We see that THING on the river bank when we go to the Lady Vol games and it is so out of place. It is also BOUND to cause a rise in property tax. Granted it is already there but we all need to stop any other "thinks" from popping up along our river.

South Knoxville is special just like North Knoxville and mulitmillion dollar condo are just not needed to remind us of how it used to be!

I think you find the Glove Factory development is nothing like That Thing at the end of Scottish Pike. TT is exactly what the new form-based code is designed to prevent.

John Gumpert, who's doing the Glove Factory property, is a good guy with a good understanding of urban design. He's planning an additional project in south Knoxville, on the old tank farm just outside the pillars of Island Home Park. The plans look great and so far the neighborhood is happy about it.

If you love south Knoxville, call or email City Council and ask them to stick with what they passed on first reading when second reading comes around next Tuesday. Contact info at (link...).

I thought this letter to MP a couple years ago had some good perspectives.
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Keep South Knoxville Serene

We originally thought about making "adult" bookstores, etc. a prohibited use in the south waterfront code. But that runs into first amendment issues, so we had to take it out.

Went to the Council workshop tonight, which went on for about an hour and a half. All the Council members were present except Chris Woodhull.

Don't think much new ground was plowed, although Ed Prins from Rinker spent a lot of time talking about issues (parking maximums, max lot size, etc.) that everyone had agreed to put to bed back before the code went to MPC. Not really sure what that was about.

There was also a lot of discussion about the alternative compliance review. This is something that was put in the code because, as Dave Hill said, "you can never write a perfect zoning code." Sooner or later, some really good project will come down the pike that doesn't meet the code and there has to be a means of addressing that.

Here's the way it works. If a developer meets the code, s/he essentially gets administrative approval. No trip to MPC necessary. If s/he wants to propose something that meets the intent of the Vision Plan but doesn't meet the code, s/he applies for Alternative Compliance Review. This requires approval by MPC and the attendant public scrutiny.

If I understood Mr. Prins correctly, he was arguing that we should relax the standards in the code and do away with alternative compliance review. He asked why, if the community supported the flexibility of ACR, we had such problems with changing the code.

The answer to that, of course, is that it's one thing to consider a specific project on a particular piece of property in the context of everything around it - it's quite another to grant everyone cart blanche to build 90' or 120' buildings all over the zoning district.

He also suggested that maybe we should just keep the current zoning since it required going through MPC like ACR. This is where I really kind of lost it - while the code was certainly written to streamline the process for developers as much as posssible, and to give them as much certainty as possible, that's hardly the only purpose of the code. Like, uh, we wanted it to codify the Vision Plan wrt urban character, pedestrian friendly environment, river accesss, open space, etc. etc. etc.

Several folks from the community spoke, and they all did a much better job than I did (I sort of let myself get too emotional, something I try to guard against).

I see no evidence of any dramatic shifts on Council. I predict the code will pass 9-0, or possibly 8-1. I think there MIGHT be an attempt to amend it, but I don't think that will pass.

And Tuesday night we can see how good a prognosticator I am.

(edited to correct Mr. Prins name - my apologies to him for getting the spelling wrong)