Barn Burner in a Backwater

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Says University of Tennessee Political Scientist Joseph Dodd, a sharp critic of the fair: "City resources are being used to benefit a small number of wealthy people. There's a direction to the flow of money. The direction always comes back to the Butcher network."

The organizers are unapologetic. "The investors took a capital risk," says Tom O'Brian, a New York banker involved in the fair's private financing. "I see nothing wrong with a return commensurate with that risk." As for Butcher, he is nonchalant about his role. "Every project," he says, "needs a shepherd." By staging a "super barn burner" of a World's Fair, he claims, Knoxville "got 30 years of growth in five years."

In fact, when the fair ends next fall, residents will be left with more than just a municipal debt of perhaps $300,000 a year. They will inherit a six-acre park with a lake and a handsome 2,500-seat theater. The once downcast downtown will be anchored by new and renovated buildings, expanding the tax base and generating new jobs.

"A World's Fair can create a lot of intangible benefits," says Roberts.

"Getting a taste of being an international city may raise our expectations culturally and aesthetically." Roberts' hopeful and boosterism sounds almost quaint: it has been at least a dozen years since World's Fairs —grand, unself-conscious celebrations of progress and technology — were right in step with the Zeitgeist. But Knoxville, a latecomer to urbanity, is excited anyway. Even John Austin, ambivalent about the enterprise, appreciates the hoopla. Says he: "We'd still be a backwater town on the banks of the Tennessee River without the fair." —By Kurt Andersen.

Reported by Anne Constable/Knoxville