Month: October 2005

Matt Boeving is walking down a dark, unfamiliar hallway. He reaches a corner, stops, then slowly peeks around.

If this were a horror film, this is the part where Boeving would get stabbed in the face. But tonight, in Bartlett at the Nightmarez … Stage Fright haunted house, he emerges intact, if a bit shaken. Now he and his friends stand huddled in the building’s parking lot excitedly comparing notes: Were you scared? What did you think was the best part? Was that your big, hairy arm that grabbed me?

“We scare because we care,” explains Patrick French, who created Nightmarez, along with Lin Workman and Todd Patton, five years ago to raise money for local charities. This year’s proceeds — around $20,000 — will go to Youth Villages, the Bartlett Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Bartlett fire and police departments.

Putting on Nightmarez, which runs through Halloween, is a big endeavor. Up to 20 volunteers have to be prepared to scare. Building and electrical permits have to be obtained, and fire-code inspections must be passed. In addition, French, Workman, and Patton visit horror-themed attractions in other cities and attend HauntCon to keep up with the latest, most horrific trends.

“Our rule of thumb is, if it scares us, that’s something we want to do,” French says.

Visitors enter the “Vortex,” an equilibrium-destroying walkway involving a spinning tube and glowing 3D artwork. They then make their way through dark passages that are dotted with “boo holes,” little windows from which the volunteers — “scaregivers,” as they’re known — unexpectedly shriek or do whatever it takes to scare the bejesus out of their guests. There are themed rooms with crazy clowns, crazy doctors, and crazy toilets. Perhaps the most terrifying is the room where there is nothing at all, and those who’ve paid $10 to be startled from all directions are left enclosed in a space with no light and no sound. The anticipation is excruciating.

Every day before the doors open, French goes through Nightmarez and makes repairs. People run into the walls. They drop on their knees and crawl or scream that they’re about to vomit. This sort of mayhem indicates to French that the job is being done right, but he still has to field one frequent question.

“If I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me, ‘Is this scary?'” he says, “I wouldn’t need to produce this thing.”

They say the real estate market often comes down to three little words: location, location, location.

Last week, Emdeon, the company formerly known as WebMD, was granted a four-year tax freeze by the Industrial Development Board of Memphis and Shelby County.

As part of the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) program, the company would get a roughly $60,000 tax break in exchange for creating 25 new jobs. Employees’ median salary would be $40,000.

“We need a second redundant data center that would allow us to expand and consolidate,” said Lara Kuhlman, director of real estate and facility management and the company’s representative at last week’s hearing. “We already have one in Nashville that is considered our primary data center.”

The data centers process medical transactions between insurance companies and health providers. Kuhlman said Memphis was always on the company’s short list for the secondary center.

“We looked at cities within a five-hour radius of Nashville,” she said. “We looked at Birmingham, Louisville, and, of course, Atlanta.”

Kuhlman said the area’s location was the deciding factor, but, financially speaking, it would seem Emdeon got to the Bluff City in the nick of time.

Earlier this week, a City Council committee asked chief financial officer Robert Lipscomb to look at possible changes to the PILOT program, including a monetary cap. The city and county office of planning and development expects the results of an external PILOT study within the next three weeks, including an assessment of peer cities and several PILOT-ed companies to see if they brought the jobs they said they would.

In part, the city’s new industry-wary attitude resembles that of the county. Last month, in an attempt to stop and study sprawl, the County Commission approved a six-month moratorium on development in unincorporated Shelby County.

“We do want to encourage growth,” said councilmember TaJuan Stout Mitchell, “but we want it to be planned growth.” Mitchell was talking about the PILOT program, but she could just as easily have been talking about county sprawl.

Both issues rest on sort of a land grab: In unincorporated Shelby County, developers have capitalized on the lack of city taxes, forcing the county to provide services it cannot afford; under the PILOT program, corporations are lured to the area with large tax breaks, which local government can scarcely afford.

So is it location, location, location or no taxes, no taxes, no taxes?

PILOTs might be a saving grace for this area. The program was used to lure International Paper’s headquarters to Memphis from Connecticut and might be the only thing keeping some industries from moving to Southaven. The bottom line is that we know we’re making a lot of concessions to get businesses to locate here, but at what overall cost?

In reviewing the PILOT program, council members want to look at the type of jobs the businesses are providing, if they are paying workers a living wage, and what kind of accountability measures are in place

Budget committee chair Mitchell suggested that corporations would never do business the way the city does. “I’m supportive of PILOTs, but I’m supportive of well-managed PILOT programs, and we don’t have that now,” she said.

With the amount of money at stake, the program deserves the scrutiny. At an earlier meeting, Councilman E.C. Jones suggested making PILOT applicants come before the council.

The council is responsible for approving the city’s budget — and raising taxes if revenues fall short. Shouldn’t they have some say? And really, if temporary street closures have to come before the council, shouldn’t International Paper’s 15-year, $15 million tax freeze?

“We’ve created government outside of government,” said Councilman Joe Brown. “We’ve lost control. … We’re not receiving the jobs we should be receiving.”

So, just what are we getting in return? No offense to Emdeon — or any other company with a PILOT — but 25 $40,000-a-year jobs just isn’t enough to sell me.

The O.C.

And no, for once in a very great while, this post has nothing to do with a certain medical examiner who was wrapped in barbed wire and tied to a bomb. It’s much, much worse. According to E! online, The O.C. star Peter Gallagher is recording a CD of Memphis soul for Epic. The deal was struck shortly after the actor crooned a Solomon Burke song on the show last season and impressed the heck out of the wife of a record executive. Although we know Mr. Gallagher is a talented man, and a skillful vocalist, it might be a good time to remind the popular actor of three things: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Steven Seagal. I would include the name David Hasselhoff, but we understand he’s big in Germany.

When Adonis Thompson attended a local modeling convention in January, he had no idea that six months later, he’d be a VJ for Fuse, a popular cable music channel.

In July, Thompson, 24, won “Ultimate Fuse Gig: The VJ Search,” a reality-show-style contest where viewers voted for their favorite of seven finalists in a VJ competition. Now he’s co-hosting a show called Videomaniac with VJ Marianela Pereyra.

Thompson attended the convention in hopes of pursuing a modeling career. He was named one of the 50 Hottest Bachelors in a Cosmopolitan magazine write-in contest in 2004 and was hoping to take his newfound modeling career a step further.

“I thought, hey, I did it once. Why not just run with the wind and see how far it takes you?” Thompson said.

But he got more than he’d bargained for. At the convention, he was pulled aside by a talent scout from Fuse. The scout asked Thompson to give a short audition, but he wouldn’t reveal why. The next day, Thompson got a phone call asking him to send in a taped audition. After he sent the tape, he was informed that it was for the Fuse contest.

“Once I found that out, I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” he said. “I went to school for TV and I love music. Everywhere I am, there’s music playing. You put those two together and that’s the perfect match.”

Thompson said he began practicing his VJ skills daily in front of the mirror, using a hairbrush as his microphone.

Once the show’s producers narrowed the finalists down to seven, Thompson flew to New York. Throughout the competition, VJs introduced videos and viewers voted for their favorites.

Thompson originally hails from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and moved to Memphis after attending Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. He said moving to New York was a big shock after living in the Mid-South.

“Nothing can prepare you for New York,” he said. “Down South, we do things in slow motion, and you enjoy life a lot more. Up here, it’s like a rat race, and you either adjust or you fall behind. I think I’ve adjusted pretty well, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”