MetroPulse Stories: Off-Center City by Matt Edens

We Are All We Have

barrettc@metropulse.com (Chris Barrett) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:48:00 -0000

The first few minutes for a visitor at a Trappist monastery are pretty special. The member monks and priests subscribe fully to the line of teaching that when Christ returns, He will present Himself as a stranger in need. You briefly get the benefit of the doubt. Once they sniff out your humanity, you are left to your own devices.

Who Will Fill 6th District Vacancy?

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:33:00 -0000

In addition to all the jockeying for the vice mayor’s post, Mark Brown stepping down from City Council to become a judicial commissioner also leaves his colleagues faced with the challenge of appointing a successor to his 6th District seat. Who will that be?

The Rep faces potential legal troubles

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:32:00 -0000

State Rep. Stacey Campfield is back in the news. Only this time, it’s not due to some publicity stunt or politically DOA piece of legislation like last year’s bill requiring death certificates be filed for aborted fetuses. Instead, “The Rep,” as the lawmaker likes to style himself, faces some potential legal trouble of his own.

Old Man Potter’s Revenge

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:07:00 -0000

You know the scene: George and Mary Bailey are bound for their honeymoon when they witness a run on the town’s bank. And, as a similar panic threatens to swamp George’s Bailey Brothers’ Building and Loan, he and Mary offer up their own cash—the “kitty” they’ve saved up for their honeymoon—to tide their nervous depositors over.

Soul Food

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:22:00 -0000

The S&W’s salvation, as Jack Neely observed in last week’s story on the announcement that a restaurant will soon be returning to the space, is “a fairy-tale ending.” But it’s more than just the Cinderella story of a single building. And, once the S&W Grande Café opens, the city will have regained more than just a restaurant.

Lost in Green Space

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Before he went full time prophesying a peak oil apocalypse, author and critic Jim Kunstler made some pretty shrewd observations about the pitiful state of America’s built environment. One such observation applies pretty well to the current debate about the City County Building green space and putting a jail on or under part of it. Kunstler’s issue is with the term “green space,” which he finds a meaningless abstraction, equally applicable to either a farm or a town square.

City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Sidewalks are typically good barometers of a center-city’s health—the more bustling the better. Here’s hoping that, as the holidays approach, the sidewalks around Mast General and along Market Square are thronged with shoppers. Seems like not too long ago when such thoughts would sound absurd.

Here’s Hoping

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:00:00 -0000

By the time you read this, we should know who the next president is. At least, I hope so. Another Florida hanging-chad debacle might be more than America’s creaky democracy can take, particularly after an election as contentious and as loaded with expectation as this one.

Gentrification Proof?

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Empty houses, overgrown lawns, and “for rent” signs replacing the “for sale” signs: As the foreclosure crisis continues to unfold across the nation’s cul-de-sacs, the reports coming sound strangely familiar. Like so many folks who fled the inner city for suburbia over the years, the physical and fiscal decay that traditionally defines the inner city seems to be following. So far, in Knoxville, things haven’t quite reached panic proportions. Builders aren’t yet running ads offering $100,000 off homes they’re desperate to sell, but sales, according to the Knoxville Area Association of Realtors, did plummet 27.8 percent last month. Prices are likewise slipping, with large homes, four or more bedrooms, showing the biggest drop: 10 percent.

Holler, Not Hollow

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:00:00 -0000

“Retail Follows Rooftops” is an age-old axiom in the development trade. It’s also common sense. Sellers need buyers and will tend to set up shop where they’re concentrated. That simple fact propelled the growth of cities in the first place. It also explains why subdivisions, naturally, tend to attract commercial development, no matter how hard the homeowners’ association screams “NIMBY.” What came first, after all, West Hills or West Town Mall?

Trade Up

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:00:00 -0000

What do two of the most magnificent mansions that ever graced Manhattan, the Waldorf-Astoria, and the Empire State Building all have in common? The question occurred to me the other day after reading a blog post on the News Sentinel’s website. The post, part of Josh Flory’s Property Scope blog, solicited reader suggestions for “Knoxville’s Best Building.” I didn’t respond, but the question did get me thinking. Add in a recent Secret History column where Jack Neely pondered Knoxville’s preference for surface parking and the result was the question I opened this piece with.

Look Out For the Little Guy

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:00:00 -0000

This past Friday, The Glowing Body yoga studio and café and Magpies, the bakery that’s been serving up sweetness in the Old City for over five years, held a grand opening at their new space over on N. Central Street. It was, by all accounts, a huge success. One observer counted more than 50 cars parked around the building, along Central and Irwin. And, seeing as the corner’s conveniently close to both Old North and Fourth and Gill, I suspect a fair number of folks arrived on foot.

Violence and Vouchers

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Violence, it is said, doesn’t solve anything. But it does grab headlines—and the public’s attention. One headline, in particular, caught my eye concerning last week’s tragic shooting at Central High. “Discipline concerns had been expressed,” said the piece, a mix of “it could have happened anywhere” spin on the part of the school’s PTO and dire warnings from several parents—some of whom, prior to the shooting, had transferred their kids to private schools—of a school in danger

TIF Tiff

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Off-Center City by Matt Edens: Amazing how quickly, in the wacky world of Knox County politics, an appointed board can go from obscure acronym to political football. It helps, of course, when there are millions of dollars at stake: five million, to be exact. That’s the amount of Tax Increment Financing developer Tim Graham is trying to get for his Willow Creek project, a Lowe’s-anchored big-box development in Halls.

This Won’t Strangle Downtown

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Off-Center City by Matt Edens: In what could be an unprecedented occurrence in the annals of Knoxville road building, orange barrels may soon appear along North Central Street as part of a project to make the road narrower, not wider. Dubbed a “road diet” in planning circles, the idea is to re-stripe the street from four lanes to two. Reducing the number of lanes will make the area more pedestrian-friendly by slowing down traffic and introducing a screen of parked cars between the sidewalks and the travel lanes. (The street parking also provides additional parking for area merchants.)

“The Next Slum?”

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Off-Center City by Matt Edens: Those few sentences, in a nutshell, are also the thrust of a July Atlantic article entitled “American Murder Mystery.” While focused on Memphis, the piece follows a trend that’s been baffling police departments across the country. Crime rates in previously quiet outer rings of core cities are spiking, often as the inner-city they surround becomes noticeably safer

Transit in Transition

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Off-Center City by Matt Edens: My colleague Michael Haynes made a pretty good point in his Shot of Urban column last week, suggesting that the Knoxville Transit Authority and the city consider expanding downtown’s trolley service outside the Central Business Improvement District. As someone who has always argued that the success of downtown ultimately depends on the success of the center city as a whole, I second the notion. Redevelopment is already rippling out from downtown. And many of the folks making a home in Fourth and Gill, Old North, Parkridge and elsewhere consider their proximity to downtown a plus (which may explain while you’ll often see them sitting at a café table on Market Square, or perched on a Gay Street barstool).

Functionally Obsolete

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Off-Center City by Matt Edens:

Sex, and What City?

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Off-Center City by Matt Edens: The film adaptation of the hit HBO series Sex and the City scored a stunning $26.1 million dollar opening night last Friday (that is—in terms the movie’s characters could relate to—enough to buy more than 30,000 overpriced pairs of Manolo Blahnik pumps, slides, and sling-backs). I don’t know the exact numbers, but downtown Knoxville apparently did its part. Most, if not all, of the evening shows at the Riviera were sold out, record numbers of cosmopolitans were consumed at the Downtown Grill and Brewery, and Gay Street was thronged with groups of women in flirty sundresses and slutty heels (even if, being Knoxville, there were more knock-offs than actual Manolos). It was a “happening,” according to one observer, while another said she’d “never seen anything like it.”

Abandoning the School Business?

Wed, 21 May 2008 22:00:00 -0000

Off-Center City: Incoming Knox County School Superintendent Jim McIntyre got a firsthand taste of the county’s fractious and geographically fractured politics this month. Where the new super would send his sons to school became a topic of some speculation, and even an outright lobbying effort on the part of Fourth and Gill. The neighborhood association sent McIntyre a letter formally inviting him to move into the neighborhood. Although the invitation, stating how making a home in the neighborhood would “provide you with important insight and credibility in addressing the many education opportunities and challenges for Knox County’s urban communities,” was as much a politely worded shot across the bow as anything else.