Knoxville Tennessee Blog

Knoxville Real Estate is quickly becoming a hot commodity for many developers and home owners. Every year more people are moving to Knoxville Tennessee, some come for the great University of Tennessee, others are here for the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory and many of them are attracted by the beautiful Smokey Mountains.

Whatever the reason, Knoxville Real Estate is emerging as one of the premier real estate markets. If you are moving to the area and are in search of Knoxville Real Estate, the first two sites you will want to visit are kaarmls.com and trulia.com. Both sites will provide you with an abundance of Knoxville Tennessee Real Estate listings. Of these two links I favor kaarmls for house searching but you will probably find the heat map of Knox county from trulia quite interesting.

The Blue Man Group is coming to Knoxville at Thompson-Boling Arena on March 4th at 7:30 PM. The ticket prices are $75.00 and $49.50 Reserved Seating. If you haven’t seen this act before you need to go. I had the opportunity to see there show in Las Vegas and I was blow away. The combination of technology, music, paint and all out craziness makes this show a blast for the whole family. Grab your kids and some tickets and I promise you won’t regret it. If you want to find out more about this incredible group you can visit their web page at http://www.blueman.com/. This is a must see event, don’t miss it!

You can get tickets by:

Charge By Phone: “Tickets Unlimited”
(865) 656-4444 or Toll Free (877) 995-9961.
Website: http:/www.knoxvilletickets.com
Box Office: Thompson-Boling Arena

This will be a short post since their has been quite a bit of coverage and commentary on term limits, but I have compiled some information regarding Monday’s forum to discuss the candidates for the 12 county positions ordered vacant because of term limits.

First, it is worth noting that there will be an hour-long simulcast with Channel Ten TV and FM-100 WNOX Monday at 7PM to discuss the forum. My only question is why not just let the officials finish their current term. I would rather have an out going official in office then a puppet in the form of a wife, brother, son or second cousin 4th removed.

From Mark Harmon, County Commissioner, District Two via Knoxviews.com

Dear Friends and Neighbors,
A quick note that the candidate forum scheduled for Monday at 6pm is still on, but the location has moved to Whittle Springs Middle School’s auditorium, 2700 White Oak Lane (the corner of Whittle Springs and White Oak).
Great thanks to Whittle Springs Principal Benny Perry who responded quickly and favorably to house the event when Fulton High officials forgot to include the academic banquet on the auditorium calendar and did not notice the conflict until this morning.
The schedule of events will be:
6pm to approx 7 pm, County Commission, District Two, all candidates seeking appointment asked to give a three-minute statement, followed by audience questions.

Approximately 8pm to 8:30pm, any candidates from other districts, same format.

A list of candidates has been compiled at http://knoxcounty.org/commission/candidates.php

Update: For more information on Knoxville Term Limits see my Best Of Knoxville Links Post.

The Cumberland Avenue Corridor Study has come up with a plan for making Cumberland Avenue more “inviting, vibrant and safe”. There proposal they are seeking approval on would turn cumberland avenue into a three lane road. (see original video from WBIR). A sketch of what this might look like can be found here (WBIR.com).

If you are interested in hearing the proposal the next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, February 22. Public Meeting # 5. 6:00 pm, University Center Ballroom. More information on Knoxville’s Cumberland Avenue can be found at the Metropolitan Planning Commission’s website. Interestingly enough, removing this lane will only add one extra minute to your drive time through that area…right. I’m also hoping they hurry up and get this project started before Smart Fix 40 is completed, what about you?

There are quite a few on going development projects in and and around downtown Knoxville. In fact, every building on Gay street has been under going renovation or has had plans of renovation from as far back as March of 2006.

It will be fun to watch the re-development of these properties downtown. Of the slated projects on the horizon, you won’t want to forget about the planned GameDay Center which is going to be built right here. If you missed the September 15, press release you can read it at the city of Knoxville’s website here. But, if you are looking for more information on how the condos will look, the price range or the floor plans, head over to the official GameDay Center website at http://tennesseegamedaycenter.com (The GameDay Center website is still under construction currently as you can see by the link references to http://tec1consulting.com/).

Check back for updates on this property and other projects that are currently being developed around the downtown area.

Following the Ipix Corporation bankruptcy case makes me wonder how much money an individual can make by creating a company, finding investors and later, after due time, filing for bankruptcy.

The case ended a few days ago but from reading the various news articles on the auction 2 of the 3 bidding parties were formed by Ipix executives. The company listed debts of $7.87 million and had about $3.5 million in cash.

The two companies (Luminetx and Argusight) with Ipix executives were bidding less than a million dollars for the patents and technology that were up for auction until an anonymous bidder pushed the price up to $2 million and later $3 million. The anonymous bidder ended up winning the auction for $3.6 million much to the dismay of former Ipix executives. The creditors are much happier with the auction price and will probably break even after adding in the $3.5 million from Ipix Corp.’s bank accounts.

What I find astounding is that executives can take huge salaries while the company they are running goes bankrupt paying for the development of technologies and patents. Then they can form a new company and buy the technology and patents with the money they made as executive officers, of the now bankrupt company, minus the cost of development.

What does this amount to? Stealing. I guess theft is the risk you take when you invest money in a business that you don’t control.

UPDATE: Sony bought IPIX.

References:

knoxnews.com
knoxnews.com
knoxnews.com
panotools.info
knoxnews.com
knoxnews.com
knoxnews.com

Bruce Pearl got painted up as a V to cheer on the U.T. Lady Vols against who were playing the No. 1 ranked Duke Blue Devils. I have a lot of respect for Pearl who even had the courtesy to leave the court before the game started to avoid being a distraction to players and fans.

I would venture to say most college basketball coaches are to concerned about their public image to come out shirtless to a womans basketball game.

Unfortunately all of the hype surrounding the game may have been a stumbling block to the Lady Vols in their 74-70 loss to Duke.

(Image courtesy Joe Christian)

More pictures of Bruce Pearl here.

Apparently smoking is bad for your health and for the health of the people around smokers who are susceptible to second hand smoke.

It seems as though some people missed the memo from Surgeon General Richard Carmona who has called for smoking cessation based upon the fact that smoking is estimated to cause about 440,000 people each year in the United States to die via numerous types of cancers, emphysema and other diseases.

There are currently 34 states with some form of smoking ban, Tennessee is not included in that list. I decided to do some research to figure out why the state of Tennessee seems to be behind the curve (nearly 2/3 of the U.S.) on this particular issue.

The Knoxville Sentinel credits Jimmy Naifeh (pictured above) for the lack of legislation. I thought it was quite interesting that some of the readers of that story believe that banning smoking in public places is “right-wing propaganda”. Does that mean California is promoting right-wing propaganda? The issue is not a liberal vs conservative or a more government vs less government issue as much as it is an issue of health.

Why is Jimmy Naifeh still the Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives? But an even more important question: Where are the checks and balances? Consider this quote from the above article.

The Speaker of the House is second in line to succession to the governorship after the Speaker of the Senate; this has never occurred. Since 1973, all Speakers have been from a single Democratic faction in West Tennessee; this has become a source of some resentment. The Speaker, under House rules, has the right to appoint all committees and their chairs and assign proposed legislation to committees, giving the Speaker tremendous power to push legislation through or conversely, to block it.