Pending Sale of Tennessee Arts School Creates "Uproar"
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Sept. 17, 2008
Arrowmont's red barn, built in 1923, is one of 10 historic buildings that contribute to the campus' two National Register-listed historic districts.
Credit: Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts
Some of the only National Register-listed buildings in Gatlinburg, Tenn., could be torn down if a real estate deal goes through this month.
The sorority that counts Barbara Bush, Faye Dunaway, and Jennifer Garner as its alumnae plans to sell a 70-acre Gatlinburg parcel to an unnamed Indiana developer soon, says Pi Beta Phi spokeswoman Eily Cummings. "The deal is not finalized yet. Either party could back out at any second."
The parcel for sale includes 14 buildings on the 14-acre campus of the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, whose $1-per-year lease with the sorority does not expire until 2011.
Pi Beta Phi founded the institution in 1912 as the Settlement School. After its announcement last month, protestors gathered at the school to decry the sale. As of today, more than 5,000 people have signed an online petition.
"There's literally a national uproar over this," says Dan Brown, director of the Tennessee Preservation Trust. "They did this surreptitiously without public bids."
The sorority's seven-member governing body, called the grand council, voted on the sale, Cummings says. "There's no way you could submit it out to a [public] vote. We have 240,000 members."
"We were approached by a large development group with a very good offer. Considering the financial needs of Arrowmont and the long-term benefits to the fraternity, it was responsible and appropriate to seriously consider the offer," Pi Beta Phi Grand President Emily Tarr said in a statement posted on the group's website. "This is a historic opportunity for Pi Phi and also for Arrowmont. … Our work in Gatlinburg brought education, health care, and economic development to the area. This development is another opportunity to benefit the community."
Pi Beta Phi has pledged $1 million to a local elementary school if the deal goes through, in addition to up to $9 million for Arrowmont.
The sorority has donated $300,000 per year to keep Arrowmont afloat, according to Tarr's recent letter to alumnae, despite the fact that Sevier County took over the site in 1968. She estimates that the school could stay open for another three or four years. "We cannot provide enough support to stop the operating shortfall. We cannot hold on to the land like a trophy only to watch the school disappear," Tarr writes in the letter.
Last week the school announced that its board of governors, which had not been aware of the pending sale, had hired a lawyer. "We have a lease that has several years yet to run. We are looking at our legal options with respect to our lease and the possible sale," according to the school's Aug. 22 statement.
"We've created an oasis, a very special environment. It's something that's precious and needs to be protected," says David Willard, director of the school. "If we have to move, then we have to find a place that is going to maintain our integrity. We don't have a plan yet."
The school's collection of buildings includes houses, cottages, and a 1923 barn. Two parts of the campus (The Settlement School Community Outreach Historic District and the Settlement School Dormitories and Dwellings Historic District) were named to the National Register of Historic Places last year.
"To lose the historic campus located at 556 Parkway would be an irreparable loss not only to Gatlinburg's tourism economy, but to students of fine art as well," wrote Nancy Tinker, senior program officer at the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Southern Office, based in Charleston, S.C., in an Aug. 22 letter to the director.
"We are in discussions with members of the sorority about how we can help," says Kim Trent, executive director of Knox Heritage, based in Knoxville. Unfortunately, development is turning Gatlinburg into "the Panama City of the mountains," Trent says. "Gatlinburg could be a very special place that has an authentic Appalachian experience, and Arrowmont is such a big part of that. It would be like cutting the heart out of the city."
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Comments
Submitted by Connie Rogers, Pi Phi member at: October 2, 2008
Thank you for bringing this to public attention. I plan to notify all my classmates from my Pi Phi class. It sounds like a poor plan to me, the easy way out for the national sorority, but definitely NOT a benefit to Gatlinburg. It is especially horrifying that Pi Phi did not even discuss the problems with the Arrowmont School Board or attempt to find other financial partners to continue this imporant historic and cultural economic engine to Gatlinburg. More information is also needed about what the prospective buyer's intentions are.