A former apartment building and hotel with a tumultuous past is now history.
Demolition crews tore down the former Volunteer Studios apartment complex off Dale Avenue near Interstate 40.
The building was once a Holiday Inn hotel, then became the site of the Knoxville Job Corps Center.
"Job Corps nationally has had a pretty good reputation. Unfortunately, in the 90's when it was here in Knoxville, it had all kinds of criminal and vagrant issues," former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe said.
The center was known for crime problems throughout the community, but gained notoriety in January 1995 when two Job Corps members, Christa Gail Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, brutally murdered fellow corps member Colleen Slemmer on the UT Agricultural campus.
Pike was sentenced to death, and is the only woman sitting on death row in Tennessee.
Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, is happy her daughter's brief home is now a pile of rubble.
"It's about time, it should've been taken down 20 years ago," Martinez said.
Following Slemmer's murder, the then Secretary of Labor came to Knoxville and shut down the program here.
"After the death, or the murder, that just crystallized it and brought it to something that had to be dealt with," Ashe said.
When the Job Corps Center closed down, Ashe said crime rates in Knoxville returned to normal levels. The new owner converted the building into apartments.
Slemmer's mother says that the demolition is only a small part of the journey, that will help her have closure.
"The only things that will help, is that if the state of Tennessee will release the other piece of my daughters skull, and if Christa gets put to death," Martinez said.
An affiliate of the Dow Chemical Co. bought the site and arranged the demolition.
A Metropolitan Planning Commission official said a clean slate helps with its vision of a facelift for the industrial neighborhood.
"Sitting as a vacant or abandoned or blighted building is not what the vision is, so you could say that's an improvement definitely," said Jeff Archer.
Dow Chemical said it has no specific plans for the property at this time.
