Month: October 2000

More than two year after it was originally proposed and more than a year after receiving final approval from the Memphis Park Commission, a redeveloped Handy Park– now named W.C. Handy Performing Arts Park– is set to open.

According to John Elkington, CEO of Performa Entertainment Real Estate, Inc., the company that manages Beale Street, construction is on schedule for the park’s October 19th opening ceremony– a private benefit concert that will feature Aaron Neville and Ronnie Milsap.

Performa signed a 20-year lease with the Park Commission in order to develop and manage the city park. Under the agreement, the city will receive 5 percent of gross revenues for the park while Performa is responsible for the entire $1.6 million in financing, as well as management and maintenance. While it is unusual for a city park to be privately operated, this deal was seen as a way to significantly revamp the park without spending taxpayer money on the project.

According to Elkington, the new Handy Park will become the anchor for the district. “There is no gathering place in downtown Memphis right now,” says Elkington. “We wanted to take what has been a negative fixture on the street and make it the focal point. I think that it’s important for that corner to look good. With the new Hampton Inn and Peabody Place going in there, that’s going to be the central corner of the new downtown. [Handy Park] was a disgrace before– drug deals going down, public urination, vagrants. And that was not acceptable given what the Belz family has invested in the community right across the street.”

Elkington claims that Performa is less concerned with making back its $1.6 million investment than he is with what the park will add to the overall appeal of Beale Street. “The objective is not revenue, but the elimination of an eyesore and embarrassment,” Elkington says.

The new park’s capacity is flexible Ñ from 1,400 to 3,500 people– depending on how the space is organized. The park also includes an information center, professional dressing rooms, and the street’s first public bathrooms. The park will be used for both free public events and paid-admission concerts. Both the Memphis Park Commission and the Beale Street Merchants” Association have to give approval for events in the park. The park also has a 9 p.m. curfew in order to ensure that events don’t compete with other clubs on Beale, though the Merchants” Association has the prerogative to waive the curfew for certain events, as it has for the park’s opening and for the annual Beale Street New Year’s Eve celebration. Other than New Year’s Eve and a few other exceptions, park events will be seasonal, occurring between April and October.

The booking strategy for the park seems to be a work in progress, but Elkington says that paid-admission concerts are “not a major thrust” of the park and estimates that there will be about 20 such events per year. Elkington says that most dates will be reserved for free, community-oriented events, such as gospel music on Sundays. The park will also be used for non-music events such as food and arts fairs.

Performa employee Cato Walker is in charge of booking the venue and Elkington says there is currently no plan to work with any outside promoters. Walker says that he envisions several concert series being organized at the park and cites blues, jazz, Southern rock, and Tennessee music as being probable areas that the series will focus on. Elkington echoes this notion by saying that the park will initially focus on the Memphis-Nashville-New Orleans “music corridor,” citing The Oxford American;s annual Southern music issue as an example of the parameters of the park’s musical bookings. Elkington doesn’t see the park as a much of a competitor with the casino strip. “We’re not trying to bring retro groups,” says Elkington. “We want acts associated with the South. I don’t think you’ll see us booking the same entertainers as the casinos.”

With the sporadic use of the Mud Island Amphitheater over the last couple of years and with the relative dearth of mid-sized music venues in town, the idea of using the park to book more high-profile rock shows seems tempting, but Elkington won’t bite.

“There aren’t going to be mosh pits on Beale,” he says.

(You can write Chris Herrington at herrington@memphisflyer.com)

Between now and November 20th, the only spirits that will be found at the Castle are the ones Prince Mongo conjures.

Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft temporarily enjoined Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges from selling or allowing the consumption of alcohol on the grounds of his controversial nightclub, The Castle, until a full trial is held on November 20th.

“This is one of the few times I’ve been straight-down-the-line-right and gotten so much bullshit for it,” said Prince Mongo before the end of the trial. “I’ve been open for two years, why is all this fuss coming now?”

Craft’s decision came after hearing testimony from undercover police officers as well as from concerned neighbors who feel the club has harmed their quality of life.

“We’re not against him having a business,” says neighbor Meg McCord. “The problem is what he is doing with that business. We think it all stems from him serving minors.”

McCord is not alone. Several neighbors sat in the court gallery all day, at times nodding in agreement and at other times moaning in disgust. Likewise, Prince Mongo, who also sat in the gallery, muttered his approval and disapproval, even standing to protest when Craft rendered his decision.

This hearing came after months of complaints from residents in the Castle’s Central Gardens neighborhood, primarily from residents of the two high rise condominium buildings on either side of the Castle, the Townhouse Apartments and the Mansfield Arms.

Bart Dickinson, who tried the case for the state called eight witnesses in the course of the all-day hearing, to prove the nuisance claim, including Mary Lowry, business manager of the Townhouse Apartments and Prince Mongo’s loudest opponent.

Lowry, who testified to seeing fights, nudity, and the sale of drugs on the property, also submitted video tapes to the District Attorney that she made of events at the Castle. The tapes showed patrons drinking, yelling, dancing, and taunting her as she filmed. Lowry testified that she sits on her balcony filming the Castle from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m., six nights a week.

“I’ve got him on tape driving up and down Central Avenue saying, “Free Alcohol, Free Sex, Free Drugs” on the loud speaker,” Lowry told the Flyer.

Prince Mongo’s attorneys, Leslie Ballin and Mike Pleasants, objected to Dickinson’s attempts to enter noise and parking complaints as evidence of nuisance.

Under nuisance law, an establishment must be found to have instances of unlawful sale of intoxicating liquors, quarreling, drunkenness, fighting, and breaches of the peace. Judge Craft did not allow Dickinson to submit arrest tickets, or evidence of noise and parking violations, finding that these were not violations of the nuisance statute. However, Craft did find that there was sufficient evidence of nuisance to temporarily enjoin the Castle from serving alcohol.

“I do feel the state has shown a pattern of quarreling and fighting, which has gone totally unsupervised on this property,” said Craft. “I don’t want to padlock his business, but I do feel that I need to enjoin Mr. Hodges and his business from serving alcohol pending a hearing.”

Craft also enjoined Hodges from allowing the consumption of alcohol on the property, meaning that guest cannot bring their own alcohol.

“This was just round one,” says Prince Mongo. “Wherever Leslie [Ballin] takes me is where I’m going next. We’ll have another trial, hopefully next time it will be with a jury and a different judge. In the end I’m going to take him [Ballin] with me to my planet.”

The neighbors say they’ll be ready for the trial on November 20th, too.

“Like Mongo says, that’s just round one,” says Lowry. “I’m going to go start videotaping for the next round.”

(You can write Rebekah Gleaves at gleaves@memphisflyer.com)

When Holiday Inns founder Kemmons Wilson announced over a year ago that he was giving the University of Memphis a $15 million hotel school, it looked like the start of a beautiful relationship.

The university is trying to raise its profile and supplement its budget-cramped state appropriations with private gifts. The irrepressibly upbeat Wilson, 88, is a local and international business legend. A hotel and resort management school would be a nice fit with the Fogelman College of Business and Economics and executive conference center. It would be the only hotel school in the Mid-South and serve, among others, Memphis and the booming casino industry in Mississippi.

That was the plan, at least. Sixteen months after the gift was announced, the project finally got under way in August with the removal of several large trees on the site at Central and Deloach and approval by the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development.

Executing the plan, it turns out, has been anything but simple. Complications include everything from the resignation of University of Memphis President Lane Rawlins to possible association with the gambling industry, impact on surrounding neighborhoods and Poplar Avenue, and the university’s — and Wilson’s — reputation for architecture known more for efficiency and functionality than aesthetic merits.

Construction of the four-story, 82-room, all-suites hotel and 1,000-seat ballroom is supposed to be finished in August 2001. Questions remain, however, about operating funds and staffing for the hotel school and the next move by neighborhood opponents, who are wealthy, battle-tested, and influential.

Meanwhile, Wilson is not getting any younger.

“I’ve never seen so much red tape,” Wilson says. “It’s hard to give money away, it looks like. I guarantee I could have built it in that length of time. I think they’ve done all the nitpicking they can do at this point.”

Wilson, who did not finish high school much less college, says he has a soft spot for the University of Memphis as his adopted alma mater. For 55 years, he has lived a few blocks away on the edge of Galloway Golf Course. He says he got the idea for a hotel school from the Conrad N. Hilton College at the University of Houston. That college, started in 1969, has an 86-room hotel, conference center, and 21 full-time faculty and is considered one of the top programs in the country along with Cornell, Purdue, and Michigan State.

The Kemmons Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management will award a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a major in hospitality and resort management, says John Pepin, dean of the Fogelman College.

“It will be a working school,” says Pepin. “We feel it could be a terrific benefit to Memphis. We are going to train managers of hotels and restaurants; we are not going to train chefs.”

Nor will it train casino workers on the gambling side of operations. There are no alliances at this time with any of the Tunica casinos with their 6,000 hotel rooms 20 miles south of Memphis. But Pepin says, “I could see where we could work with them on the hotel-restaurant side.”

Rawlins, a Mormon, was opposed to gambling.

“I believe the position is changing” regarding possible relationships with casinos, Pepin says.

The university and board of regents took some pains to insure that the hotel school will not resemble a Wilson World or Wilson Inn, known for their pink stucco-like exteriors. The building will be covered with brick, which Wilson and university officials both approved.

“This will be much more expensive,” Wilson says.

The $15 million, Wilson’s estimate of the cost, includes everything from sheets on the beds to flatware on the dinner tables, says U of M spokesman Curt Guenther. The school will look for professionals to run the hotel and possibly operate it under a licensing agreement. The academic staff will be university professors, although at this point they haven’t been hired, and the $15 million gift does not include funding for instructors.

That’s one of several concerns of the neighbors, who include several prominent bankers, developers, and lawyers such as Charles Newman, who helped stop Interstate 40 through Overton Park, and Jim McGehee, former head of the Memphis Shelby County Airport Authority.

Neighborhood leaders see the university getting a hotel first and worrying about a school later while they dramatically change the neighborhood and one of the last residential stretches of Poplar Avenue. As precedent, they point to the destruction of homes on Conlee and Deloach (small streets that run between Poplar and Central), the low-cost married students housing on the south side of Poplar, and a general lack of adherence to long-term planning on the university’s part.

“I think they’re going to destroy Poplar Avenue,” says Doug Ferris, chairman of the Poplar Avenue Committee for the Red Acres Neighborhood Association. “They’re going to change the whole character of the neighborhood.”

Poplar will eventually be the major northern entrance to the university, Ferris believes. The houses on Conlee have already been bulldozed, and the university has requested that the city of Memphis undedicate it and give it to the U of M. The university, through the state board of regents, also owns all but one of the dozen or so houses on Deloach between Poplar and Central, according to county records. Adding a hotel and 1,000-seat ballroom to the parking lot, Lipman Early Childhood School, and married student housing already located north of Central will inevitably lead to a major entrance and traffic light on Poplar, particularly if the university ever gets its wish for a performing arts center in the same general area, Ferris says.

“Where’s the stopping?” Ferris asks. “All the way west to Patterson or Highland? There is no planning and nobody communicates.”

Not to worry, says Guenther. The performing arts center is on hold, at best, and “I don’t see how a small hotel is going to have that much impact on traffic,” he says. The university rents the houses it owns on Deloach to faculty and staff and has no pending plans to change that.

Ferris is skeptical. He has no quarrel with the hotel as such but thinks it would be better located south of Central near the athletic facilities. But putting it at Central and Deloach, closing Conlee, and tying Conlee in with Zach Curlin Drive, as planned, will inevitably mean a major entrance off of Poplar. Moreover, Ferris says, the university, as a state entity, is doing something a private hotel developer could never have done on its own hook.

“They deliberately try to defuse something when they know damn well where they are going,” says Ferris. “It’s invasive, like having a bunch of weeds in your yard.”

Few are mincing words in this controversy. Jeanne Coors Arthur, a real estate agent whose son lives in the U of M area, called it “this monstrous development” in a letter to the county planning staff. In July, however, the Land Use Control Board approved the closing of Conlee Street with minor reservations.

Among the likely consequences, the planning report admitted: more traffic on Poplar, a traffic light, and expedited widening of Poplar.

THIS STORY ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE SEPTEMBER 2000 ISSUE OF MEMPHIS MAGAZINE.

(You can write John Branston at branston@memphismagazine.com)

Of all the corporations in Memphis, AutoZone would seem to be one of the least likely to be hit with a major discrimination lawsuit. But that’s what happened last week when the Equal Opportunity Commission took the auto-parts retailer to federal court — something that happens in less than one percent of the thousands of charges filed each year with the EEOC in Memphis.

The allegations in the widely publicized 10-page complaint could still be settled before they go to trial, but the damage to AutoZone’s reputation has already been done. The complaint says AutoZone’s Memphis headquarters has a white-guy job network with a “pattern and practice” of discrimination against blacks and females.

That hits AutoZone where it lives. Minorities are the backbone of the $4 billion company’s customer base, and from the CEO to the rank-and-file, AutoZone’s rah-rah corporate culture of red shirts and acronyms like DIY for “do-it-yourselfer” is based on being customer-friendly.

The annual report is printed in Spanish as well as English, and minorities are prominently featured (portrayed by actors) in the company’s television commercials.

Company founder J.R. “Pitt” Hyde III is a staunch patron of the National Civil Rights Museum, and CEO John Adams Jr. was cochairman of the NAACP’s Freedom Fund Gala this year. In a move the company says is unrelated to the EEOC action, Adams, 52, announced last week he plans to resign later this year or early next year to spend more time with his family.

Image is at odds with reality, however, when it comes to some black and female AutoZoners, according to the EEOC complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that AutoZone has engaged in unlawful employment practices since 1993, with most of the specific complaints coming from 1993-1995:

* At least 59 official/manager positions were filled from 1993-1995 but none by blacks.

* Qualified blacks and women were passed over in favor of white males for jobs as technicians, service workers, security guards, project manager, construction manager, and technical writer.

* A word-of-mouth job network within AutoZone’s largely white male workforce deprived blacks and women of promotions and opportunities.

“Defendant employer at all relevant times acted with malice or reckless indifference to the federally protected rights of black applicants,” the lawsuit says.

AutoZone vice president of communications and training Lesley Hartney said the company follows state and federal laws regarding fairness and equal employment, but otherwise company officials have not commented since the lawsuit was filed last week.

Celia Liner, senior trial attorney for the EEOC in the Memphis district, said the office was still fielding calls this week from current or former AutoZoners inquiring about joining the class-action lawsuit which asks for back pay, relocation expenses, job search expenses, and compensation for emotional pain and suffering.

“A lot of them want to be heard,” she said.

She did not know exactly how many employees were involved in the earlier complaints that have already been investigated. But she said the long-time lag is not unusual. Only 30-60 of the more than 10,000 charges filed in the Memphis district, which includes Little Rock and Nashville, result in lawsuits.

After a charge is investigated, the EEOC issues a “determination of reasonable cause” if it has merit. Then there is a “period of conciliation” during which the EEOC tries to resolve the matter — sort of like a plea bargain in the criminal justice system, with the added advantage of no publicity. If that fails, the charges go to the EEOC office in Washington D.C., headed by chairwoman Ida Castro, which decides whether or not to file a complaint in federal court.

“It’s not unusual for larger cases to take quite a while,” Liner said.

The names of the people who made the charges will be revealed during the discovery process, Liner said.

“Nothing gets changed if somebody doesn’t take a step,” she said. “I think they’re very brave. They lay an awful lot on the line.”

The lawsuit was filed at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and news crews were outside the company’s Front Street headquarters an hour later. Privately, some AutoZone officials suspected the EEOC of tipping the media, but Liner “categorically” denied that.

(You can write John Branston at branston@memphismagazine.com)

The Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) has a website (http://www.memphisriverfront.com/) that features “pollin’ on the River,” an interactive newsboard that allows visitors to make their voices heard in matters relating to the development of Memphis’ “Big Muddy” western border. Mayor Willie Herenton entrusted the RDC to develop the riverfront with the help of both professional consultants, namely Cooper-Robertson & Partners of New York and Civitas, Inc. of Denver, as well as Memphis citizens.

While the RDC expects the entire analysis for the river to take roughly nine months, the non-profit organization says that the consulting firms will complete the first stage of the river plan by Oct. 19th.

The message board is set up into eight sections, each addressing a specific area on the riverfront. For example, one popular section is the “Mud Island River Park” newsgroup. Visitors are asked to answer questions like “What is special to you about Mud Island?”; “How do you feel about being at Mud Island after dark?”; and “Would you show Mud Island to an out-of-town visitor?”

However, controversy can also be a part of the discussion. Recently, some visitors have expressed concern over the RDC’s decision to work on the cobblestones between Tom Lee Park and Confederate Park. These decisions came before the input from citizens was made possible through the website and comes well in advance of the consultant companies’ date of completion of the first stage of the river plan.

However, Benny Lendermon, President of the RDC, stresses that such measures will not affect the overall scope of the river project. On the website, he posts, “Coopers and Robertson felt the project would provide immediate benefit and be appropriate with any conceivable future plans they might develop.”

The forum also allows some less-serious discussion as well. Recently, there was a suggestion that the famous Memphis bridge with its tell-tale ‘M’ should be lit up in more impressive colors such as red and green or blue. Lendermon’s response was, to say the least, interesting.

According to Lendermon, red and green lights are used by the Coast Guard as navigation lights and are thus prohibited. Blue bridge lights are prohibited by the FAA because landing strips at airports use blue for run-way lights. Lendermon quips, “Just think, a 747 landing on the Memphis Bridge.”

(You can write Chris Przybyszewski at chris@memphisflyer.com