Good news from Kristin Olsen of the Humane Society of Anderson County:
Due to the overwhelming response and concern for continuing our neuter/spay program, we have met and revamped our program to help those in need.
We will continue to offer financial assistance to Anderson County residents. Requests will be made in person on the last Saturday of the month at the Humane Society Flea Market located at 372 Warehouse Road in Oak Ridge. A $10 donation will be requested. Twenty approvals will be issued each month.
We still need the support of the Anderson County Commission that helps our program each year, donations and memberships. We are also open to sponsorships from companies or individuals.
We also have our pet pantry to help families feed their pets, doghouses to help those out in inclement weather and still go into schools to teach students about being kind to their pet and the responsibilities of having a pet.
If you have any questions or would like to donate or know someone that we can help in our community, please call 381-1550.
The Humane Society Serving all of Anderson County
Congratulations to Kristin on this good result — less than 2 weeks after the news that the spay-neuter program would be suspended.
Two bits of good news in a row: (1) The Oak Ridge Revitalization Effort now owns the Alexander Inn and (2) an additional trail segment has opened on the Black Oak Ridge Conservation Easement in westernmost Oak Ridge. Hurray for the people whose volunteer efforts are making good things happen!
On the Alexander Inn, Kate Groover says:
It’s official. The Oak Ridge Revitalization Effort now owns the Alexander Inn/Guest House.
Plans are underway to begin cleaning up the grounds as quickly as possible. The Rogers Group is generously providing 250 tons of gravel to fill the stagnant swimming pool immediately and Robert McNabb is providing the trucks and labor.
We encourage all those interested in this property to join us in City Court on Monday, December 21 at 8:00 AM to show your support during the hearing scheduled to address current code violations.
On the Black Oak Ridge Conservation Easement, Tom Dunigan says:
For your holiday enjoyment, an additional 0.8 miles of trail have been opened in the NE corner of the Black Oak Ridge Conservation Easement. See updated trail map and Google maps at this page on Tom’s website. The new trail includes the boundary gravel road section (0.3 miles) that descends toward Blair Road, connected back to the entrance gravel by 0.5 miles of single-track (Twisted Beech Trail). Trail work and design were guided by TWRA’s Jim Evans and Larry Creech with help from numerous volunteers.
Black Oak Ridge Conservation Easement includes 3,073 acres on Black Oak Ridge and McKinney Ridge in the western part of Oak Ridge. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and DOE manage the site. It contains interesting community types and species such as hemlock-rhododendron forest, beech maple forest, cedar barrens, fringe tree, spider lily, spreading false-foxglove, white-topped sedge, Vaseys trillium, Tennessee dace and southeastern shrew. Some of these species are unusual for the Ridge and Valley region. The area currently has more than eleven miles of trails, mostly on gravel roads, which are considered moderately difficult. The trails are open daily from daylight to dusk, and are limited to hikers and bicyclists. No motorized vehicles or animals are permitted, with the exception of motorized wheelchairs and service animals.
The Oak Ridge city staff and and the Knoxville Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) have been working quietly to get started on a process to update the city’s pedestrian and bicycle plans. City Council found out earlier this week that an advisory committee had been formed and several meetings have been held. Currently the city has a sidewalk plan for the center city and a greenways master plan, but neither of these is recent, and some sort of comprehensive pedestrian-bike plan is needed to qualify for certain grants.
A forum for public input will be held on January 5 at the Civic Center A/B Room. Here’s a classy announcement of the forum that’s being distributed.
The
Bicycle Pedestrian Technical Advisory Committee Invites
You to a Public Forum
January 5th, 2010 @ 6:00 p.m.
Oak Ridge Civic Center A/B Room
The City of Oak Ridge, the Bicycle Pedestrian Technical Advisory Committee, and the Transportation Planning Organization have joined forces to prepare a Bicycle Pedestrian Master Plan for the City of Oak Ridge. During the first public forum we will be seeking input for establishing policies, programs, and priorities for the plan. If you have any questions you may contact the Community Development Department at (865) 425-3531 or the Parks and Recreation Department at (865) 425-3450. We look forward to seeing you there.
Some unfortunate news for animal welfare comes today from the Humane Society of Anderson County. Due to funding limitations, the society is ending its neuter/spay program, which helped “qualified families and individuals” pay for spaying and neutering their family pets. The society received 10 to 20 requests for assistance weekly.
According to the Oak Ridge Police, most of the users of this program were residents of Anderson County outside Oak Ridge — the area that is the source of about 80% of the animals brought to our animal shelter. The loss of the spay-and-neuter assistance program can be expected to result in more animals coming to the Oak Ridge animal shelter — and a higher euthanasia rate there.
People who can’t afford the full cost of neutering their pets can still use low-cost clinics. The Humane Society message says that the nearest one is in Roane County.
The 3/50 Project is giving us all a simple recipe for preserving and promoting commercial activity in our communities: pick 3 independently owned local businesses that you would miss if they disappeared, and spend $50 each month at those businesses ($50 divided among all three). The basic idea is to commit a total of $50 each month to locally owned independent businesses.
The promoters point out that the money spent in independent local businesses returns more money to the community — in taxes, payroll, and other expenditures — than the money spent in big-box stores and franchises. (And the return to the community is infinitely greater than when we spend our money in out-0f-town businesses or online.) Ideally, it also means that local retail areas thrive because they contain one-of-a-kind independent businesses that customers seek out. (This is particularly important for older shopping areas — like Jackson Square and Grove Center. )
All this is consistent with the concepts of a sustainable local economy and a sustainable environment — for example, the Oak Ridge Environmental Quality Advisory Board’s draft climate action plan calls for “increasing the local velocity of money” (basically, keeping more money in the local economy and moving it around faster) as one strategy for making Oak Ridge more self-sufficient — and thus more sustainable. With the Jackson Square and Grove Center merchants, Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce, and several other local businesses signed on as supporters of the 3/50 Project, it appears that different elements in the community are all together on this.
Thinking about the 3/50 concept, I quickly realized that some independent local businesses that are important to me are unlikely to get my business every month. For example, I’m wearing shoes that came from Edwards Shoe Store and I drive a car that was last serviced at Chuck’s CarCare Center, and even though I value these two businesses, I’m unlikely to spend money with them every single month. On the other hand, in any given month I’m likely to spend $50 or more divided between several independent local eateries (places like Homeland Food, the Magnolia Tree Restaurant, Mediterranean Delight, the Flatwater Grill, and the various Mexican restaurants). Most people are likely to have different “threes” in different months — and spend more than $50 in some months.
I’ve also pondered a bit regarding some of the 3/50 Project’s criteria — for example, the idea that locally-owned franchise businesses don’t qualify because they have advantages, like preferred vendor lists, specially negotiated vendor pricing, and a regionally/nationally recognized brand name, that true independent businesses lack. Franchises are less in need of customer support than truly independent businesses. However, if my goal as a city leader is to maintain a vital retail sector and keep money in town, I have to care about the success of locally owned franchises – partly because they are more likely to succeed (and thus provide a stronger retail sector).
For me, the key idea of the 3/50 Project is that we consumers need to be conscious of where the money we spend is going to end up — and try to make spending decisions that keep more of that money in the local economy. I like having one simple message that tells us to do all that.
I hope that our local independent business owners will return the favor by paying attention to customer needs and wants (different operating hours to better serve two-earner households? offering special ordering to better meet customer needs?) — so we will have more and more reasons to spend our money with them.
There’s good news in a press release from the police department: “The Oak Ridge Animal Shelter has expanded the hours of operation. Effective Tuesday, December 8, the shelter will now be open Tuesday thru Saturday, 11:00 AM till 6:00 PM. The former hours of operation were Tuesday thru Saturday, 1:00 PM till 4:30 PM. The new hours will now provide more opportunity for the animals to be adopted to loving families.”
However, before that happens, the shelter will be closed Dec 4 through Dec 7 (Friday through Monday) for painting of the floors of the kennel and other maintenance. “Citizens are asked to help us by not bringing animals to the shelter during these dates.”
The press release tells about some other welcome improvements to the shelter:
“During the summer months, several storage rooms were repainted with the assistance of volunteers. The paint was purchased by the city and the teenage volunteers provided many hours of the labor.” After that, Anderson County jail inmates (free labor!) removed old insulation, cleaned above the storage rooms (apparently they remoed a lot of dust), cleaned the extra large room, and did some more painting.
Additionally:
“The parking lot was expanded to help accommodate more vehicles. In the spring of 2010, the parking lot will received the final topcoat of pavement to the parking lot. A storage building was purchased and is being utilized to hold excess supplies, tools, etc. The city has also replaced all of the lighting as well as all ceiling tiles throughout the building. Gail Lee-Hinton, a local artist, has given vast improvements to the lobby area by painting a mural on the walls.”
This weekend, when it seems that most of America celebrates shopping, seems to inspire discussion of the perennial topic of “Oak Ridge retail”. My recent e-mail has included both (1) cheerleading for the 3/50 Project and (2) questions about the Oak Ridge city center development (why did the mall fail? what is the city going to do to get the site redeveloped? etc.). So, what do I have to say?
Start with the city center (formerly the mall). This is private property over whose use the city government has no actual control. People ask if the city could take it by eminent domain and redevelop it. In principle, the city possibly could acquire it by eminent domain as a blighted property, but use of eminent domain is repugnant to most of the community, a court would set the price (often this is more than the acquiring government thinks the property is worth), and more importantly, the city would have to oversee the redevelopment (retail development is not something that small city governments are known to be good at). Redevelopment of the mall requires the skills of a good private developer — and eminent domain for this property would be a bad idea.
The property owners have a good track record on some other developments, but the lack of progress here in Oak Ridge is frustrating for everyone. Redeveloping a mall site isn’t easy. Not only does it mean demolishing buildings, but the redevelopers have to work around the existing anchor stores and the Tinseltown movie theater, existing utility lines, and numerous other easements. An even bigger challenge is that the current economic climate has been hard on the retail sector nationally — and the developer needs to attract national chains to make the plan work. However, Oak Ridge’s economy remains fairly stable, the developers know many times more about how to do retail development than anyone in city government does, and the DOE funding they are getting for a “geothermal” demonstration project is a big boost for the development — both financially and from a marketing perspective. Everyone is impatient, but as I see it, Oak Ridge’s best option still is to hope the owners can pull off a successful development. Revitalization of the city center area will address both public and private needs, so city officials can expect the developers to ask us for help with the project — and we’ll need to look carefully at the request to make sure it is “right” for the city.
As for why the mall failed after doing good business for a few years… I blame this on some poor business judgments by the mall developer (Crown American). The company had been a successful developer of shopping centers in other parts of the country, and was rapidly expanding to smaller markets (such as Oak Ridge) during the period when the Oak Ridge mall was built. Many of the retail tenants that it signed were national companies that wanted to lease space in other Crown American malls. Crown American signed them to bundled leasing packages in which leases for the malls they wanted to be in was tied in with leases for space in some new malls that Crown was opening (such as Oak Ridge). Many of these stores did good business in Oak Ridge, but business here wasn’t good enough to justify the high prices that Crown was charging for the space. When the leases came up for renewal (all at essentially the same time), most of the smaller mall tenants decided not to renew. (City officials learned about this only after the tenants started to desert the mall.) The anchors remain because they pay much lower rents (this is apparently a standard practice in retail development — the developer gives the “big fish” a good deal in order to attract the “little fish” that pay much higher rents). Fundamentally, Oak Ridge’s market size isn’t large enough to generate enough business to justify the high heating, cooling, and maintenance expenses of an enclosed mall, so the mall fizzled financially. Apparently this happened to numerous Crown American malls built in expansion markets that were basically too small for the indoor mall model to work (a few years back on a business trip, I ran across another decrepit Crown American mall in a small city in Pennsylvania). Retailers are superstitious, so once a mall is “dead,” new business will not move in. (And Crown American is now defunct as a company.)
Isn’t the current retail situation the fault of Oak Ridge voters who rejected two referendums? I’m tired of sitting quietly while certain other City Council members complain that Oak Ridge would now be a thriving retail center if not for the voters’ rejection of the referendums in 2002 and 2007 that would have authorized general obligation bonds for retail developments (bonds that would not give the public any ownership interest in the resulting developments). The problems with the 2002 proposal were many. Too many projects (mall property redevelopment, new senior center, new preschool, and new school administration building) were bundled together in a single $23.2 million package (who’s to know what any individual voter was opposed to? I recall that some opposed the package because they objected to the proposed location or design of the preschool and senior center), the financial details were obscure (leading to suspicions about what was really going on), and a few days before the vote it was revealed that Crown American had bankrolled the expensive advertising campaign for the bond issue (leading many to conclude that their suspicions about the finances had been correct).
As for the Crestpointe proposal that voters rejected in a referendum in 2007, Councilman Charlie Hensley has been ranting that if it had been approved, we would now have a big-box development at the Crestpointe site, a thriving retail redevelopment in the city center, dormitories for Roane State Community College, and several other lucrative developments. Those claims are rooted in the same kind of unrealistic thinking that led Crown American to build a mall that was doomed to fail. Mr. Hensley has somehow formed the idea that Oak Ridge could have supported a 450,000 square foot big-box shopping center at Crestpointe plus a similar amount of new retail development on the old mall property plus several smaller new retail developments around town, but no responsible economic analysis indicates that there are enough shoppers (and dollars) around here to support anywhere near that amount of retail activity. Back in 2007 knowledgeable outside observers said that Crestpointe would kill (for at least a few decades) any prospect of regenerating retail activity at the center city (mall) site, and the mall property owners said that the mere existence of the Crestpointe proposal meant that retailers were reluctant to sign deals with any local retail site. (And all that was before the financial meltdown of 2008.) Given the massive amount of site preparation and infrastructure that the Crestpointe project would have involved (both with long time horizons and large dollar costs), plus all that happened with the economy, no one can be sure what would have happened if Crestpointe had been approved. I’m sure that it would not have worked out as advertised, and I think it likely that taxpayers would be stuck paying off a large bill without realizing any value.
In a nutshell, I have my fingers crossed about the city center — I’m hoping that the landowners can finally pull off their plan to redevelop the area around the existing anchor stores, with some of the “town center”-type concepts that Steve Arnsdorff brought to town back in the early years of the decade. Meanwhile, the 3/50 project is a positive development that deserves its own separate post.
Wow… Frank Munger’s blog post “Who’s making the big bucks in Oak Ridge?” is attracting a lot of attention today among staff at ORNL. I have a hunch that the information that the top managers of certain local government contractors are receiving annual compensation on the order of half a million dollars or more is going to be affecting public discussion in Oak Ridge for some time to come…
I’m getting ready to head off to San Antonio (Texas) for the 2009 National League of Cities Congress of Cities and Exposition. This will be my first time attending a National League of Cities event, and I hope I’ll bring enough back (in the way of knowledge and resources) to make it worth my time and the city’s money. Other Oak Ridgers attending include city manager Jim O’Connor, Tom Beehan, Jane Miller, Tom Hayes, and Dave Mosby.
“Solar 101”: Solar Basics for the Oak Ridge Homeowner will be held Saturday, November 14th, 2009, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm, in the Oak Ridge Public Library Auditorium. Sponsored by the Oak Ridge Environmental Quality Advisory Board and the City of Knoxville’s Solar America Cities Program, this workshop will provide an overview of the solar technologies that are available for home installation such as solar photovoltaics, solar hot water, solar lighting, solar heating, and passive solar design. It will also provide an introduction to the step-by-step process of “going solar” in your home.
The workshop will review basic incentives and financing options, as well as best practices for hiring qualified installers. Although the workshop is not designed to offer technical or financial guidance to a specific project, it should help homeowners better understand the options and process for pursuing solar technologies.
For more information, contact: Athanasia Senecal (865) 425- 3574 or Erin Burns at (865) 215-2065
