Month: February 2011

A Cooper-Young Development Corporation (CYDC) project to revive a deteriorating stretch of Seattle Street has led to the deterioration of the organization itself.

The 20-year-old CYDC’s board has agreed to allow its president, Reb Haizlip, to manage the organization out of existence after the failure of the Seattle Street project and a recent Regions Bank lawsuit to recoup money borrowed for the group’s operating expenses.

“When we tie up our loose ends, we’ll seek a vote of dissolution from the board. We’ll present that to the secretary of state and that will be the end,” Haizlip said.

Over the years, the group has developed more than 60 properties in the Cooper-Young neighborhood. Some of those developments were new homes, and others were renovated homes or commercial businesses. When the development corporation was founded in 1991, the Midtown neighborhood was just beginning to bounce back from its reputation as a crime-ridden area.

“Twenty years ago, Cooper-Young was considered somewhat on the other side of safe,” Haizlip said.

The group was successful in reviving the neighborhood by growing home ownership and increasing the area’s housing stock. In 2006, the CYDC launched the Seattle Street project with funding support from the city and state.

The group purchased 10 properties on Seattle Street, a rundown neighborhood off McLean and just west of the Cooper-Young neighborhood. They built six new homes, but once constructed, they couldn’t sell them.

“Our timing could not have been worse. The homes came online just about the time that the real estate market went into its spiraling decline,” Haizlip said. “That made it impossible for us to sell. We could not lease them or rent them. It was a tragedy for our organization.”

Today, the new homes on Seattle remain empty and boarded. Some of the homes were foreclosed.

“We spoke with our lending institutions and informed them that foreclosure was our only course because we couldn’t sell them,” Haizlip said. “We thought it’d be better if the homes were back in their hands instead of ours.”

Additionally, the group was recently hit with a lawsuit from Regions Bank, which is attempting to recoup money borrowed more than 10 years ago for the group’s operating expenses.

For years, the CYDC paid small amounts to satisfy the interest on the uncollateralized loan, and eventually the board created a fund to retire its debt.

“When the real estate market got to the point where we couldn’t sustain our operations, we began tapping into that fund which we created to buy back the debt,” Haizlip said. “In the end, they sued us for the money, and the board elected the suit to be won. That election effectively terminated our ability to operate.”

The CYDC recently sold its old office building on Cooper Street to the Cooper-Young Community Association.

Despite the group’s post-recession financial woes, Haizlip hopes residents will remember the good things the group did to rehab the Cooper-Young Historic District.

“This was the first group of developers in the neighborhood. These were pioneers. These were the people who bought really derelict homes and brought sweat equity and money into them,” Haizlip said. “These are the people who brought the neighborhood back, and I think the organization deserves a lot of credit.

Cracked The Fly Team tries to let our readers know when Memphis is included on an unflattering list created by some struggling magazine to generate headlines. But somehow we missed this extremely important piece of writing from an August 2009 issue of Cracked. The article titled “6 Most Horrific Bosses of All Time” identifies former Memphis mayor Henry Loeb as the absolute worst boss of all time for his involvement in events leading up to the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike. According to Cracked, Mayor Loeb wasn’t satisfied with the

sanitation workers’ low pay and poor working conditions, so he made more oppressive rules “purely out of dickishness.” Why can’t these guys write history textbooks?

Irony Alert Apparently, Memphis police major Stanley Eason took his job title a little too seriously. Eason, who worked as the supervisor of the Memphis Police Department’s domestic violence unit, was charged with threatening his wife with a gun on Valentine’s Day. Let’s just hope the poor man never finds work as a shot nurse.

Verbatim Here are some words you don’t see together very often. According to a report by WMC-TV, Domino’s delivery driver Susan Guy contacted authorities when a customer who had ordered pizza every day for the past three years failed to place an order for several consecutive days. Police discovered that Domino’s customer Jean Wilson had fallen and was unable to get up, prompting WMC to report that “her pizza-heavy diet may have saved her life.”

By Chris Davis. E-mail him at davis@memphisflyer.com

If the Mallory-Neely mansion in Victorian Village were a woman, she’d look darn good for her age. But even this grand dame of Memphis’ past isn’t immune to time.

Built in 1852, the 25-room structure at 652 Adams is in dire need of a new roof and restoration work to about a third of its 70 windows, said Wesley Creel, administrator of programs for the Pink Palace Family of Museums.

The carriage house/visitor’s center, situated behind the main house, is also out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The Mallory-Neely mansion will remain closed to the public until the repairs and ADA-upgrades are complete.

“I’m hoping that we will have a new roof by Christmastime,” Creel said. “That’s usually how long it takes for all the processes to work. But we still can’t open until we’re ADA compliant.”

Though Creel hesitated to set a date, he said the ADA upgrades might not be completed until spring 2012.

For years, the city-owned Mallory-Neely mansion was open to the public as a museum of Victorian culture, but it was shuttered in 2005 because of city budget cuts. That same year, the city of Memphis and the U.S. Department of Justice agreed that all city-owned facilities would have to become ADA compliant.

As far as Creel is concerned, the roof takes top priority this fiscal year. It isn’t leaking yet but has “major potential for some damage.” About $268,000 is available to replace the roof, but Creel is hoping prospective contractors will bid the job for less.

That would allow for at least some of the windows to be repaired and weatherized — a custom restoration that could cost about $4,000 per window. To put that figure into perspective, Creel said some windows in the house are seven and eight feet tall.

Meanwhile, the city’s capital improvement budget for 2012 allocates $36,000 for architectural engineering fees and $150,000 for construction, renovation, and repairs at Mallory-Neely. Those amounts could go a long way toward shoring up more damaged window casings and funding the ADA requirements, which include producing audio/visual tours for people with mobility impairments and improving the area outside the carriage house to make it wheelchair-accessible.

But first, a cash-strapped Memphis City Council must approve those amounts. Right now, the city anticipates a $70 million budget shortfall in fiscal year 2012 that could lead to layoffs and other sweeping austerity measures.

Cynthia Buchanan, the city’s director of Parks Services, appeared last week before a city council committee to submit a preliminary design schematic for the work. It was approved, so the next step involves a full council review on March 1st. After that, a bid package can be issued to contractors.

“We intended to open [Mallory-Neely] this year, but when we realized how massive the improvements were going to be, we didn’t want to bring in the public when we might have to be doing things that were dangerous,” Buchanan said.

Although frustrated by Mallory-Neely’s dormancy, Scott Blake, executive director of Victorian Village Inc., looks forward to the day when the mansion finally reopens for tours.

“Our little area needs that kinetic energy [that will be created] when the Mallory-Neely House is open,” Blake said.

Right now, amenities in the area, which lies between the downtown core and medical district, are limited. The Woodruff-Fontaine House at 680 Adams is the only continuously open museum in Victorian Village. The Goyer-Lee House sits empty and in need of extensive restoration work.

Blake is hoping a private developer will buy the Goyer-Lee House, which is for sale, and repurpose it as a bed-and-breakfast or some other tourist attraction. Whatever it becomes, the Goyer-Lee House, like Mallory-Neely, will have to be repositioned within historical guidelines.