Month: December 2008

Categories
Special Sections

Klyce Motors — Memphis’ Studebaker Dealership

a9e1/1242006816-klycemotors.jpg Brothers Arnold and Walter Klyce opened Memphis’ only Studebaker dealership on South Cleveland in 1945. Newspapers praised the building’s clean design, created by Memphis architect Zeno Yeates, and proclaimed it “one of the most modern and attractive dealerships in the South.”

This photo, taken in 1950, shows a pair of what appear to be 1949 Studebaker Commander models parked at the curb (the gentlemen in the photo were not identified). These two cars probably weren’t sold to customers, since each one has the company name and address painted rather prominently on the doors, along with with catchy slogan, “They’re Nice at Klyce.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Let Them Eat Pie

CREDIT: by Justin Fox Burks

Ivory Winfield was a beautician for 31 years — a beautician famous for her tasty sweet-potato pie. Everyone was always asking her to bake them pies and cakes. So three years ago, she sold her house and used half of the money to convert her beauty salon in Orange Mound into Grandma’s Desserts, Etc.

“I knew I knew more about cooking than I did about doing hair,” Winfield says.

Grandma’s is pick-up and delivery only. The sweet-potato pie is Grandma’s number-one item, selling more than 100 at Thanksgiving. Other pies on the menu — ranging in price from $11 to $35 — include pecan, honey walnut, chess, and turtle cheesecake. Cupcakes are $12 a dozen (try the Italian cream), and among the options for cakes ($22 to $35) are red velvet, German chocolate, and caramel.

The “Etc.” is an important part of Grandma’s. Winfield offers jalapeno cornbread, lasagna, dressing, and other non-dessert items, selling from $5 to $40.

Winfield opened Grandma’s for her family.

“She wanted to leave a legacy for her grandkids,” says Elnora Johnson, one of Winfield’s five children. Elnora, along with her three sisters, splits her time between baking and doing hair at the family-owned Chaparral Salon on Winchester. Elnora laughs and says, “We were all doing hair, and then we just got thrown into Grandma’s Desserts.”

by Justin Fox Burks

Winfield’s 12 grandkids, ranging in age from 5 to 41, also help out. “Some are in college and some have other jobs, but they all work here at one time or another,” Winfield says. The older kids mastered the recipes while growing up, and the others are learning. Those who don’t cook help out in other ways. Winfield’s 5-year-old granddaughter often helps by sweeping the floor. “She wears a cap just like the rest of us,” Winfield says proudly.

Ryan Johnson, Elnora’s 18-year-old son, had been taking phone orders and washing dishes for the past three years when he was recently promoted. “I made my first sweet-potato pie about two weeks ago,” he boasts. Ryan explains that one day there were no dishes to do so he offered to cut the pies. (His grandma has a special way of cutting them.) Winfield was impressed. Since then, she’s let him try a few of her easier recipes.

“I don’t cook fancy,” Winfield says. “I cook regular, old-fashioned food just like my mama did 50 years ago.” All of the recipes used at Grandma’s Desserts are Winfield’s or her mother’s.

Elnora credits the bakery’s success to word-of-mouth and their booth at the Memphis Farmers Market downtown, where they sell a variety of cakes and pies by the slice, brownies, cookies, and an assortment of other delights. “We did great,” Elnora says. “It’s really helped business.”

Winfield says she feels confident that her family could carry on without her. But she’s not going anywhere just yet. “She’s very active,” says Elnora. “She does more than I do.”

Winfield still does hair at least one day a week and also sits with elderly people at night. But her favorite thing to do is to cook. Being surrounded by family makes it even more enjoyable. “When we’re all cooking, I tell everyone to turn off their cell phones and let the [business] phone ring,” she says.

Don’t worry, though: Winfield says they always check their messages.

Grandma’s Desserts, Etc.

3108 Park (458-2197 or 292-7990)

grandmasdesserts.com

by Justin Fox Burks

‘I don’t cook fancy. I cook regular.’ says Ivory Winfield.

Categories
News

Local Economy Could Be Worse?

Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce president John Moore predicted a somewhat positive local economic outlook today at a Center City Commission board meeting.

“I feel confident going into ’09 that we will have at least as good of a year as we did in ’08 in terms of job potential,’ said Moore.

Moore said the chamber has 41 new business projects in the pipeline for 2009, and though he doesn’t expect all to reach fruition next year, the projects will eventually create 11,000 jobs in the city.

‘That’s more in the pipeline that we had at this time last year,’ said Moore.

While some existing local businesses, like FedEx and International Paper, are cutting jobs and salaries, Moore said Memphis’ orthopedic industry — Medtronic, Smith & Nephew, and Wright Medical — hasn’t really been affected by the recession.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

On Facebook and “Friends”

I have 146 friends. And counting.

Of course, some of my friends are people I’ve never met. Some of my friends are actually my family. And some of my closest friends aren’t my friends at all.

Such is the nature of Facebook … Read the rest of Mary Cashiola’s In the Bluff column.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: This Jenga Tower Economy

I’ve been thinking about Jenga lately. You know, the game where you build a tower of little slotted logs, then players take turns removing them until the tower collapses in a heap. Seems to me, life is filled with Jenga moments, like, say, when you realize that General Motors is run by idiots or that your country is being driven off a cliff by conscience-less morons or that cute li’l Hannah Montana has turned into just another shaky-fakey tart.

Not to stretch the analogy too far, but our economic troubles have a certain Jenga quality to them. Nobody regulated the size of the towers being built by Wall Street investment firms or lending institutions or media companies. Now these institutions lie in a heap, asking taxpayers to help pick up the pieces, while they lay off their workers by the thousands.

Since I work for a media company, I’m particularly saddened by the fact that more than 30,000 of my peers have been laid off in 2008, mostly in big media corporations. They are victims of the “bigger is better” creed of unregulated capitalism. Sometimes bigger isn’t better, as we’re now discovering.

At my locally owned bank, they welcome me by name when I walk to the teller window. At my local pub, the bartender puts a bottle of Yeungling in front of me before I have my coat off. The little restaurant down the street knows my favorite table. These businesses have no stockholders demanding ever-increasing profits; they aren’t trying to satisfy millions of customers, nor do they have to pay thousands of employees. Times are tight for them, as they are for all of us, but they’re not overreaching. Their business plans are not built on greed but on service, and making an honest profit. What a novel concept, eh?

The American economy needs to rebuild from the bottom up, with local merchants as its bedrock. Our institutions, including our media — television stations, newspapers, radio stations — can help by serving primarily as local information portals and cost-efficient vehicles for local advertisers. But that won’t happen as long as big media’s corporate masters try to keep their failed conglomerates together.

At the Flyer, we understand what local businesses are facing, because we are a local business — and like them, we never built a Jenga tower. New game, anyone?

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Electric Cars

After I read Randy Haspel’s Rant (December 11th issue), I immediately got on my computer to look for the movie he recommended: Who Killed the Electric Car?. Everyone — especially conservatives who think George Bush can do no wrong — needs to watch this. First, I was shocked and amazed that I had never even heard of the EV1. But then, it was sort of GM’s big joke, wasn’t it? Second, to learn that the technology for a very good electric car has been out there for some time and we’re not allowed to have it is ludicrous.

I have been a bike commuter for about eight months, and watching this documentary confirms that I have been doing the right thing. I am planning on getting a car for necessary car trips, but I can guarantee it won’t be a GM product. There is too much in the documentary to go into in this letter, so please, everyone, get it and watch it! Tell your friends and neighbors. We really could start a revolution if we wanted to.

And, oh yeah, Bush is a freakin’ idiot.

Yvette Rhoton

Memphis

The Economy, Explained

I think that most people understand what is happening with our economy (“13 Upsides to the Downturn,” December 11th issue). You can conduct a complex analysis of the complicated market system, but the simple version is that tokens (money) are exchanged for wanted goods and services. Since we no longer support the gold standard, our tokens will be worthless in the United States and the world economy if valuable goods and services can’t back them up.

Big government has created a massive and expensive bureaucracy, which private companies and taxpayers must support. You need government, but government can’t and shouldn’t be expected to do everything.

Wall Street has put too many tokens in the hands of too few individuals. These individuals have sold their tokens to other individuals who aren’t producing goods and services in exchange — a bad investment.

Wall Street and the average investor have liquidated too many producers (companies) through mergers and other schemes to gain quick profits, without any regard to the effects on production of goods and services. These schemes have undermined the free market by determining the fates of companies solely on their ability to make a fast profit for stockholders.

We need to refocus on the basics. First, the government has no choice but to inject tokens back into workers’ pockets to avoid freezing the financial system. Second, we should again focus on producing valuable goods and services. Third, we cannot continue to act as if tokens without accompanying salable goods and services will somehow increase in value. If “money” determined a country’s wealth, any country could become extraordinarily wealthy by just printing more of it.

Jason Grosser

Cordova

The Flyer isn’t a rag

Contrary to what James Smith wrote (Letters, November 27th issue), the Flyer is right on point. Though Barack Obama may not have been the best choice, he was the only choice compared to John McCain. McCain would have completed the demise of the country that George Bush started. And Sarah Palin was a joke, qualified only for a job on Saturday Night Live. She raised excitement among conservatives for a while, until most finally opened their eyes and saw the truth. The rest decided to remain blind, a common trait for many conservatives.

Smith mentioned that the Flyer tried to “piss on [his] head and tell [him] it’s raining.” Well, he should be used to it if he believed Reagan when he said he knew nothing about the Iran/Contra mess or Bush when he said Saddam was in on the 9/11 tragedy or that there were weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq.

All I have to say is, liberals know the difference between piss and rain.

Booker Davis

Germantown

Tigers to St. Pete

I enjoyed Frank Murtaugh’s column on the football Tigers (Sports, December 11th issue). Tommy West runs a good program with limited means at the U of M, and his teams are a big step up from those coached by his predecessors. That said, even I, a Tiger fan from way back, have trouble working up much enthusiasm for a bowl game for this year’s 6-6 squad, especially considering one of the victories was over a non-Division I team, Nicholls State.

Sometimes, it’s better to “wait ’til next year.”

L.R. Winston

Memphis

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

My MLK

The end of December really is the best time of the year. Not because of the stress-inducing holidays, mind you, but because it’s the time of year when critics around the world create list after list chronicling the best and worst of everything that happened in the preceding 365 days.

Coming in number one on The Fly-Team’s best lists of December 2008 is a list of marketing blunders compiled by Collateral Damage, a website known for its sarcastic takes on current events. CD’s list is chock-full of bad business decisions ranging from the manufacture of panties for tweens emblazoned with “Dive In,” the catchphrase from Disney’s High School Musical 2, to Hershey’s “Have You Found Mr. Goodbar” campaign that conjures up images of both a chocolate bar and a shocking ’70s-era film starring Diane Keaton. But nothing tops McDonald’s comparison of fast-food king Ray Kroc to Martin Luther King Jr.

From Open for Discussion, McDonald’s corporate responsibility blog: “Ray Kroc and Dr. King both demonstrated persistence and determination through their care for others and the sharing of the beliefs that shaped their philosophies.” McDonald’s has created the all-purpose template whereby anybody can compare themselves to the great civil rights leader. Seriously, go back and substitute the name of any person or group for Kroc’s: Hitler, Charles Manson, the Memphis City Council. It all works.

Crippling Abuse

Beginning in 2009, Memphis International Airport will charge disabled customers to park in convenient spaces created for the physically impaired. According to The Commercial Appeal, this decision will prevent airport workers from “hogging prime parking spaces.” Whatever happened to the good old days of ticketing, towing, and termination?

Categories
News The Fly-By

Quick Cash Clusters Blocked

From his vantage point at Wolfsburg Automotive on Summer Avenue, co-owner Jim Boyd can see four title loan and cash advance businesses.

“That’s just looking out the front window,” Boyd says. “There are another four within a block of here.”

But, under a new ordinance, title lenders won’t be allowed to cluster in a neighborhood.

Earlier this month, the City Council approved a new zoning ordinance that will require payday and title lenders to be at least 1,000 feet from churches, parks, schools, and each other. The ordinance will not affect existing lenders.

“It’s a little overkill to have so many of the same businesses doing the same thing,” Boyd says. “It’s more of an eyesore than anything because they have to catch people’s attention with flashing signs and flags, and, on a street that didn’t already have that, that would be a problem.”

Cash advance and title lenders supply borrowers with quick cash, securing the loan with a contract or the borrower’s car title and tacking on high interest rates. In Tennessee, car title lenders are allowed to charge up to 264 percent interest annually.

City Council member Bill Morrison, the sponsor of the ordinance, says there are more than 200 payday and title lenders in Shelby County, and they prey on low-income neighborhoods.

“There may be a place for these institutions on the financial end, but ultimately, they are bad business,” Morrison says.

Several years ago, Memphian Andrew Ginn took out a $250 title loan. “I needed some quick cash to pay rent, and it worked out, but paying it back was another story,” Ginn says. “They ended up towing my car. I had to pay them over $500 to get my title back.”

In addition to charging astronomical interest, some say the businesses hurt neighborhood property values.

Morrison, who lives in Raleigh, says there are nine payday advance and title lenders within two blocks of the Raleigh Springs Mall. “It gives the perception of a neighborhood in decline,” Morrison says. “And if we don’t slow this down, they are going to be in every neighborhood in our city.”

Elaine Blake-Enis is the co-owner of Cash in a Flash Check Advance, which operates 12 lending businesses in Shelby County. She says the ordinance is unfair.

“Our customers are nurses, teachers, firemen, police officers, and government workers,” Blake-Enis says. “We don’t go after the poor. Our customers choose [us]. They need extra cash for unexpected emergencies, and they come to us to get that need met.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: What Crimes! What Arrogance! What a Dick! (Cheney, That Is)

Imagine
this scenario: I call Joe Birch at Channel 5 and tell him I’ve got information
about a crime that’s been committed, let’s say for the sake of argument, an
unsolved murder, and I want him to have the “scoop” about who committed it.
Joe, knowing what a reliable source I am (i.e., trust me, I’m a lawyer), agrees
to interview me, on air, and during the interview, I confess to committing the
murder. Now, based on my history, Joe knows I’m not one of those kooks who will
confess to anything, from being a shooter on the “grassy knoll” in Dallas, to
killing Jimmy Hoffa and dumping his body in the Mississippi River, so he knows
my confession isn’t a looney-tunes fantasy.

What do you suppose would happen then? Well, of course,
Joe, or one of the many thousands of viewers who have heard me confess to the
crime, would call the police or DA Bill Gibbons’ office so they could have me
arrested and prosecuted for the crime, and I would end up in the hoosegow,
right? Guess again, Sherlock. Actually, I’m not going to be prosecuted because
the Mayor, City Council, the police department and Bill Gibbons have all decided
it wouldn’t be worth investigating the crime I’ve confessed to, much less
prosecuting me for it because (a) they’re not sure murder is a crime, and (b)
I’m such a force to be reckoned with in the community (a/k/a the “great and
powerful” Gadfly), it would be too disruptive to day-to-day life in Memphis if I
were to be prosecuted.

Cheney Waives the Fifth

Think that’s silly do you? Well, that’s exactly what it
looks like is going to happen to some of the biggest war criminals in history,
one of whom is so sure he won’t be prosecuted for the crimes he has committed,
he emerged from his “undisclosed location” just long enough to confess to those
crimes on national television. I’m referring to Dick Cheney, who, in one of the
most astonishing waivers of a person’s Fifth Amendment right in history,
actually confessed to ABC News reporter, Jonathan Karl, in
a televised interview, that he had participated and approved the so-called
“aggressive techniques” that were used to interrogate detainees in America’s
custody, including the notorious technique known as water boarding (which, of
course, he denies is torture). When I saw this on TV, I spewed a mouthful of my
supper, and had to immediately check my cable box to make sure it wasn’t tuned
to the parallel universe channel.

Several facts are important to understand here, by way of
context. First, there is no remaining question that agents of the U.S.
government used torture on detainees it held in such places as Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo. This has been substantiated by such things as the shocking pictures
from Abu Ghraib, the
report of a human rights group, based on physical and mental examinations of
detainees, eyewitnesses to torture, including

FBI officials opposed to the use of techniques they
considered torture, and, most recently,

the written account of an actual interrogator about the torture he
witnessed but refused to participate in.

We know that acts of torture were rationalized and enabled
by officials in our justice department, including the
notorious John Yoo. We know that Bush’s top advisers, and Bush himself, knew
of and approved “enhanced interrogation” methods”. We also know that evidence
of torture was destroyed by the people who committed it, in an obvious
attempt to cover it up. And, we now also know that what happened at Abu Ghraib
and Guantanamo wasn’t, as we were being falsely and frequently told, the result
of a few
“bad apples”, but was the result of a systematic program that originated at
the highest levels of our government, as detailed in an eye-opening
report just released by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Those levels go
up to, and include, the
occupant of the oval office.

Torture of Prisoners

Virtually everyone who has investigated our interrogation
procedures has concluded that they violated every applicable law against
torture, including the general who did the
first investigation of Abu Ghraib, Antonio Taguba, as well as

the renowned scholar and international lawyer, Phillippe Sands. It’s worth
pointing out that the fact torture was sanctified by lawyers not only doesn’t
immunize the officials who abided it, but exposes
those lawyers, themselves, to prosecution.

Finally, and most importantly, our administration can’t get
away with asserting that the “enhanced” interrogation techniques it used somehow
weren’t torture, and that, therefore, “America doesn’t torture.” You need go no
further than the denial of water boarding as torture to pierce the
ridiculousness of that kind of sophistry. The fact that this country itself

prosecuted the use of water boarding as torture when it was used against our
own troops is enough to give the lie to this kind of nonsense.

So, we know our leaders, in the name of our country,
tortured prisoners in their custody, and we know that there are a whole slew of
officials, at every level of our government, who knew about this abuse, enabled
it and approved it. And, as if all the other evidence of those facts isn’t
enough, we now have the brazen admission of the second highest constitutional
officer of our country to that effect. Do me something, he seems to be saying.
So, obviously, what will ensue are prompt investigations and prosecutions for
torture, right? Guess again, Sherlock.

Here’s the problem: it doesn’t appear that the Obama
administration has any interest in going after the government officials who are
responsible for torture. Apparently it’s more concerned about the appearance of
political retribution and the effect of such investigations (much less
prosecutions) on Obama’s hope for “bipartisanship.” That, at least, is

what one of the lawyers who might be a subject of such an investigation has
suggested (and what possible motivation could he have to do that?). They are
floating the idea of a 9/11 commission-type body to do an inquiry, instead of
empowering the incoming Justice Department to, right off the bat, do what it’s
supposed to—investigate and prosecute crimes. There is already a mountain of
evidence (not to mention at least one confession) DOJ could move on, without
waiting months for the outcome of another politically hamstrung “commission.”
And yet, influential Democrats seem willing to “let
bygones be bygones” when it comes to torture, and “move on.” Remember,
Democrats

were willing to do the same when it came to impeachment. It was
disappointing that even one of the authors of the Senate Armed Services
Committee report, Carl Levin, was calling
for a commission, rather than an immediate referral for criminal prosecution.

The Parallel Universe Channel

The true character of an Obama presidency will be assessed,
both immediately and historically, by whether or not he insists on the prompt
investigation and prosecution of those responsible for using torture, especially
since he has decried torture and promised to end it so

“America can regain its moral stature in the world” . There can be no
equivocating or posturing on this issue. Torture is a stain on our country’s
collective psyche, its reputation and its very soul. The people who perpetrated
this crime must not be allowed to get away with it. It is not just a dream of
millions of Americans to see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, and yes,
Yoo, among others, “frog-marched” (a/k/a perp-walked) to waiting paddy wagons
for their comeuppance; it is an absolute necessity.

But, on the other hand, since I’m not going to be
hypothetically prosecuted for the hypothetical crime I’ve hypothetically
confessed to, I suppose it’s ultimately OK if Dick Cheney isn’t actually
prosecuted for the actual crime he’s actually confessed to either. Maybe my
cable box was tuned into the parallel universe channel, after all.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Midtown’s Next Big Thing:

CREDIT: by Justin Fox Burks

With suburban sprawl derailed by energy costs and subprimes and downtown sleeping off the condo hangover and arena fatigue, attention has shifted to some potentially big deals in Midtown.

One of them, proposed by Memphis developer Henry Turley, would redevelop the Mid-South Fairgrounds as a sports complex, Kroc Center, hotel, and shopping center. A second proposal by Miami-based WSG Development Company would put a 28-acre retail center in a blighted area near the intersection of Poplar and Cleveland. Both projects would cost several million dollars in public and private investment, rely on complicated tax schemes to attract national retailers such as Target or Wal-Mart, and won’t show tangible results for at least another year.

Big-store fever has also spread to downtrodden Overton Square, where there is some buzz but no firm proposal about a new grocery store and hotel.

That something needs to be done is obvious. Over half of the fairgrounds property is vacant, and someone driving on Cleveland from the abandoned Sears Building to Methodist Hospital on Union Avenue would think Midtowners mainly shop for auto parts and title loans. The question is what? Midtowners are a diverse, activist, and choosy bunch — fiercely loyal to what they like and fiercely critical of what they don’t like. And downtown’s Peabody Place is a reminder that multi-million-dollar mixed-use retail projects with the best planners that money can buy can fail.

by Justin Fox Burks

If any of this works, the developers will owe a debt to small businesses and neighborhoods that invested in Midtown without fanfare or tax benefits, relying on personal risk, sweat equity, customer loyalty, and creativity. They range in size from the residential redevelopment of the abandoned Interstate 40 expressway corridor to restaurants and small businesses in Cooper-Young and the Evergreen Historic District.

Big or small, successful projects filled an unmet need — new houses with historic architecture, a walking trail on an abandoned railroad line, a Home Depot in a building that had failed twice as a grocery store, a movie theater in Overton Square that outlived a much bigger competitor downtown, or a family-run neighborhood restaurant whose owner trained at Bennigan’s, the bankrupt national chain. They succeeded because people wanted them and liked them. They got little or no assistance from tax credits or quasi-government agencies like downtown’s Center City Commission. There were no debates about development fees or corporate logos. Collectively, they help make Midtown the unique group of neighborhoods that it is.

First, a little disclosure. I have beaten this horse before. Fifteen years ago I coined the slogan “Midtown Is Memphis.” The driving force was driving. Some Midtown parents were tired of hauling our children to Cordova and Germantown for shopping, movies, and sports, especially when two Midtown teams would play each other. Artist Tom Foster and I put the slogan on a bumper sticker that is still around, no thanks to me. Our design was full of graphic icons of happy little scenes. Midtowner Calvin Turley reduced it to its current white-on-red or green-on-white incarnations. Less was more. His son Rayner and daughter Lyda sold a ton of them.

by Justin Fox Burks

The campaign fizzled. The school board and Park Commission collaborated on a track, two baseball diamonds, and an alleged soccer field next to East High School, the sum of which is a sportsplex in name only. So the bumper sticker was overdesigned, and the sportsplex was underdesigned. There is probably a lesson in there somewhere.

Anyway, here are some Midtown projects with real staying power and comments from some of the people who got it right and made it work.

The Overton Park Expressway Corridor: A generation has grown up since Midtown just west of Overton Park was marked by a swath of weeds, vacant land, and broken foundations 400 yards wide and nearly a mile long. Even residents have a hard time telling where the old houses end and the new ones begin on some blocks. From 1992 until about 2003, more than 200 new bungalows and four-squares were built to historic guidelines on land bulldozed for an expressway 30 years earlier. (More recently, another Midtown residential infill project followed similar guidelines after the old main library was demolished at Peabody and McLean.)

by Justin Fox Burks

Neighborhood leaders obtained historic designation for the Evergreen Historic District. The city reacquired the land and sold lots through real estate agents to former owners, builders, and prospective homebuyers. Construction quality was uneven, but architectural guidelines were enforced, and within a decade most empty lots were gone.

“Three things were done well,” says Dexter Muller, former director of the city’s division of Planning and Development. “The first was working through issues of ownership and acquiring the land. At the state and federal level that was a challenge, and I really give credit to my assistant, Cindy Buchanan [currently director of Parks and Recreation]. The second thing was a plan that was realistic in the marketplace. There was so much demand you didn’t need government incentives. And third, the planners and local government set it up as a historic district and imposed guidelines to make it compatible with what was there. That was huge.”

by Justin Fox Burks

Corridor homeowners, like Shelby County commissioner Deidre Malone and her husband, made the planners look good. The Malones bought their lot in 1993, hired an architect, moved into the house in 1994, and have been there ever since.

“We went through the Landmarks Commission process and everything,” said Malone, who was working in Midtown at WMC-TV at the time. “They wouldn’t let me have shutters on the house. But I moved on. Our kids went to Snowden and Central, which are great neighborhood schools. We love the feel of Midtown. It’s a very diverse community, and the neighborhood association is fabulous.”

by Justin Fox Burks

Malco’s Studio on the Square: Opened in 2000, Malco’s boutique four-screen theater has been an unqualified success while Muvico’s Peabody Place megaplex, which was built at about the same time, has closed. The theater was developed by Memphis-bases Southland Capital, which planned to redevelop all of Overton Square but has sold its interest. The section south of Madison is still struggling, with several vacancies but a tantalizingly large parking lot that keeps the rumor mill grinding.

“I’m a Midtown proponent and convinced our people it would be a wise thing to do,” says Malco’s James Tashie. “Parking is critical for us. We wanted this theater to be bigger with more screens but parking prohibited it. Still, we’ve held our own very well with the big guns downtown.”

Tashie said the developers got some tax credits “but that didn’t tip the scales for us.” The original concept of an “art house” was discarded for more standard fare, but the theater is still very different from, say, Malco’s Paradiso in East Memphis.

“Our theater fit the niche of Midtown. We do a lot of film festivals and special events there, and we have a sitting area and a wine bar. I think it works for that reason. But if you don’t have movies people want to see, it doesn’t matter what you build.”

The V&E Greenline: An abandoned railroad line in the middle of a stable neighborhood was a challenge for the Vollentine-Evergreen community. Rhodes College professor Michael Kirby was one of the neighbors who bought the land in 1996 and turned a potential trouble spot into a walking and biking trail.

by Justin Fox Burks

The 1.7-mile Greenline is much shorter than a proposed railroad abandonment bike trail to Shelby Farms, making acquisition costs and construction much cheaper. Organizers got less than $10,000 from government sources to build a bridge and a storage building and develop a master plan. They raised many times that amount in donations from Keeler Iron Works and other businesses and in donated labor for the original clean-up and ongoing maintenance.

“We used to think the area between University and McLean was unsafe,” said Kirby. “People had a vision of a trail that was nicer than what we had, and the more it was improved, the more people started using it. I remember seeing a 75-year-old lady in the neighborhood walking her dog, and the fact that she felt safe enough was an indication of our success.”

Stewart Brothers Hardware: Stewart Brothers, at Madison and Cleveland, is the ultimate Midtown survivor, founded in Memphis in 1887 and occupying the same location since 1935. Like a sprawling old house, it has expanded several times as space became available, but it’s the antithesis of the big-box store. A sled, a child’s bike, tools, and the $1 bin are all on display a few steps from the cash register and entrance.

“Our specialty is customer service,” says Chris Dempsey, 36, one of five family members working in the store purchased by his father, Jim Dempsey, in 1975. “We’re able to greet customers when they come in the door, take them to the product they want, and answer any questions.”

Stewart Brothers has never received any tax breaks, unless you consider being next to MATA’s $60 million Madison Avenue trolley extension a break. Dempsey doesn’t. Construction was “a terribly negative process” that cut business 35 percent. He knows of no benefits and says “the road back up was a lot harder than the fall.” He would welcome the proposed development at Poplar and Cleveland and the demolition of blighted properties.

Fresh Slices Sidewalk Café & Deli: If you’re not looking for Fresh Slices and its neighbor, Diane’s Art Gift and Home Store, you won’t find them. Midtowner Diane Laurenzi, a respiratory therapist at the time, opened her store in a former Masonic Lodge in the middle of the Evergreen Historic District in 2002. The restaurant opened in 2004 and an upstairs gallery this year. They get no tax credits.

Fresh Slices owner Ike Logan had several years experience with the Bennigan’s restaurant organization. Eight family members work in the restaurant, which emphasizes neighborhood ties with dishes named after residents.

Laurenzi features neighborhood artists in her gallery and store, which became profitable after two years. She makes it a point to make friends with her customers and carry a variety of items at different price points.

“The neighborhood is very loyal to our business, and part of that is we have something to offer them,” she says. “I think they want to see us do well.”

The Levitt Shell in Overton Park: “Save Our Shell” was a rallying cry for decades, but the outdoor bandstand and shell appeared to be doomed until the Mortimer Levitt Foundation came to the rescue thanks to a chance encounter.

Memphis musician David Troy Francis was performing at a restored shell in Pasadena, California, and had dinner with Elizabeth Levitt Hirsch. He told her she had to come to Memphis.

“We had lunch at the Brushmark and then walked over to the shell,” said Barry Lichterman, president of the shell’s board of trustees. “She looked at it and said, ‘This is it. I want to do this in Memphis.'”

The Levitt Foundation donated $250,000 for renovation and $500,000 for operating costs for the first five years. The city of Memphis contributed $500,000, and an additional $600,000 was raised from private sources.

Lichterman credits the shell’s initial success to architect Lee Askew, who lives nearby, and to local donors. The Levitt donation is only a start. It costs $450,000 a year to operate the shell, so “without local participation this is not going to happen.”

Cooper-Young Business District: Midtown’s most successful neighborhood restaurant and entertainment center is 20 years old this year. It has overcome safety fears and a lack of parking garages with a police mini-precinct, an annual street festival, and constant marketing.

“This is a tribal gathering place, and the one element you have to have is safety,” says Charlie Ryan, a Cooper-Young investor and president of the Cooper-Young Business Association.

Ryan is proud of the district’s independent business owners and absence of franchises.

“That is the beauty of it,” he says. “Nowadays, you do a lifestyle center and talk to all the big boxes and wind up with something boring. Cooper-Young is not boring. It is unique.”

The district does not receive the sort of tax credits that are commonplace downtown and in the proposed fairgrounds and Poplar-Cleveland projects.

“We got a HUD grant in 1991 for $500,000 for street improvements, street trees, and antique lights, and some of the individual owners got historic credits for facades on their buildings,” Ryan says.

“We operate on the Karl Rove theory of commercial. The truth is what you say it is. Every few months we came up with something to get some publicity. The festival is a once-a-year public relations event that says it is okay to come to Cooper-Young, and we are a cool place. You don’t have to put in gazillions of dollars if you’ve got creative people. There is a lot to be said for just working with what you have and building on your strengths.”

by Justin Fox Burks