It was announced this evening that Superintendent Bob Thomas now supports moving the Knox Schools Central Office to the East TVA Tower because Knox County Government has bought the schools support by absorbing the $15.8 million annual operation cost for the Central Office.
Let’s go back to this 2016 WBIR story when TVA was ready to sell both towers and the Summer Place building/garage. Everyone quoted in the story said it would sell for a company headquarters and was such a great deal. Even Buzz Goss who appeared before Commission tonight begging for a extension on some knox county property that he has had tied up for 10 years was quoted in the story about the prospect of the towers for sale in April 2016, “I think a lot of businesses would like the location and like the building, however there are not a lot of large businesses that could take the entire building,” said Goss.
It should be noted from here that one of Goss partners is former PBA (Public Building Authority of Knoxville/Knox County) Chief Dale Smith.
City of Knoxville employees Rick Emmett, Bill Lyons and Jesse Mayshark (now of CompassKnox) bragging about the lucrative property deal in the WBIR story.
Taking money from my left pocket and putting it my right pocket doesn’t mean anything. It is still Knox County taxpayers getting the big orange screw to subsidize UT. Why on earth would Knox County lease a building for 37 cents per square foot when they can buy a bigger better building for 12 cents a square foot?
East Towne Mall is a much better deal. Doesn’t Glenn Jacobs understand the difference between owning and renting?
Apparently, it’s a make the deal work no matter the way to do it, after all as bureaucrats think it isn’t their money anyway.
Glenn Jacobs has made the TVA Tower his white whale. We don’t know if a rehabbed Andrew Johnson Building will be successful. Rick Dover’s new project on Henley will be tough competition.
If Jacobs really wants to put a building on the property tax rolls buy East Towne Mall and put City and County governments, KPD, and Knoxville Fire in East Towne. Then you have only the Sheriff’s intake and the courts in the City County Building. The rest of the building can go apartments and offices and be on the tax rolls. That is a genius play.
TVA Tower will never be on the tax rolls. And neither with East Towne Mall any more. The chance of a lifetime to buy almost a million square feet of office space for $8 million dollars. 12 cents a square foot. What does Jacobs do? Subsidize UT and cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars by putting the School Board in the TVA Tower.
Brad Anders wouldn’t make this mistake.