this thing through,” says Ohlgren, who spoke up at the Oct. 27 Council meeting.

“It’s a bad precedent to set: subsidizing people just because they want to come downtown,” Ohlgren continues. “I understand that it’s a normal way of doing business, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s such a common practice that no one questions the validity of it.”

While granting that the additional parking will benefit his and other businesses in the area, Ohlgren believes that such agreements tend to prop up unsound developments, ventures that might not survive on their own merits.

“I’d love to see a quality project move in next to me, and I want to see the city buzzing,” he says. “But if you’re not willing to let things happen organically, when you force things, that’s when you end up with mediocre projects. I’m of the belief that if the numbers on your project don’t stand alone, don’t burden the city with it.”

On the other hand, Hultquist admits he was “torn” over whether to vote for the parking plan. He ultimately voted against it for reasons that in some ways echo Ohlgren’s; he’s afraid the deal will supplant natural selection downtown, favoring a development plan that’s less than ideal, one that might not survive without the municipal incentives.

“The deal gives the developer a guaranteed cash flow to secure financing on the rest of his project, the condo development. But the condo development, to me, looks like a pedestrian-unfriendly suburban development dropped into the middle of downtown,” Hultquist says. Hultquist says the condos and the parking lot in combination would seem to block pedestrian access to the nearby McClung warehouse buildings, prime targets for future downtown redevelopment.

“If we give incentives, it should be to help downtown,” says Hultquist. “What we would be doing there is creating a pedestrian-hostile compound that would isolate the most attractive part of Jackson Avenue. It’s just bad urban design.”

But the city’s economic development director, Bill Lyons, says the plan’s opponents have “misframed” the issue. “There are all kinds of parking problems down there. That area has been a victim of its own success,” Lyons says. “This way, we’re providing substantially for the inventory of parking, at no additional cost.”

As further evidence of the Jackson Avenue-area parking crisis, Lyons cites the pending 2005 closure of the viaduct by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the renovation plans of other downtown developers. “We’ll have David Dewhirst renovating more lofts down there, and Scott Carpenter developing the old Southeastern Glass Building. With those things coming in, we need to be ahead of the parking curve, not behind it.”

—Mike Gibson

November 4, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 45 © 2004 Metro Pulse