March 2009 Archives

One of my recent field trips took me 45 minutes north of downtown to a place called Sharps Chapel. Located in Union County, just north of Maynardville off Highway 33, it's a place I'd never thought to visit until friends undertook an extreme relocation from urban Knoxville to that rural community. They've been inviting me out to see their new, old digs for two years, but it took a driving tour with Union County historian Bonnie Peters to get me out there. Now I wonder why I waited so long.

My friends Dave Whaley and Tomica Miller were fixtures in the Old North Knoxville neighborhood for years. So was the bed and breakfast they operated - The Brimer House Inn. Their inn was a popular destination, but Dave discovered he preferred restoration work over changing sheets and dealing with the sometimes maddening behavior of their paying house guests. So he and Tomica began driving country roads looking for land and plotting their escape to a peaceful, rural setting.

The story of how they found their current project sounds like a combination of serendipity and fate.

Preservationists often encounter abandoned historic mills these days. The withering of the textile industry in the United States left hundreds of them sitting empty and vulnerable around the country - but especially in the South where the industry was the backbone of many local economies. Some people see them as massive white elephants only valuable for the bricks that form them and the land under them. Others see them as opportunities for mixed-use development that can preserve their often stark, industrial beauty while revitalizing the communities around them.

In Knoxville today we have one example of how to turn around these industrial assets, but we have another mill that is languishing in limbo and imperiled by neglect. One was rescued by a local development firm and the other is in the hands of out of state interests.