Month: June 2001

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

The Gwatney Gambit

Although there are still three active candidates for the Democratic nomination for Shelby County mayor — state representative Carol Chumney, state senator Jim Kyle, and Bartlett banker Harold Byrd — and Byrd’s momentum, especially, is gathering, yet a fourth significant public figure is thinking strongly of making a mayoral race as a Democrat.

This is Russell Gwatney, owner of several automobile dealerships and a recent chamber of commerce chairman who focused on evangelizing for educational needs.

Gwatney, whose previous foray into politics was an unsuccessful race as an independent candidate for the county commission in 1994, is reading from the same primer as other Democratic countywide candidates who see the county’s demographics, notably a technical black majority, favoring them in 2002 but who understand that swing voters have developed the habit in recent years of voting Republican in Shelby County races.

With some exceptions, such as county assessor Rita Clark‘s two winning campaigns in 1996 and 2000, Democrats haven’t fared well in such races. But Clark’s success with suburban swing voters has encouraged Democrats to believe they can win with candidates who have sufficient middle-of-the-road appeal.

Hence, the high hopes invested in the likes of Byrd, whose indisputable Democratic identity — from his service a generation ago in the state legislature and from two 7th District congressional races, in 1982 and 1994 — is fortified by across-the-board business relationships and by his long identification as a booster and fund-raiser for the University of Memphis and other community causes.

Most party cadres see Byrd beginning to take the play away from Chumney, whose candidacy has to fly in the face of stereotypes, and Kyle, whose legislative efforts have saddled him with some difficult issues. But Byrd has a major liability, too — notably his recent alienation from a Democratic faction, mostly made up of longtime Ford-organization cadres, who thought he undermined the chances of party nominee John Freeman in last year’s special election for register.

Byrd’s critics point to a $1,000 financial donation he gave independent candidate Otis Jackson, a former U of M basketballer, in a three-cornered race involving Freeman and the eventual winner, Republican nominee Tom Leatherwood, and suggest that Byrd organized even more support for Jackson after Freeman upset Byrd’s choice, former U of M basketball coach Larry Finch, in a nomination session of the Democratic executive committee.

Byrd, who was a co-chairman of the 2000 Gore-Lieberman campaign in 2000, says all he did was give the donation to Jackson, a personal friend, after which he kept his distance from the local race. Since then, Byrd has made a point of helping Freeman defray his campaign debt, and, though known to be the personal choice for county mayor of Sidney Chism, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton‘s chief political aide, the Bartlett banker has kept his lines of communication open to the Ford family and its allies.

“You still mad at me?” Byrd asked longtime Freeman friend and veteran Fordite David Upton at a recent party gathering. “Well, a little,” said Upton, “but you’re doing some of the right things now, no question.”

Meanwhile, there’s Gwatney, whose history of noninvolvement with intra-party disputes somewhat balances his minimal past participation in party affairs. “I want to see how Harold does” is the businessman’s frank statement about his short-term strategy. If Gwatney sees Byrd faltering to any major degree, he has made it clear that he will enter the race.

Gwatney’s problem is that Byrd already draws on much of his would-be constituency, and Byrd’s chances of nailing down a base in both the business community and among mainstream Democrats will be greatly enhanced if a $1,000-a-head fund-raiser, scheduled for June 28th at Central Station, a day before the county Democrats’ annual Kennedy Dinner, is a huge success.

The Hooper Factor

Like the mayor’s race, the one for sheriff also has a dark horse — or possibly two –waiting in the wings.

Henry Hooper, now a State Farm insurance agent but once both a Sheriff’s Department employee and a Secret Service agent, has indicated that he intended to run for sheriff as an independent. Now, there is some thought in Democratic ranks to persuade him to run as a Democrat.

Hooper, who was Mayor Willie Herenton‘s first choice to be police director back in 1992 before former congressman Harold Ford Sr. exerted his influence on behalf of Melvin Burgess, is an imposing figure who as an independent could draw votes away from Randy Wade, the likely Democratic nominee.

Recently Hooper’s stock took a bounce when he became the subject of an admiring, ostensibly nonpolitical, feature article in The Commercial Appeal.

Hooper is close to former Shelby County mayor Bill Morris, who has begun to actively plead his cause.

The situation has prompted a few Democrats to suggest to Chism that he might rethink his preferences and throw his authority — and, by implication, that of Mayor Herenton — behind Hooper in a Democratic primary. So far that scenario is considered unlikely.

As an alternative, some Democrats are recommending that Wade A) persuade former U.S. marshal Buck Wood to agree to serve as his chief deputy and B) announce the fact as part of his campaign.

The idea behind that proposal is two-fold — to enhance Wade’s potential in the general election and to keep Wood, who also has talked up a race for sheriff, from complicating that race any further.

Other observers see a scenario whereby both Wood and Hooper become independent candidates, creating a four-way race in which Democrat Wade and independent Hooper, both African Americans, vie with two white candidates: independent Wood and the Republican nominee (current Chief Deputy Don Wright or department administrators Bobby Simmons or Mike Jewell).

The Thompson Puzzle

Speculation about the 2002 electoral intentions of U.S. senator Fred Thompson was compounded this week with brand-new commentary in the national media and with the naming of a new chief of staff for the senator — lobbyist and former law partner Howard Liebengood.

Some wondered if Liebengood, who was assistant minority counsel to Thompson on the Senate Watergate committee in the early ’70s and who was the chief lobbyist for the Philip Morris Companies in recent years, means a focus on the administrative — as against electoral — aspects of Thompson’s office.

Others wondered if it meant Thompson was gearing up for a major campaign — either for reelection or, as The New York Times speculated this week, for governor.

Most observers saw the Times article, by B. Drummond Ayres Jr., to be something out of a time warp, since Thompson conspicuously swore off a gubernatorial bid back in February.

But, says Ayres: “To hear some of the rumor-mongers talk in Tennessee, Senator Fred Thompson is fed up with Washington and may return to run for governor, especially now that Senate Republicans are back in the minority.”

The idea that Thompson will be a Senate candidate again is indeed subject to increased doubt around the state; yet the notion that he would, at this stage, return to the gubernatorial wars is regarded as far-fetched.

(But watch this space.)

A Beleaguered Pair

Two Memphis members of the state House of Representatives — Bartlett Republican Tre Hargett and Memphis Democrat Henri Brooks — have become the focus of increased attention in the last week, in ways not altogether to their liking.

Hargett — who, with Nashville Democrat Sherry Jones, chaired a special committee appointed by House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh (D-Covington) that was charged with making specific recommendations for budget reductions — has taken some flak in the process.

Though the representative noted that his lengthy list of possible cuts were not recommendations as such but merely a compilation of the suggestions made by members of his committee, some observers were aggrieved by them.

After a testy conversation in Legislative Plaza with Tennessee State Employees Association director Linda McCarty, Hargett found it necessary to dispatch an all-points e-mail denying that he and State rep. Paul Stanley (R-Germantown) were recommending a reduction in the state’s contributions to medical insurance for state employees, though a recommendation to that effect had been on the committee’s list of possibilities.

“I am extremely disappointed that someone would take the committee comment and distort it so horribly in an attempt to use you and your colleagues by misrepresenting the actual details of what is happening in the Tennessee General Assembly,” Hargett’s e-mail said.

Brooks has become the focus of a continuing controversy over her public refusal to rise with other members when the pledge of allegiance is recited at the beginning of legislative sessions.

When she failed to do so one day last week House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh made a pointed request that she remain outside the chamber until after the daily pledge was finished. She declined and complained that the conversation had been one of “a master talking to a slave.”

Brooks, an African American, gave as her stated reason for not standing during the pledge the fact that she regards the American flag as representing “those colonies that formerly enslaved our ancestors,” contending, “For me to pledge allegiance would be a slap in the face and a dishonor to them.”

Her actions and statements drew an unusual response from one Jim Boyd of Hendersonville, a self-proclaimed “Patriot Party” candidate for governor, who stated his intention of burning an effigy of Brooks outside the state Capitol this week. Boyd declared that Brooks was guilty of “treason.”

How so? he was asked. “I know treason when I see it,” he declared.

Box Score

The Memorandum of Agreement enabling the building of a new arena and the shifting of the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis may be voted on at a special meeting of the Shelby County Commission next Tuesday after members heard a preliminary presentation of the MOA from Shelby County mayor Jim Rout and others Monday.

If so, the plan is likely to pass — with potential swing voters Clair Vander Schaaf and Tom Moss having indicated they will vote yes if some tweaking is performed — particularly a loosening of the agreement’s provisions, under a “competition” clause, that the team’s proprietors would have first dibs to hold major money-making events at the new arena.

A sure no vote will come from Commissioner Walter Bailey who achieved a commission first Monday when he played for his colleagues and the overflow audience a recording from his voice-mail of a Memphis woman who opposed the arena.

Chairman James Ford, an arena supporter, denounced Bailey’s action as “inappropriate” and “a stunt,” but Mayor Rout lightened up the mood later by offering to share some of his own voice-mail favoring the arena. One call, he confided, had come from “an 82-year-old lady” — his mother. — JB

Categories
Editorial Opinion

A Deal We Can Live With?

In many ways, Mayors Rout and Herenton and other city and county officials — as well as members of the private sector — have worked wonders in honing the pending deal with the NBA and the ownership of the Vancouver Grizzlies to build a new arena and bring the franchise here.

The proposed “Memorandum of Agreement” (MOA) unveiled before the city council and county commission on Monday is reassuring in numerous particulars — notably in its promise of new private moneys for arena construction and in its provision of safeguards against an untimely departure by the team.

So far, so good. Have we got a deal? Not yet, in our opinion. Some key members of the Shelby County Commission, which will follow the council’s vote this week with one of their own next week, have raised some concerns that we, too, are troubled by.

Most notable is the clause of the agreement titled “Competition,” whereby “HOOPS” (the ad hoc designation for a reconstituted Grizzlies management, including its proposed local part-owners) is given, in effect, veto power over the acts and events that could appear in other local venues such as The Pyramid and the Mid-South Coliseum. HOOPS would have to give its written consent before these and other publicly built facilities could book any attractions that might “compete” with the new arena. Further, HOOPS would maintain the right to match any pending offer on behalf of the new facility.

In one of the more uncertain passages of an otherwise eloquent pitch for the MOA, Shelby County mayor Jim Rout told the county commission it is understandable that the Grizzlies ownership would want to shore up its situation since it would be responsible for operating losses at the new arena. But, as Rout also noted, there is still some room for negotiation on that score.

We should hope so. In fact, we would insist on altering that segment of the agreement — which amounts as of now to an unconscionable restraint of trade, one that could be enormously damaging to facilities that have served us well and that represent so much previous long-term commitment by local taxpayers.

And that consideration gives rise to a larger thought: If and when the arena gets built, Memphis will find itself faced with a veritable garage sale of used sports and entertainment facilities — the Coliseum, The Pyramid, Tim McCarver Stadium, the Mid-South Fairgrounds, and Crump Stadium. Not to mention Mud Island Amphitheater.

What we need — as an addendum to the MOA, if necessary — is a commitment in writing from the mayors and the movers and shakers of HOOPS to rally around the cause of doing something about this detritus — knocking some down, replacing some, selling some off if possible. The guiding principle should be a public-private partnership for participant sports facilities in the mode of the Mike Rose Soccer Complex and Southaven’s baseball fields and various tennis centers.

One of the attractions of the Grizzlies deal is that it promises to provide genuine and lasting revitalization of the downtown area. But that should not come at the expense of the rest of the metropolitan area, especially at a time when so many of our city youth have poor sports facilities or none at all.

The NBA package still requires amendment, and we trust the county commission will see to it. For it to truly be a deal we can live with, it should be the first step toward a wholesale revitalization of the whole community.

Categories
News The Fly-By

City Reporter

Private Group Offers To Build New “No-Kill” Animal Shelter

With the city dragging its heels on building a new animal shelter, a private animal-rescue group has come forward to try to get the job done.

The Responsible Animal Owners of Tennessee (RAOT) are currently in talks to receive over 10 acres of donated land so that they can open a no-kill shelter sometime in the near future.

“Our short-term plan is to get the shelter built,” says RAOT’s director, Robin Heise. “Our long-term goal is to work with the city’s shelter and take in more rescues, do more spay-and-neuters, and train animals to work with the handicapped.”

The group plans to raise money for the new shelter by doing a variety of fund-raisers, including a performance by the Recovery Repertory Theatre June 9th.

“Financially, we’re just getting started,” says Heise, “but we’ve got to start somewhere.”

Although the shelter will not be operational until two to five years from now, RAOT plans to staff the facility with volunteers to start and base all their operating procedures on the shelter in San Francisco.

“We want to try and get Maddie’s funds, but those don’t kick in until the shelter has proven successful.”

The Maddie funding refers to about $200 million slated for no-kill shelters across the country in memory of one man’s pet. To get any of that money, the shelter has to meet strict operational guidelines, one of which is to work with the municipal shelter.

In Memphis’ case, the no-kill shelter would take in animals that have already run out of time at the Memphis Animal Shelter and provide a more concerted effort to get them adopted.

“Those that can’t be adopted will be allowed to live out their lives at the shelter or will be trained to help the handicapped,” says Heise. “You can do things with these animals instead of putting them down.”

In May, the Memphis City Council voted to delay $1 million in funding for land acquisition and engineering for the city’s proposed animal shelter. The current shelter, located on several acres of the airport’s land on Tchulahoma Road, was the subject of a Flyer cover story in April that cited a need for a new shelter.

But for many animal-rescue groups, the only answer is privatization.

“It’s not just an idea anymore; it’s happening,” says Heise. “I’ve been wanting to do it for years. Donna Malone, the president of the RAOT, and I got together on this about 9 months ago and we’ve been going forward ever since.” —Mary Cashiola

DeSoto Center Hopes To Play Name Game

The proposed FedEx NBA arena naming-rights deal isn’t the only game in town. The DeSoto County Civic Center (DCCC) is in the market for a local company to lend its name — and money — to the 2-year-old facility.

According to DCCC general manager Stuart Taylor, “We’re always looking for potential prospects. We have companies that we are talking to but I wouldn’t say we have any deals per se. We’re just working on presentations.”

The state government of Mississippi recently signed a law that, according to Taylor, applied specifically to DeSoto County. The new bill allows a private company to gain revenue off a public facility.

Taylor says that he is talking to “the major companies in the area” such as FedEx, International Paper, and AutoZone. Both FedEx and AutoZone have well-publicized naming-rights deals involving the proposed NBA arena and the downtown ballpark, respectively. He is hoping for a deal worth $5 million to $7 million.

While some disparage the private naming of public facilities, Taylor says, “It’s been going on for years and years and years. If you go back to the college campuses, they name their sports facility buildings on campus after individuals. Only during the last 10 years has it been really publicized as the big arenas, the big headliners have started doing it.”

DCCC’s goal is different from FedEx’s proposal, reportedly worth over $100 million. Whereas the FedEx arrangement was, according to the NBA pursuit team, critical to luring the Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis, the naming-rights package for the DCCC simply provides funds for the facility. “That’s really about all it does,” Taylor says. “It provides an advertisement for them. It provides [the DCCC] with necessary revenue. Other than that it doesn’t affect the building itself.” — Chris Przybyszewski

Long Debate Ends In KIPP Approval

After a lengthy debate, on Monday night the Memphis City Schools board voted 6-2 in favor of superintendent Johnnie Watson’s KIPP proposal.

Watson brought the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) idea to the board after a trip to New York, where the program is earning praise. Watson says KIPP is working in schools in New York and Texas, and he expects similar results from the programs that will begin shortly in Memphis.

The schools that will take part here have not been selected, but Watson did say he is looking into facilities in North Memphis and the Orange Mound area.

The program allows students 70 percent more time in the classroom and is geared to help those who need to catch up academically. In addition, the program is strictly voluntary for the students, parents, and teachers.

“The beauty of KIPP is that it is decided upon by choice,” said Commissioner Lora Jobe.

Memphis parent Deborah Northcross attended the school board meeting to support KIPP, saying it will bring access to new opportunities. “The KIPP challenge will raise the bar,” she says.

In objection, Commissioners Sara Lewis and Wanda Halbert feared that there were too many legal issues to address before the KIPP contract should be approved.

These two board members were not alone. Teachers, ministers, and parents in the school board auditorium raised questions about equity, charter schools, and parent involvement.

“Is there a reason why we are not improving the programs we already have in schools right now?” asked Memphis parent G.A. Hardaway. “Let’s take inventory of what we have and keep studying what KIPP has to offer.”

Under former Superintendent Gerry House, the system implemented 18 reform models that are currently under review.

Commissioner Michael Hooks says he was more concerned about the KIPP issue splitting the community than the actual controversy of the contract.

“This is only one issue we will deal with, there will be more,” Hooks said. “We cannot afford to split this board and make this issue tear us apart.”

Voting in favor of KIPP were Commissioners Lee Brown, Michael Hooks Jr., Lora Jobe, board president Barbara Prescott, Carl Johnson, and Hubon Sandridge.

Voting against KIPP were Wanda Halbert and Sara Lewis. Patrice Jordan Robinson was absent. — Hannah Walton

Memphis Attorney Wins Before U.S. Supreme Court

Memphian Sharon Pollard and her attorney Kathleen Caldwell scored a victory before the U.S. Supreme Court recently. On Monday, June 4th, the court released a unanimous decision on Pollard’s harassment case, allowing her to receive more money than had previously been statutorily permitted.

“It doesn’t get any bigger than this,” says Caldwell. “It is so inspiring to see the legal system spin out like this to make a substantive change in law.”

The case, Pollard v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., was brought by Pollard against the Memphis company, alleging that during Pollard’s years of employment at DuPont’s hydrogen peroxide plant she experienced harassment and discrimination at the hands of her male co-workers.

According to Caldwell, male subordinates left Bible verses on Pollard’s desk saying that women should be submissive to men, ostracized Pollard, sabotaged her work, and engaged in offensive name-calling.

U.S. District Court Judge Jon McCalla found in his lower court decision that Pollard had been discriminated against and harassed and awarded her $300,000 in damages. However, in his decision McCalla also noted that $300,000 was not enough to fairly compensate Pollard, but the statute limited compensatory damages to that amount.

DuPont appealed the decision to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals and Pollard cross-appealed, arguing that front pay (money awarded when a former employee cannot be reinstated at the company, or money for lost compensation in the period between the court’s judgment and reinstatement) is not an element of compensatory damages.

The three-judge panel decision of the District Court agreed with McCalla that $300,000 was not enough to compensate Pollard but said that they were prevented by statute from granting her more because front pay was an element of compensatory damages.

The U.S. Supreme Court, after hearing oral argument from Caldwell on April 23rd, overturned the District Court decision. In a decision penned by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court decided that front pay is not an element of compensatory damages.

Caldwell says that Pollard’s case will now be sent back to the District Court for the front pay amount to be set and that the court will also be able to consider Pollard’s claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress which, if successful, could yield an even higher damages amount for Pollard.

“This is a big victory for all plaintiffs and citizens who live in the 6th Circuit,” says Caldwell. “All of the other U.S. circuits had already said that front pay was not limited by the caps, and now the 6th Circuit has to, too. This affects, I think, every Title VII case in the 6th Circuit,” Caldwell says, referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination. — Rebekah Gleaves

Muvico’s Opening Benefits St. Jude

Muvico Theaters will unveil its 22-screen megaplex at a grand opening celebration in Peabody Place Entertainment Center on Saturday, June 9th.

Proceeds from the gala will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Guests can tour the three-story facility designed after a grand railway station, sample food, enjoy live music, and view one of the 21 films. The 60- by 80-foot 22nd screen opens at a later date.

Local Memphis restaurants such as Amerigo’s, Automatic Slim’s, Elvis Presley’s Memphis, Gordon Biersch Restaurant and Brewery, Joe’s Crab Shack, and Melange will be offering hors d’ouevres. Muvico will also treat guests to popcorn and soft drinks from the concessions.

Two local bands, Swing Time and Don Echoes, will perform as guests tour the theater.

The doors open at 6 p.m. and the shows will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 1(800)274-2151. —Hannah Walton

Categories
News News Feature

Wheel Tax

We begin, as usual, with a reading from Scripture, this time from the 3rd Chapter of St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Cleavers: And on the 8th day, after He was well rested, God created Sprawl, and out of Sprawl he brought forth leafy residential neighborhoods, copious shopping malls, and tastefully landscaped office campuses, and He named them Suburbia. And to ensure that adolescent sojourners in the Land that was named Suburbia would suffer no boredom, God mandated that all parents must purchase for their progeny an automobile to mark the occasion of the offspring’s 16th birthday. And lo, it has ever been thus.

And that, folks, is why suburban boys and girls seem so certain that it is, truly, a God-given birthright that they receive a car the day they turn 16.

And a driver’s license, of course, and insurance and an EXXON card and a license frame that reads “Yield to the Princess” (for girls) or “Ain’t Skeered” (for boys). And, along with all of this — needless to say — comes carte blanche permission to drive anyone anywhere anytime, with Gangsta-Alt-Metal-Country blasting as loud as the sound system will go.

There is, these days, great trepidation over the July 1st implementation of the Graduated Driver’s License, which will place restrictions on anyone under 18 who gets a license on or after that date. No more than one friend in the car. No driving after 11 p.m. Fascist stuff like that. Expect long lines at the driver testing station and record enrollment in driver’s ed classes this month, as the hordes of hopeful drivers make a dash to try and get their licenses before such odious restrictions go into effect.

Yet not all of us — myself included — think this is such odious or fascist stuff. We are parents who are glad to see our kids supervised in their driving, even if it means curtailing a bit of the God-given freedom our teenagers think they deserve.

And we have an advocate in our corner: Dr. Dale Wisely, a clinical psychologist who practices child, adolescent, and family therapy in Birmingham. Wisely, who lived in Memphis from 1978 to 1982 while receiving his M.S. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Memphis, is the author and keeper of a wonderfully sane and thoroughly practical Web site — Parenting the Teenage Driver — which is found at http://www.parentingteendrivers.com.

Wisely also created The Chiff and Fipple, an Internet hub for those of us who are obsessive players of tinwhistles (see the last Burbland for shocking confessions on my part), and he keeps the Journal of the Home Gorilla Breeding Society of North Central Alabama, for those who are concerned with such problems as “remodeling homes to cccommodate in-home simian breeding activities.” He is, in other words, a man of great humor and taste.

Yet he lets us know, right up front, that he’s serious as can be when it comes to the business of teen drivers: “For most parents, nothing you will deal with as a parent will be more important, more life-and-death, than how your teenager uses — and misuses — a motor vehicle. What is at stake here is knowing that you have done all you can reasonably do to avoid burying your own child.”

To prove his point — as if it needed proving — Wisely presents a series of harrowing statistics: “Motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) are the leading cause of death in people age 16 to 20. MVAs account for about 1/3 of deaths of people in this age group. People age 16 to 20 have the highest fatality rate due to MVAs of any other age group. People age 16 to 20 make up only 5 percent of drivers and drive only 3 percent of all miles driven by all drivers. And yet they are involved in 15 percent of traffic deaths.”

And this, which I think is as telling as you need: “16-year-old drivers are 20 times as likely to have an MVA than the general population.”

There is, Wisely maintains, a sane way off of this skid pad: a driving contract. In it, parents and new drivers establish rules, guidelines, and consequences for earning the privilege — not the “right” — to drive a car. Negotiating the contract is tough going, Wisely warns. Many parents can expect epic whining or torrents of slick teenage rhetoric about how all their friends have cars and about how they’re the meanest, most strict parents on earth.

To which parents must be willing to stand firm. As Wisely keeps warning, this is hard work, but it’s definitely a situation in which the end justifies the means.

Best of all, Wisely’s site presents a sample contract that can stand as the basis for the family negotiations. You can use the online contract, or you can download a copy that you can edit to suit your needs.

Just make sure it’s agreed to, signed, and sealed before you start handing out car keys. That way, you stand a better chance of keeping your kids alive to whine another day.

You can e-mail David Dawson at letters@memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Book Features Books

Fun Couple

Sylvia and Ted

By Emma Tennant

Henry Holt, 192 pp., $22

One of the most well-known scandals in literary circles is the suicide of poet and novelist Sylvia Plath and the subsequent condemnation of her husband, poet Ted Hughes, by Plath’s myriad fans. He is blamed for driving her to ruin, though she was admittedly suicidal from an early age, much like poor Virginia Woolf. Hughes, even today, decades later, is commonly booed at his readings. He’s been called a murderer in public. His surname is regularly chipped from Plath’s tombstone. Now, Emma Tennant, in fictional form in Sylvia and Ted, has lent her voice to the fray, and anyone looking for a more equitable approach must look elsewhere. Tennant, another of Hughes’ ex-lovers, is not exactly an unbiased chronicler — she wrote about her affair with Hughes in her book Burnt Diaries — and here she portrays Hughes as something just short of a demon, adding another suicide to his résumé. The author’s note at the beginning of the book is worth quoting in full: “Sylvia and Ted is the story of the twentieth century’s most famous — and most tragic — love affair, the marriage and separation of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Events described in the book are based in fact, and in the case of the story of Assia Wevill, Sylvia’s rival, who also committed suicide, many of the facts were previously concealed or unknown. Sylvia and Ted is, nevertheless, a work of the imagination.”

Okay. But what is most unreasonable, perhaps, is not Tennant’s agenda, which is quite clearly to pen a fictionalized account of the affair and cast Hughes in the role of Iago, but her hysterical and hyperbolic tone. Is this affair really the 20th century’s most famous and tragic? Of course not.

Tennant continues this overwrought approach in the book’s opening section, where she sketches a few quick incidents from the three characters’ childhoods. About Hughes’ childhood she writes: “In the boy’s childhood there is killing. The love of killing, the acceptance and necessity of killing. How can he tell what he must kill and what should be left alive?” The connotation is heavy-handed at the very least. And later, when Sylvia is a young poet in Cambridge and headed to hear a newly acclaimed British poet named Ted Hughes give a reading, Tennant writes: “Thus does Sylvia go forth to meet her doom.” This is melodrama, unfiltered and vitriolic.

Tennant’s portrait of the poets’ marriage is bleak, sad, and lacking any spark of love, yet we know there must have been some tenderness. Surely there is in the worst of marriages. “There is something wrong,” Tennant writes, “a wrongness that lies dormant. What is it? There is a silence and heaviness in Ted, who will sit an hour on the hillside, playing God with a colony of red ants.”

The author has concocted for her fictional biography an appropriately elliptical and poetic language, and she is capable of some beautiful and spare sentences. Unfortunately, overwritten excesses counterbalance these. “And, then the winter came, with Assia glowing in the heart of it like a red-shaded bedroom lamp you just can’t turn off” is an example of the kind of awful and attenuated writing she exhibits here. One wishes she had kept to her pared-down approach and tempered her telling with equipoise and wit, with some concrete storytelling. Sadly, the book smells of recrimination.

Example: “Sylvia has tried not to see this man as a killer. But she knows by now that he cannot walk across this land without the knowledge of where his next victim may lie: rook, pigeon, rabbit, hare. Ted kills, and he loves to kill.”

Get the picture? Tennant is writing with a sledgehammer. There is no light let in on her constricted view; the claustrophobia and dread, which may very well have characterized Hughes and Plath’s marriage, translates here into a story with no hallways off the main room of hell. There is only a straight line to unrepentant desperation: “His wife is caged,” Tennant writes, “her only freedom a further lunge downward to obscurity.”

Enough.

There is the stuff of a good novel in this tragedy of two poets coming together and creating one life that then splinters and sends insecure, sad Sylvia to her self-destruction, but Sylvia and Ted misses it by a wide margin. This brief book is a house of cards, an empty house, flimsy, short-lived, and insubstantial.

Emma Tennant, for all her damning implication, never really makes a tangible case against Ted Hughes. The question remains: Did his infidelity alone drive his wife to suicide? Or was it his “bloodthirsty” personality? After finishing Sylvia and Ted it’s hard to remember even one scene. And that’s the worst of it: Tennant, probably because of her contrived and vindictive intention going in, has failed to make two real people come alive for the reader.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Tutti Frutti

After much anticipation, the Art Museum of the University of Memphis and Delta Axis have unveiled “Max 2001: All About Paint,” an extravaganza of big, bold, slick, and sexy art that packs quite a visual wallop. No heavy agendas here; instead, one might say the emphasis is on fun and lightheartedness. Fuzzy textures, hard-edged graphics, and plenty of ooey-gooey lumps all appeal to the sensual, especially apparent in the abundance of eye-scorching pink. The show’s title may be a little misleading. Several hardcore painters are certainly featured, but curator Holly Block defines the subject of paint rather loosely to encompass sculpture, video, photography, performance, installation, and even conceptual art.

Block, the executive director of Art in General in Manhattan, has upped the ante with this Max, the third manifestation of the exhibit. “Max 1998” and “Max 1999,” curated by Kim Levin and Buzz Spector respectively, were exclusively regional affairs relying on slide images and studio visits to select artists — a course of action that resulted more or less in survey exhibits. Although she used a similar method of recruitment, Block brings to her theme of paint the works of artists from all over the nation and beyond, and these mix quite comfortably with regional offerings. Certainly this international roster of artists adds an air of prestige to the exhibit, especially when several have accumulated impressive résumés. More importantly, this fusion presents an opportunity to relate the art issues and practices of the region to a wider cultural context.

Paul Henry Ramirez of Mexico sets the festive tone of this exhibit with a goliath scroll painting. Spread II perches majestically above the ensemble of art objects in the main gallery, unfurling down the wall into a heap on the floor — a pretty brash way to mount a painting. The imagery is even more indelicate: A fractured diagram of flesh, hair, and squirting bodily fluids is rendered with a taut graphic style that seems to revel in lavish ornament, while large pools of flat color outlined by svelte ribbons of black heighten the architectonic qualities of the picture. Ramirez is enjoying a growing reputation for his art; one of his paintings even graces the cover of the current issue of Art Papers, reflecting the art world’s love affair these days with all things beautiful. “Max 2001,” as a whole, is likewise tinged with this pervasive sentiment.

If any paintings in this exhibit can hold their own next to Ramirez’s extroverted image, they are Hamlett Dobbins’ two luscious offerings nearby. It is paint that is Dobbins’ passion, and looking at the striped Glimpse, one is swept up in the excitement of his piquant palette of neutral pinks, yellows, and beige. The artist has never been one to scrimp on paint, and he likewise lays it on thick here, but do I dare detect a newfound deliberateness in its application that borders on the slick? For HH (the stillness of skin) is a delightful pink-on-pink affair — not rose, not mauve but the pinks of pink Cadillacs, Double-Bubble, and Pepto-Bismol. Pink Panther pink. This painting looks delicious enough to eat.

A bead or two of dribbled paint greets one at the entrance to the building and then follows a path to the museum inside, terminating with a leaky can of paint stuck to the gallery wall. A label beside the affixed can and runny trickle says that this is a work of art from the oeuvre of Francis Alÿs. Titled The Leak, it undoubtedly springs from the artist’s past performances in which he took short treks carrying an upturned, punctured can of paint, marking a path that concludes where it begins. Alÿs could not come to Memphis to do the piece himself, so Block was the stand-in for a proxy performance. The notion of purposely spilling pigment from a ruptured vessel while following someone else’s prescribed scheme, no matter how meaningful the intent, seems both ludicrous and pretentious, especially when its most enduring consequence will likely be what’s left on the carpet after the show is over. Besides that, speaking as an aspiring Pollock myself, not just anybody can drip paint.

It might seem unusual to include photographs in an exhibit about paint but not when you’re talking about the work of Phillip Andrew Lewis and Martina Shenal, two artists who utilize the medium with a painter’s perspective. Shenal exhibits images from her recent show with Lewis at the Second Floor Contemporary Gallery, but it’s never too soon to once again admire these beautifully austere images of objects veiled by scrim. Lewis breaks out a new triad of images of the Mississippi River floodplain, transforming the horizontal bands of the landscape into a sensuous gradient of azure, in which form is dissipated into pure radiant color.

When I heard that Roxy Paine was going to be in “Max 2001,” my jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. I had seen his contribution to “010101: Art in Technological Times” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) just a few weeks prior. Paine’s Scumak seems well-suited to that exhibit’s theme of exploring the integration of art and technology, because one literally walks into a computer-operated sculpture factory. A high-tech machine slowly oozes a viscous mass into a lazy lump on a conveyor belt then sends it down the line to an accumulating stockpile of similar soft sculptures, with the production’s limited set of variables all handled by a lil’ laptop computer. Ironically, the only humans necessary are the ones guarding the merchandise and fancy hardware.

It is something of an anticlimax to see Paine’s lumps at “Max 2001” sans the spectacle of the SFMOMA installation. Scumak (4) is a nice enough set of specimens from the production, with that characteristic shape somewhat akin to a lava flow or soft-serve ice cream. Perhaps part of the disappointment lies in the objects themselves. Because in the context of witnessing their origin, one’s attention is fixed upon the manner of production, while the objects themselves are ephemeral, a remnant, one as valid (or not) as the next. As art objects, they’re delightfully indulgent, tactually inviting yet mind-numbingly arbitrary.

Gee, there is so much other remarkable work and so little space left. Arturo Herrera’s stunning Say Seven is a bolt of brown felt meticulously cut into a shape that resembles a splash of chocolate syrup dripping off the wall. Les Christensen, who was in the last Max, offers her 100 Maidens (Nuptial Shield) and 100 Widows (Death Shield), funky spirals constructed from the heels of women’s shoes. Meikle Gardner unleashes his Ab-Ex tendencies with a couple of his slash-and-drip paintings. And there’s even more.

Get out the Kool-Aid and lemon cookies. Although a happenstance, Emily Walls’ installation in the adjacent Artlab gallery fits right in with the insouciant revelry of “Max 2001,” as it is a twisted re-creation of prepubescent art-making. The artist has painted murals throughout the gallery with cheerful colors and anamorphic forms of preschool life. Populating the room are all manner of mutated doll, in every conceivable color, texture, and form, shoved into corners and dangling from the ceiling. Kitsch is Walls’ ongoing obsession, and the inventiveness and industriousness of this effort is impressive. But ultimately, the installation offers a pastiche of the Playskool experience that is not too dissimilar from the original.

Through July 21st.

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Cover Feature News

Drive On!

Tom Lehman

It’s a week before the FedEx St. Jude Classic at the Tournament Players Club at Southwind, and it’s raining. As Phil Cannon mounts the stairs to the viewing stand overlooking the 18th green, his foot slips. Cannon’s on his walkie-talkie faster than a downhill putt on ice.

“Hey,” he says, calling maintenance, “these steps on 18 are slick.”

“Yeah, they are pretty slick, aren’t they?” comes the proud response.

“No, I don’t mean they’re good slick,” Cannon says. “I mean they’re slippery! We almost fell on our butts coming up here.”

“Oh … uh, well, we’ll come see what we can do.”

It’s crunch time for the director of Memphis’ annual PGA TOUR stop and after 33 years of working the tournament, Cannon has learned to sweat the small stuff. Slick steps during the tournament could mean trouble, and trouble is what he needs to stay one step ahead of. Cannon has seen it all through the years: horrible weather, great weather, miraculous comebacks, temper tantrums, meltdowns, tears of joy. He’s been around some of the giants of the game — Player, Trevino, Norman, Price — and seen obscure journeymen take home an unexpected victory.

But Cannon doesn’t talk about that much. If you look up “modest” in your Webster’s Unabridged you’ll see Cannon’s picture. He prefers to pass along the credit to his staff and volunteers. He prefers to talk about what it feels like to hand a big check over to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital each year. He prefers, in short, to remain well outside the beam of the spotlight. “The story,” he says firmly, “is not about me.”

Phil Mickelson

And he’s right, of course. The stories during this tournament week should be about the game and its players. Can Phil Mickelson, the second-ranked golfer in the world, shake his recent putting yips? Will John Daly play well, or fling a putter into a lake? Can Nick Price win in Memphis yet again? Will home cooking help Germantown’s young phenom David Gossett find his game? Will Jesper Parnevik wear those fabulous pink pants?

Or maybe one of the PGA’s young guns will use Memphis to step forward, like last year when Notah Begay snared the trophy with a brilliantly precise 6-iron over water to the 18th green. And what about the other relative newcomers — David Toms, Frank Lickliter, and Chris DiMarco — all of whom have played well this year?

The field is rich, perhaps the best ever. Tom Lehman, Lee Janzen, Steve Elkington, Bernhard Langer, and Nick Faldo, who have all won Majors, will lend their luminance to the tourney.

So who will emerge? Who will kiss the trophy? That’s the story.

Still, a little more about Phil Cannon couldn’t hurt.

“When I was a sophomore at White Station,” Cannon says, “I became a volunteer at what was then the Memphis Open. I went to college as a journalism major at Memphis State and worked in the sports information office with SID James Bugbee, who also worked for the tournament. He got me even more involved.”

After “cramming four years of college into eight,” Cannon stayed in the sports event business, eventually working for the Mid-South Coliseum for a number of years in the 1980s. In 1990 he went to work for the tournament full-time.

So what does a tournament director do the other 11 months and three weeks of the year?

“My old boss used to joke, ‘We wake up, play 18 with Arnie and Jack, then go to the office and answer a few phone calls,'” Cannon laughs. “But that’s hardly the case. Much of what we do is raise money to fund the purse and our operations.”

Bernhard Langer

Cannon manages a full-time staff of four, plus nine part-time workers and 1,500 volunteers. “Our volunteer Committee of 100 raised $1 million this year,” he says. “That’s a big story.” The money comes from sponsors, the sale of $35,000 “hospitality chalets,” ticket sales, and various other revenue sources. The tournament’s biggest sponsor is, of course, FedEx, which contributes “something well into seven figures,” according to Cannon. “Basically, it takes us 11 months to raise the money,” he says, “and one month to spend it. We’re a 501.C3 nonprofit charity, so what’s left over goes to St. Jude.”

And there has been more than a little left over. Since 1970 the tournament has donated more than $11 million to the children’s hospital.

Cannon, who doesn’t play golf, compares his job to running Memphis in May or an outdoor festival. “It’s event management and all that that entails,” he says. It’s crowd control and logistics and food and beverage service — and keeping the steps from being too slippery.

But the best part of his job, Cannon says, is working with the volunteers. “I always say to the media, ‘You want a story? Write about our volunteers. What they do is incredible.’ It doesn’t hit home until you see it. We had a father and daughter who buried their wife and mother the Tuesday before the tournament started last year. On Wednesday they were here working. It’s an amazing group of people.”

What’s the worst part of his job? Cannon likes it all. Except for one thing. “Every year I’m surprised by the number of people who come out to the tournament and get mad because they have to walk. I’m not sure what they expected, but I would tell Flyer readers, ‘Be prepared to walk.'” ·

The Local Angle

Want to root for a hometown hero? There are plenty to choose from at this year’s tourney.

Loren Roberts

Loren Roberts

The Germantown-based Roberts had the best year of his long career in 2000, with one victory and nine top-10 finishes. Known as the “Boss of the Moss” because of his pure putting stroke, Roberts’ victory at the Greater Milwaukee Open made him the oldest winner on tour (at 45) since Tom Watson won at age 48 in 1998. He ranks 87th in 2001 money earnings ($288,937), with his best finish being a tie for fifth at the Sony Open. He is a former member of the USA President’s Cup and Ryder Cup teams.

Doug Barron

The 31-year-old Barron won nearly $200,000 his rookie year (1997) and finished 108th on the money list for 2000. He currently ranks 181st in earnings, with $52,449 for 2001. His three top-10 finishes in 2000 were a career best.

Shaun Micheel

Playing out of Ridgeway Country Club, Micheel, 31, had his best year on tour in 2000, with three top-10 finishes and four top-25 finishes. His best tournament this year was the BellSouth Classic, where he tied for 11th. He ranks 119th on the money list in 2001, with $193,608 in earnings.

John Daly

David Gossett

Gossett is ranked 20th on the Buy.Com tour this year, with $45,217 in earnings. After failing to earn his PGA card last year in the seven tournaments he entered, Gossett received a sponsor’s exemption to play in this year’s FedEx St. Jude Classic. He has finished fifth twice on the Buy.Com tour in 2001. Gossett, who is from Germantown, has played the FedEx classic twice, making the cut as an amateur in 1998 (after shooting a first-round score of 66) and missing the cut as a pro in 1999.

John Daly

Though now playing out of Philadelphia, Mississippi, Daly, 35, remains a local favorite. The long-hitting, mullet-headed blond won two majors before he was 30, but well-publicized troubles with alcohol, gambling, and his marriage have eclipsed his early promise. He has only won two other times in his career. This year he leads the tour in driving distance (301.4 yds.) and ranks 100th in earnings with $254,260. · — BV

FedEx St. Jude Classic Facts and Figures

· 44th Annual Tournament

· Title Sponsor: FedEx Corporation (since 1986)

· Beneficiary: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital ($11,498,416 since 1970)

· Economic Impact: According to a recent study, FESJC annually impacts the Memphis-area economy by more than $15 million; 88 percent of attendees are college-educated; 63 percent are at executive-level jobs.

· More than 1,500 volunteers contribute 20,000 hours.

· Attendance: Estimated at 150,000 annually

· Site: Tournament Players Club at Southwind

· The Course: Par 71; 7,030 yards. Eight lakes and three streams affect play on 11 holes.

· Field: 156 golfers. After 36 holes, field will be cut to lowest 70 scorers and ties.

· Purse: $3,500,000; winner’s share, $630,000

· Television Coverage:

Thursday, June 7th — ESPN, 2-5 p.m.

Friday, June 8th — ESPN, noon-2 p.m.

Saturday, June 9th — ABC, 3-5 p.m.

Sunday, June 10th — ABC, 2-5 p.m.

A Reporter’s Memories

bobby Hall covered the Memphis stop on the PGA tour for The Commercial Appeal from the late 1960s until last year. He retired from the CA in February and does some part-time work editing the tournament’s publications. We asked him to talk about some of his favorite tournament memories.

First on Hall’s list was Al Geiberger’s 59 in 1977: “In those days,” Hall recalls, “we had only a couple of staffers covering the tournament. There weren’t any high-tech scoreboards so we didn’t have a real idea of what was happening out on the course. I remember the day well because several cars caught on fire out in the parking lot and I had to go out and cover that. By the time I got back, the word was out that Geiberger was doing something marvelous. I was lucky enough to see him play the last hole.

“A million people will tell you now that they saw the whole round, but they didn’t because it was only the second day of the tournament and no one knew what he was doing.

“I do remember that he wasn’t a flamboyant guy. He made the putt on 18 and kind of threw up his hands and walked off. There really weren’t a whole lot of people there.”

Hall also witnessed tourney winner Jerry Pate jumping in the lake in 1981. “He pretty much told people as a joke,” Hall recalls. “He said, ‘If I win it I’ll jump in the lake.’ As it turned out, of course, he did win and people held him to it. He didn’t even hesitate.”

Through the years weather has wreaked havoc on the tournament, including torrential rains, blistering heat and humidity, and even tornadoes. “During a tournament in the 1960s,” Hall says, “there was a tornado warning. Everybody — spectators, players, caddies, officials — swarmed into the lower clubhouse. They were packed in like sardines, Arnold Palmer and everybody else. I remember there were some little old men — club members — coming out of the shower wrapped in towels. They walked out of the shower with no clue what was going on and here was this huge throng of people in their locker room.”

Two-time winner Nick Price also has a spot reserved in Hall’s memory bank. In 1993 the personable South African was on the leader-board every day of the tournament but didn’t know if he’d be able to stick around long enough to finish since his wife was in Florida expecting a child.

“Each day,” Hall recalls, “at the end of the round Price would say, ‘I may get a call and I won’t be here tomorrow. If I get a call from Florida, I’m out of here.’ But he was kind and cooperative enough to let me call him each night where he was staying and let me know if he was going to be around the next day. He was really a likable guy and very popular here. He had a caddy named Squeaky who died of cancer.”

Memorable shots? Hall’s seen a few in his time. He followed Greg Norman as he made his three-consecutive-birdies charge to victory in 1997. He saw Notah Begay‘s pin-point chip shot on the 17th hole last year. But the one that sticks with him the most came in 1990, and it also came on the 17th.

“Tom Kite was stuck behind a tree about 190 yards out. He had to hit a huge banana slice around it to get to the green — a nearly impossible shot. He hit it to within a couple feet of the hole and made the birdie putt. Kite said at the time it was the best shot he’d ever hit in competition.”

How has all the new high-tech equipment affected the game? “How to judge that, I don’t know,” Hall says. “Sure it’s affected the game. People say, ‘What if Hogan had this new equipment, how would he play?’ But what if these [current players] had to play on the courses he played? Back then they weren’t manicured like they are today. Basically, I think a good pro could take a set of clubs off the shelf from Wal-Mart and play scratch golf, but I know everybody, including the pros, wants the top-of-the-line stuff.

“Of course, with my swing it doesn’t matter.” — BV

The FESJC –A Brief History

The tournament was founded in 1958 as the Memphis Open with an initial purse of $20,000. It was held at the Colonial Country Club, which was then in East Memphis. Billy Maxwell won the first event and collected $2,800.

In 1960 the name was changed to the Memphis Invitational Open. In 1969 entertainer Danny Thomas agreed to lend his name and influence to the event, which was renamed the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic (DTMC). In that event’s first year, 1970, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital became the event’s sole charity. Dave Hill won the first DTMC and collected $30,000 from the $150,000 purse.

In 1972 the event was moved to the new Colonial Country Club in Cordova. Lee Trevino won the first tournament at the new layout.

In 1977 the tournament saw two notable events. President Gerald Ford shot a hole in one on the 5th hole during the celebrity pro-am. And just two days later tour veteran Al Geiberger pulled off what Sports Illustrated called “one of the most significant athletic achievements of the 20th century” by shooting a 59. No small feat when you consider that the Colonial course was at that time the longest on the tour. Geiberger’s 13-under-par 18 holes still stands (though it has been tied twice since then) as a PGA tour one-round record.

In 1985 the tournament’s name was changed yet again — this time to the St. Jude Memphis Classic. One year later the Federal Express Corporation became the tournament’s title sponsor.

In 1989 the tournament moved to its current location at Southwind. · — BV

Categories
News The Fly-By

SAY “UNCLE”

At Monday s city and county commission meetings, those for and against the proposed NBA arena showed up in force. Even good ol Uncle Sam, standing 10 feet tall (including stilts) and wearing a clown s costume complete with big red nose and funny hair. Uncle Sam didn t like paying for a new arena and made his arguments heard by serenading all with blasts from his little hand horn.

So that s what Jolly Royal is doing these days!

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We Recommend We Recommend

wednesday, june 6th

Memphis Mercury soccer team hosts Kentucky at Mike Rose Stadium at 7:30.

Categories
News News Feature

MAYORS PITCH ARENA FUNDING

The NBA Vancouver Grizzlies and its owner, Michael Heisley, were successfully courted by the J.R. “Pitt” Hyde led pursuit team. Monday the pursuit team turned its full attention to the two legislative bodies in Shelby County. The NBA has yet to approve the relocation. NBA commissioner David Stern said that the league is waiting for final or near final confirmation in the form of a commitment to build a new arena.

While the county commission was holding its normal meeting, the city council held a special meeting. The city council will vote on its share of the NBA financing plan as submitted by Mayors Herenton and Rout as well as the Memphis pursuit team Tuesday, at 3:20 p.m.

In both cases, the mayors used their time to highlight the new Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) that each signed last Friday evening. The MoA is the first step framework in signing a lease agreement.

Central to that MoA was the beginning of a strongly pro-Memphis lease for the new arena. After the arena is built and the Grizzlies move in, they will begin a 25 year lease with the city and county of Memphis. For the first 10 of those years, no movement by the team is possible. After the tenth year, a number of stipulations must be met before the franchise could move. First, attendance must drop below 14,900 per game. If attendance does drop below that level, Memphis will have another season in which to regain that level. For example, if the team draws a disastrous 2,000 people per game in any season after the tenth and then draws an average of 14,901 the next year, then the team must stay.

If those conditions are met, the corporate support to the Grizzlies must fail to provide its promised 5,000 tickets. Dean Jernigan, head of the Memphis Redbirds, is leading a corporate drive to secure those tickets. Regardless of the average attendance of the Grizzlies, if the corporate sector comes up with its 5,000, then the team must stay in Memphis. In other words, if the team draws 5,001 per game but 5,000 of those tickets are from the corporate sector, then the team must stay.

If those conditions are met as well, then Michael Heisley must sale the team in order for it to move rather than keep it and move somewhere else. If he does decide to sale it, then he must give the Memphis minority ownership group right of first refusal. If the Memphis group is unable or unwilling to come up with the money to buy the team outright, then the Memphis city and county governments have the right of first refusal to either find a willing owner or to make the team a city and county asset.

If neither party can or will buy the team, then the Grizzlies meet stiff moving penalties. For example, if all conditions are met simultaneously and the team decides to move after year 10, it will owe the city and county governments $98 million for bonds against the arena and $11 million dollars from the naming rights package with FedEx. Though that number decreases every year after the 10th in response to how much money is left to pay on the arena, the team would still owe the city and county governments all naming rights revenues through the 25th year.

According to members of Herenton’s and the pursuit team’s staffs, the average buyout in relocation teams across the four major league sports is $85 million. In Memphis it will be $105 million.

The arena will be owned by the city and county. However, the Grizzlies will operate the facility for no fee. While the Grizzlies receive all revenues from the facility, the team will pay the city and county 1.3 million a year, and will be responsible for all maintenance and upkeep of the facility. According to the pursuit team, this is rare in professional sports and was a major “win” for the Memphis negotiators. The Memphis city and county governments will be responsible for any “capital” repairs and will hold $10 million of the $250 million in reserve for those repairs. If the Grizzlies wish to change the building of the arena in any way that will make it cost more than $250 million, then the team will take on that cost.

Controversial to the lease is the non-compete clauses that affect the Pyramid and the Coliseum. Herenton’s staff and the pursuit team qualified four types of events that might occur in the three facilities: Grizzlies events, National events, local events, and excluded events.

All Grizzlies events (i.e. games, basketball camps, etc.) must be played at the new arena. If the Grizzlies wish to use the Pyramid, the team must make plans with the Pyramid leasing staff.

A National event is any event televised to two or more TV markets. That includes such events as nationally televised NCAA tourney games. All University of Memphis games are in the Excluded category described below. All National Events must happen in the new arena. Those events may only occur at the Pyramid with the direct consent from the new arena’s staff.

Local events (i.e. any non-U of M or Grizzlies basketball event, and not televised to more than two TV markets) may happen in any of the three facilities. However, the new arena’s staff has five days to match any offer that is available to the Pyramid or the Coliseum.

Excluded events include all University of Memphis events (basketball, etc.), the Wonders Series currently held at the Cook Convention Center and The Pyramid, and certain concert series. In those cases, the sponsor of the event may pick the venue among the three.

Citizenry both for and against the new arena were present at both meetings. In the city council meeting, those against were in the majority. In the county meeting, those for the arena proposal were more heavily present.