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bearden
VOL. 5, NO. 14
APRIL 4, 2011
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Big mama Sitting on eggs at the Collier place See Dr. Bob Collier’s column on page A-7
Bridging the waters The Third Creek Greenway bridge is back, just in time for spring foot races! See story and photo on page A-3
Bud and Carolyn Mynatt at their home at 7133 Wellington Drive in Deane Hill. Their yard can be toured 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 6-24 as a Dogwood Arts Festival Open Garden. Photo by Wendy Smith
Building a beautiful garden together once again an open garden during The key to a beautiful garden is the Dogwood Arts Festival. The two met at a high school dance the same as the key to an enduring marriage – patience. Deane Hill res- when Carolyn was just a freshman. “Bud was the only guy there that idents Bud and Carolyn Mynatt are experienced with both. The Foun- didn’t dance with me,” she recalls. tain City natives have been married The two married in 1944 after 66 years, and their gorgeous yard is Bud flew 35 bomber missions over
By Wendy Smith
FEATURED COLUMNIST LARRY VAN GUILDER
Calling 1-900WHO-KNEW The Shopper’s own ‘Mr. Hotline’ answers some pesky questions about your county government. See page A-4
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10512 Lexington Dr., Ste. 500 37932 (865) 218-WEST (9378) news@ShopperNewsNow.com ads@ShopperNewsNow.com EDITOR Larry Van Guilder lvgknox@mindspring.com ADVERTISING SALES Paige Davis davisp@ShopperNewsNow.com Darlene Hacker hackerd@ShopperNewsNow.com Debbie Moss mossd@ShopperNewsNow.com Shopper-News is a member of KNS Media Group, published weekly at 10512 Lexington Drive, Suite 500, Knoxville, TN, and distributed to 24,267 homes in Bearden.
Europe. When he returned home from serving at age 20, he wasn’t old enough to vote in the ’44 elections. The couple built a home in Holston Hills, but moved to Deane Hill in 1978 after Carolyn quit her job at St. Mary’s Hospital. She immediately joined the neighborhood garden club.
“I had never gardened in my life,” she says. An important first step in landscaping is learning about plants. Carolyn soaked up the information she learned through the garden club and learned more through To page A-2
Old school trumps ‘new urbanism’ Southwest elementary recycles Gibbs By Larry Van Guilder Northshore Town Center was conceived as a compact urban neighborhood combining residential and retail establishments that featured innovative architecture.
Analysis But the design for a new elementary school, which will become a prominent feature of the development when the school is completed in August 2013, reflects old ideas based on cheap land and outdated acceptance of urban sprawl. The new school’s footprint mimics Gibbs Elementary School. With the exception of its capacity for 200 more students, “It’s exactly like Gibbs,” said Knox County Purchasing Director Hugh Holt. Gibbs Elementary, completed in mid-2000, is a fine facility. But its onestory footprint, suitable where land is plentiful, is out of place in Northshore Town Center. How this “old school” school came to be slated for a neighborhood conceived as a step toward “new urbanism” is a story in itself. Before Cope Associates was selected as the architect for the project and awarded the $542,000 fee, the Knox County Schools system had never used a design competition to select an architect. And although Lanis Cope recently told the Shopper-News that the county wanted to “re-use … (something)
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Gibbs Elementary School served to furnish the design template for the new southwest elementary school. Photo by Ruth White already designed,” the solicitation for proposals issued by county purchasing disagrees. In an addendum to the solicitation, Deputy Director of Purchasing Matt Myers wrote: “All designs will be considered. The intent of the competition is to allow consideration of all facilities, including those that have been previously designed and constructed, not to establish a prototypical design.” Cope’s firm designed Gibbs Elementary School, granting Cope a clear advantage over competitors starting from scratch with the costly design phase. Although there is no indication that the evaluation and selection process was biased (the designs were evaluated “blind,” with nothing to identify the submitter), some bidders were not satisfied. One local architect, who asked to remain anonymous, was scathingly critical of the process: “Knox County public schools,
meaning the buildings themselves, are remarkable for their mediocrity. I challenge you to find more than one or two built since 1950 which embody architectural merit. The recent ‘competition’ was simply lip service, the anonymous-submission drawings comprising but two ledger-size sheets, in conjunction with the usual non-anonymous boiler plate. A design competition normally involves original work, which then informs the project design developed by the winner.” The American Institute of Architects (AIA) publishes a handbook, “Architectural Design Competitions,” which is comprehensive in scope, beginning with “appropriate conditions” for a competition and ending with “post-competition activities.” According to the AIA, one of the advantages of design competition is to “generate a wide range of new ideas in the approach to a design.” Ironically, the design competition
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handbook adds that “a well-organized design competition, with selection based on ideas rather than past portfolio,” gives the designer an opportunity to “acquire expertise in a new market or building type.” The original ideas in the winning design are notable only for their absence. The usual suspect, money, is driving the school system’s bus. Replicating Gibbs is the economyminded choice, and a school system already faced with deteriorating buildings around the county can hardly be blamed for its decision. The school as designed is a poor choice architecturally and conceptually for the “new urbanite” Northshore Town Center. For a 2 cent property tax hike, the county could generate more than enough for the school system to pay for a building whose design would reflect something other than “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
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