SOUTH KNOX VOL. 2 NO. 17
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An art education
NEIGHBORHOOD BUZZ
Big Lots South moves, expands
The Chapman Highway corridor just got a little brighter and shinier. The new Big Lots store at 4580 Chapman Highway held its grand opening April 18. Along with the traditional ribbon-cutting, the event included a symbol of Big Lots’ desire to give back to the community: South-Doyle Middle School was given a check for $1,500. Assistant principal Sharon Robinson accepted the donation. The ribbon-cutting brought out representatives from local government: assistant fire chief Gary Compton, Capt. Eve Thomas from the Knoxville Police Department and County Commissioner Mike Brown. Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett and school board member Pam Trainor arrived a bit later to help celebrate. Door prizes and refreshments gave the grand opening a festive atmosphere. The approximately 29,000-square-foot store replaces the Big Lots that had been at the corner of Chapman Highway and Moody Avenue that was closed in mid-March. This facility, renovated to accommodate Big Lots’ mix of household, outdoor and office items, groceries and furniture, formerly housed a Food City. Manager Pat Wooten says the new store has better visibility from the street and better parking-lot lighting than the previous location. It is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. – Betsy Pickle
And furthermore ... Sandra Clark offers free advice to various political candidates in an interesting take on the May 6 elections. Early voting is underway and turnout so far is light.
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Read Clark on page 4
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At the Mooreland Heights Elementary School Art Festival, Katharine Bruns, who is working on her master’s degree in art education at the University of Tennessee, introduces siblings Alex, a kindergartner, and Zaen Moussa, a 1st grader, to a pottery wheel. Bruns was one of several UT graduate students and community artists who joined Mooreland Heights faculty to turn the festival into a community event. Photo by Betsy Pickle
See story and more photos on page 7
Babelay Farm: Largest land tract up for sale By Betty Bean The largest available land tract in Knox County – more than 500 acres of rolling hills and green meadows in the shadow of House Mountain – has gone up for sale. Furrow-Strickland Real Estate Services has listed seven contiguous tracts of Babelay farm property located in the Ritta/Corryton area. This land has been in the Babelay family for decades and stretches for approximately two miles along Washington Pike, which borders the farm to the east. The heirs of the late John Paul Babelay, a longtime mainstay of the Ritta Community, are selling the properties that their father purchased, one at a time, over many years with an eye to creating one very large farm. John Paul was the son of Vincent Babelay Jr.
and Cleo Adair. The Adair farm was originally a land grant for service in the Revolutionary War. Vincent Babelay Sr. was one of many Swiss immigrants who came to America in the late 19th century. He founded the Babelay greenhouses, which grew to become the largest supplier of bedding plants and cut flowers for much of East
Tennessee. John Paul Babelay’s older son, the late David Babelay, was a historian who chronicled Knox County’s Swiss immigrant community. Rob Strickland of FurrowStrickland said he’s been in real estate for 27 years and has never seen such a vast tract as John Paul Babelay assembled – seven differ-
ent farms, all touching, yet separate, each with its own utilities and several with different road frontage. John Paul’s son Stephen completed the tract with two final land purchases in the 1990s. The Furrow-Strickland website describes the Babelay land as “home to horses, cattle and even had its own hog farm. The Babelay men built the silos that are still standing today as well as the barns, tenant houses, fencing and a unique saw mill where many hours were spent cutting timber.” The listed properties include the Charlie Shipe farm, the Swan Sweat farm, the Cardwell farm, the Fred Stewart property fronting on Wise Springs Road and the Kruger Graves farm. Info: www.furrowstrickland. com/babelay/#sthash.TmJZkR37. dpuf
Pellissippi prepares for Tennessee Promise By Betsy Pickle Now that Gov. Bill Haslam’s free higher-education plan, the Tennessee Promise, has earned legislative approval, the state’s community colleges are facing the possibility of significantly increased enrollment, which could put a burden on teachers and classrooms. Pellissippi State Community College, with 10,600 students on five campuses in the Knoxville area, is the largest local school affected by the legislation, but the mood there is preparation, not panic. President Anthony Wise says Pellissippi State should be able to accommodate any influx beginning with the registration for the 2015-16 school year. “We are starting to look at it and to think about it,” says Wise. “It’s really built on the model of Tennessee Achieves, which started here in Knox and Blount counties. I don’t know that we’ll see the huge enrollment increases that we might see in other parts of the state because in essence you can have free access to a community college in Knox or Blount County right now through Tennessee Achieves.”
Faculty and facilities are two concerns. “We’re committed to having fulltime faculty as much as possible teach our classes on campus,” says Wise. “We want to make sure that we have the right kind of academic Anthony Wise and student support programs in place for the new population of students. “We’re a little bit off our historic enrollment high of three or four years ago, so we have some capacity to grow into that. We do have the new facility at Strawberry Plains, which hopefully can absorb some of these new students.” Other potential measures include adding classes later in the afternoon, offering Saturday classes and making science labs available on Sundays. Students who take advantage of the Tennessee Promise plan to earn a two-year associate’s degree are likely to be people who ordinarily wouldn’t have thought about higher education, either because they lacked financial re-
sources or didn’t think they could succeed in the academic environment. Wise says generally 60 percent to 65 percent of students have to take some type of remediation course at Pellissippi State. “That’s among the best at community colleges within the state,” he says. “Some places it’s significantly higher. Most students generally have one area of remediation, and more often than not it’s mathematics.” Tennessee Promise students are likely to mirror those numbers, he says. “One of the conversations we’re having is, how do we deal with the fact that perhaps in the fall of 2015, not only do we see this increase but we see an increase in students who really need additional assistance and support academically in order to be successful?” Statistics show that students coming in through Tennessee Achieves are more likely to stay in school and graduate – and do so more quickly – than the general student population, Wise says, and he thinks the same thing may happen with the Tennessee Promise.
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“I think there are a couple of things that have made Tennessee Achieves successful and I think have the possibility of making the Tennessee Promise successful,” he says. “They have strict requirements on the obligations that the students have to meet – they have to attend meetings at their high school, they have to complete their financial aid form by a certain time, they have to register at community college by a certain time, they have to work with a mentor, and they have to give a day of service back each semester to the community.”
Tennessee Promise Gov. Bill Haslam’s signature initiative was developed in part by South Knox native Randy Boyd. It was adopted 87-8 in the state House and 30-1 in the Senate. All members of the Knox County legislative delegation voted yes, including Democrats Gloria Johnson and Joe Armstrong; and Republicans Becky Massey, Stacey Campfield, Harry Brooks, Bill Dunn, Roger Kane and Steve Hall. The bill was revenue neutral, redirecting proceeds from the state lottery.