Metro Pulse

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. Full story »

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. Full story »

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. Full story »

“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? Full story »

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. Full story »

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. Full story »

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 Full story »

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. Full story »

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.) Full story »

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 Full story »

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). Full story »

Off-Center City by Matt Edens: Full story »

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.” Full story »

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. Full story »

Commentary: With few exceptions, the long-anticipated 12-month shutdown of I-40 through the middle of downtown kicked off last week with more whimper than bang. A simple malfunctioning signal caused the most noticeable backup after the closing. The loudest complaints, so far, have been from the folks who live within earshot of the construction site, not commuters sitting in traffic. And the biggest story of the shutdown has been the surprising lack of one—a serious embarrassment for WBIR, who borrowed a chopper from an Atlanta station to better cover the epic chaos everyone predicted. Full story »