Author: John Branston

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Opinion Viewpoint

Pyramid History 101

If you’ve seen one mounted deer head you’ve pretty much seen them all, but 100 or so stuffed deer, elk, moose, bears, and other critters is another matter, so I went eagerly to check out those and other wonders of the new Bass Pro Pyramid when it opened.

And I was duly impressed. This is a special store in a special building. And if Bass Pro founder/owner Johnny Morris thinks first-time visitors aren’t as curious about the structure as they are about the furnishings, then he’s dumber than a catfish, which he obviously is not.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bass Pro go public within a year or so, with a valuation of a few billion dollars, which is not bad for an enterprise that started as a Missouri bait shop. So I say, as Morris and his team of architects and marketers go through their final punch list items, they should add one thing — a nod to the Pyramid’s history, perhaps a display or plaque, with suitable attention to the funders of the place (the citizens of Memphis and Shelby County) and its prime movers, schemes, and shenanigans. Yes, including Sidney Shlenker’s and Isaac Tigrett’s crystal skull. People love a good story as much as a plate of fried catfish or, I will wager, an ode to duck flyways.

I am sort of married to the Pyramid. I wrote so much about it that several times I swore I would write no more forever, and then something new would come along and I would break my vow.

In 1986, I was writing for The Commercial Appeal‘s Sunday magazine when a young man named Brent Hartz came calling. He had renderings of a gigantic golden pyramid his father had drawn several years before and was doing a road show to influential downtowners.

John Tigrett, who was as reclusive as his wife Pat is outgoing, was smitten. Memphis needed a landmark and a new arena, but this was no gimme. Mayor Dick Hackett and the reigning powers-that-be at then Memphis State University wanted to expand the Mid-South Coliseum at the fairgrounds. The Pyramid was too big, too expensive, too far, too risky. Tigrett persuaded his friend, FedEx founder Fred Smith, to chair the Public Building Authority that met for nearly a year. The go-ahead may well have doomed the fairgrounds, along with Hackett’s political career.

It was a Mad Men dream with a cast of characters, mishaps, and moments worthy of a mini-series: the decision to move the site from atop the South Bluff to “down in a hole”; the “Big Dig” groundbreaking with a giant lighted-shovel drop; daring ironworkers with video cameras at the topping-out ceremony; the gap-toothed Shlenker; the aforementioned hidden crystal skull at the apex; the flooded bathrooms at the opening concert; the inclinator to the top that never was; some rocking concerts and basketball tournaments; partial redemption as Grizzly bait; and the building’s closing in 2004.

“Who knows what’s going to happen to this Pyramid in the long run, how successful it’s going to be or not be,” said Morris in short and understated remarks at the opening ceremony.

He looked like a man who would rather kiss a rattlesnake than make a speech, but there is no shortage of Morris-abilia inside the Pyramid. The tales of Uncle Buck and the yarn about going fishing with Bill Dance and catching a whopper that closed the deal are cute, but it should be noted that this house was conceived and built in Memphis, and Bass Pro moved into it.

Even modest public buildings usually merit a plaque at the entrance recognizing the enablers. At the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, a riveting documentary film records the contributions of architect Eero Saarinen and the placement of the capstone piece.

The most interesting building in Memphis deserves something to acknowledge its history, and it would be good manners and good marketing if Bass Pro were to step up and do it. Why not give visitors an answer to their inevitable “How did this get here?” question?

You can’t make this stuff up, and you don’t have to. John Tigrett and Sidney Shlenker are gone, but the others are still alive, and there is gobs of archival film. Tell the story inside the building. Lord knows there’s room for it.

John Branston is a former Flyer senior editor who is now working on various writing projects — and his tennis game.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Let it Be

Sometimes the do-nothing option isn’t bad. And that’s so with the Fairgrounds.

Ten or 15 years ago, doing nothing was not a good option. The Fairgrounds was blighted. It was basically an entertainment junkyard that included the abandoned remains of Liberty Land amusement park, Tim McCarver baseball stadium, and the stables and agricultural buildings that were part of the Mid-South Fair. The main entrances to Liberty Bowl Stadium were ugly and congested.

Today, the Fairgrounds looks a lot better from end to end, especially from the west side along East Parkway. The city greened and cleaned it. The stadium is beautifully lit, the faux entrance looks great, and Tiger Lane is an inviting, landscaped tailgating area for the Tigers, the Southern Heritage Classic, and the AutoZone Liberty Bowl. The blight is gone, except for the Mid-South Coliseum, a big space-eater that doesn’t look so bad.

The Children’s Museum is expanding, the Kroc Center is open, and there are two soccer fields, a high-school football stadium, and a track. Fairview school is renovated. The old Liberty Land is a disc golf course; there are worse things. There are lighted baseball and softball fields, a rugby field, and a skate park just north of the Fairgrounds at Tobey Park. A lot of this is free, if not first class.

A Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) for a youth sportsplex is proposed now by the city and was previously proposed (and approved in Nashville and Memphis) by developers Henry Turley and Robert Loeb. The financing is complicated, but the big part isn’t. The “T” in TDZ stands for tourism. Mayor A C Wharton says a Fairgrounds TDZ would be nice for local youth. Maybe so, but that’s not tourism. Tourism is getting somebody else to come to Memphis and stay here and spend some money.

A youth sportsplex was a great idea — in 1995. After that, lots of cities, big and small, figured it out. Let’s look at the competition within 250 miles.

Bowling is supposedly the “fastest growing high school sport.” The state meet is held in Smyrna, outside of Nashville. The venue has 52 lanes, so let’s say the ante is 50 lanes.

The state swim meet is held in Knoxville or in Nashville at the Tracy Caulkins Aquatics Center. If you want to compete, you don’t build a pool, you build an aquatics center. The pool must be 50 meters long and eight lanes wide, with a second rec pool and a diving area. That’s the ante.

Soccer’s premier venue in the Mid-South is the Mike Rose Fields in Shelby County, with 16 fields, a stadium, and 15 hotels within 10 miles. Oxford’s FNC Park has five lit-and-sprinkled soccer fields plus eight baseball fields and a BMX course. Who’s going to drive past those to get to Memphis?

Tennis? The state meet is played in Murfreesboro at a facility that is adding eight new courts in February. Nashville’s Centennial Park has 13 resurfaced outdoor courts and four indoor courts. Little Rock’s Burns Park has 24 terraced outdoor courts and six indoor courts. Memphis has multiple courts at Rhodes College, Leftwich Tennis Center, the Racquet Club, and Memphis University School. Trust me on this — I’ve been a hacker for 55 years — tennis players are picky.

Baseball and softball complexes virtually surround Memphis. Snowden Grove in DeSoto County has 17 fields. Joe Mack Park in Jonesboro, Arkansas, has 12 fields, all sponsored by local businesses. Jackson, Tennessee, has 17 fields you have probably seen at mile 86 on Interstate 40. The Game Day First Tennessee complex in Shelby County has 10 lighted fields. Let’s call the ante 10 lighted fields.

So it goes. Hockey? Nashville and DeSoto County have pro teams that help support rinks. Volleyball? The state meet is in Murfreesboro. Same for football and track. A central location beats Memphis, if you live east of Jackson.

Basketball Town USA? Maybe. Memphis often has the best high school and national AAU teams year after year. We’ve also got the Grizzlies. But our teams have to go to Murfreesboro to claim their state trophies every year because we’re stuck in the corner.

Location matters. Ordinary doesn’t cut it. Great beats good. Want to play? Ante up.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Let’s Go, Shelby County Schools!

When Tom Foster, Calvin Turley, and I started a little promotional campaign called “Midtown Is Memphis” 20 years ago, we were acting in our own self-interests.

We wanted to preserve our neighborhoods and send our young children to public schools and nearby playing fields so we wouldn’t have to spend so much time hauling them to the suburbs. The bumper sticker was an afterthought. The more substantial effort was something called Parents for Public Schools, which didn’t last nearly as long.

A high-performing neighborhood public school is 100 times more potent than a bumper sticker or ball field. Now — The Year of the Big Change — is the time for Shelby County Schools (SCS)to promote itself as a viable alternative to private and suburban schools. All talk of cooperation aside, it’s every system for itself in the scramble for enrollment.

Fight, fight, fight! And looking ahead, SCS has the people and resources to win its share. There is no need to become just the old Memphis City Schools with a larger footprint.

In Dorsey Hopson, SCS has a young, battle-tested, homegrown superintendent who eats his own cooking by sending his children to a public school. In Optional Schools Director Linda Sklar, SCS has 35 years of experience spanning the past seven superintendents. And in innovation specialist Brad Leon, SCS has a decade of experience with Teach For America and other innovations in New Orleans, Nashville, and Memphis. This threesome knows what works and, just as important, what doesn’t.

The University of Memphis, Rhodes College, Christian Brothers University (CBU) , and LeMoyne Owen College — all within the interstate loop — are powerful partners for public schools such as Campus School, Snowden Elementary and Middle School, Fairview Middle School, and Soulsville Charter School. Employees can drop their kids off and pick them up after work. Older students get the benefit of college-level courses, mentoring, and exposure.

My reporting career took me to these and many more public schools all over Shelby County. Some of them in the poorest neighborhoods — Douglass and Manassas high schools for example — have facilities that are as good or better than any suburban school. You could not say that 10 or 20 years ago.

Fairview Middle is especially significant in the big picture. For years, it was a failing school in bad repair. But it’s been renovated, and the new windows, impressive entrance, and prominent location at the corner of East Parkway and Central across from CBU make it an attention grabber.

This year, it houses the Maxine Smith STEAM Academy (the letters stand for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math). It is an all-optional school, meaning students have to meet academic standards to get in. Unlike its predecessor, it is integrated. If things go well and the word gets out, in a year or two it could find itself holding a lottery for spaces, as high-ranked magnet schools in Nashville do now. 

Long term, the SCS board should think of a new high school to go with it on the property behind the board offices, as developer Henry Turley envisioned in his failed Fair Ground plans. Alternately, I could see Crosstown with its abundant space and proposed “urban village” filling this role.

The guiding vision for SCS should be a public school system that provides options for everyone. That ideal, once an American given, was wrecked by busing and white flight. More recently it has been undercut by suburban snark and Teach For America’s misguided impression that anyone with the resources goes to private school and urban public schools are laboratories for experimentation on those who cannot escape.

In a year of historic change, most media attention, understandably, will be on the new suburban school systems. In effect, it’s a built-in marketing machine. As much as anyone, I look forward to seeing the school-by-school enrollment numbers and demographic profiles when they are released in a few weeks. 

But one thing we already know is how savvy the suburban leaders are when it comes to selling their schools. SCS should take advantage of every opportunity in this year of upheaval to innovate on the fly and sell its own positive story just as vigorously.

John Branston is a former Flyer senior editor with a longstanding interest in public education.

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Opinion

Owed to CMI

“I love the Flyer! What do you do there?”

Going on 23 years, I still get that at least once a year. Life’s way of keeping you grounded. The answer is soon to be “not much,” but first a little background.

John Branston

It was 1990, and the speaker at the Peabody was talking about the promising prospects of free “alternative” weekly newspapers. Bob Roth, founder of the Chicago Reader, was wearing boots and jeans and had a beard and a ponytail. So far so good. He said something about the typical alt-weekly reader buying several CDs every month. Lotta money, I nodded.

Of course, he was talking about compact discs, not certificates of deposit. For someone whose music collection was still vinyl, it was an early sign of a challenging marriage. I had recently turned 40, and publisher Ken Neill was looking for someone who could write it long or write it short and keep the newborn Memphis Flyer edgy but out of trouble while its grown-up sibling, Memphis magazine, paid the rent. I bit. First suggestion: It is not a good idea to have a local feature called “Rumor Mill.”

A free paper, competing with one of the most profitable dailies in the country. Fat chance. Over the next 15 years, 16-page papers would become 28 pages then 44 pages then 96 pages a few glorious weeks. Party!

Dick Hackett was mayor, Harold Ford Sr. was between trials, and Willie Herenton was an unemployed former superintendent. “Free” was still the exception and not the rule in news, and strip-club ads supported this and other weekly papers. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, pay walls, and trolls did not exist. Our most faithful correspondent wrote upbeat weekly letters to us in longhand. Penmanship and notepads had not disappeared, the internet was a few years away, and a Rolodex and a reverse city directory were handy things to have. And the women who are now our advertising director and operations director were babysitting my children.

What, exactly, did alternative mean? The punk rocker who took a dump on stage at the Antenna club and the bond trader at First Tennessee who called a colleague a “f—ing goombah” and got sued over it were about to test our definition. Absent smartphones, the Flyer had the scoop.

“Tell me something interesting I didn’t know,” suggested Henry Turley. His sequel, equally wise, was, no matter who you are, “sooner or later, people get tired of your bullshit.”

Soon enough, big news came along, like the Herenton cliff-hanger election, the casinos, and the Ford trial and acquittal, that let us show our stuff. The beauty of working for a company with multiple “platforms” — as we now say at Contemporary Media Inc. (MBQ magazine and memphisflyer.com joined the print paper and Memphis) — is the ability to change gears from a 10-part series to a 4,000-word story to anniversary issues to books to columns and blogs, which we once called “Bobs.”

At some point, I decided I had earned pundit’s rights. A cartoon I saved for years showed a columnist blindly tossing a dart at a board that read, “Today I am an expert in,” with slots for nuclear physics, medicine, stocks, sports, government, and international affairs. I replaced it a few years ago with a “Doonesbury” strip wherein aging reporter Rick Redfern is asked by his son what he does if he has nothing to say, and he tells him, “Say it anyway, four times a day. I don’t have a pension.”

There’s a lot of truth to that. “Reacher said nothing” is a good narrative device in Lee Child’s tough-guy fiction, as well as excellent advice in real life, unless your job includes feeding the Web beast. Good writers are usually great reporters and interviewers — Jackson Baker, for instance. Whether selling or writing, this is an in-your-face business. I hope it lasts.

Doing work you would (sometimes) do for free and making enough to raise a family is not a thing to be taken for granted, especially when allowed to do it without fear or favor or interference. I sincerely thank my present and past colleagues, our board, advertisers, and especially our readers. The term “alternative weekly” needs to be redefined, and fresh horses are key to any going concern. The next hire should have a thousand friends and followers and zero CDs.

I have a half-finished book and some other things I want to do. I’m younger than half the dudes in the geezer bands playing Tunica. Ken Neill, a friend indeed, has offered to call me a contributing writer until I turn 65 next year and make a killing in Social Security, Medicare, and day trading.

What? No killing? But I’m an expert!

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Opinion

Harold Ford Sr. Not Ready to Retire; Opens New Funeral Home

CREDIT: John Branston

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It has been more than 30 years since there were more Fords in the funeral business than in the politics business.

But that’s the case now that former congressman Harold Ford Sr., godfather of the most politically powerful family in Tennessee including his son, former congressman Harold Ford Jr., is opening Serenity Columbarium and Memorial Garden. The first phase, the Harold Ford Funeral Chapel, was the site of Friday’s open house. The facility will employ approximately 100 people when completed.

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The site is on Sycamore View in northeast Memphis between Interstate 40 and Summer Avenue. Ford bought it from Belz Enterprises and plans to expand beyond the present “Harold Ford Chapel” into additional new buildings on the property.

A columbarium is a place where ashes are stored in small “niches” for those who choose cremation instead of burial. Cremation generally costs less than half as much as burial but was slow to gain acceptance in Memphis and the South. Ford said 42-44 percent of people choose cremation today, compared to less than one percent when he started in the business as a college student 50 years ago.

“I don’t think it was accepted at all,” said Ford, 68, looking fit and healthy with more gray in his short hair than in his congressional days.

He plans to live in Memphis three or four days a week and spend the rest of his time at his home in Florida or opening some 15 other new Serenity facilities in Chicago, Atlanta, and other cities. They are not part of the big public companies that dominate the industry.

He plans to get out of lobbying in the next year or so.

“I’m not ready to go sit on the beach every day,” he said. Asked if he misses politics, he said “I’m around it every day,” but he did not plan to attend the Democratic Party roast for former Mayor Willie Herenton this weekend due to previous commitments.

“It’s harder to get in and out of Memphis now because of the flight cutbacks,” he said.

For nearly three decades, the Ford family boasted, at the same time, an influential member of Congress (Harold Sr. or Harold Jr.), the Tennessee General Assembly (Senator John Ford and Ophelia Ford), the Memphis City Council (James, Joe, Edmund Sr. and Edmund Jr.,) and the Shelby County Commission (James and Joe). Only Ophelia Ford, Edmund Ford Jr., and Justin Ford (son of Joe Ford) are currently in politics.

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Opinion

Tourist Town

Converting the fairgrounds to a sports tourism magnet is going to be hard. You only have to look at the consultant’s report.

Not the one that came out this month justifying the proposed public/private financing for a new $233 million Tourism Development Zone (TDZ), but the one that came out in 2009 criticizing the proposed public/private financing for a $125 million TDZ. The same outfit, RKG Consultants, wrote both reports. Same property, same centerpiece — the 155-acre fairgrounds and Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.

The earlier proposal came from a partnership led by Henry Turley, downtown’s preeminent developer, and Robert Loeb, developer of Overton Square. Turley called it “the best idea I ever had,” but it wasn’t good enough to get city support.

The problem with using future retail sales to finance development at the fairgrounds, as RKG saw it then, was not so much the recession as the location, the competition, and the nature of retail. Fairgrounds retail “would fill a void in the local market area, however it lacks highway presence and the tenant mix to be a regional consumer draw.”

Because “most all of the sales activity would be reallocated sales already occurring elsewhere in Memphis” the projected stream of sales tax revenue was “insufficient to retire $112,264,000 in bonding.”

The new fairgrounds proposal, which must get state and city council approval, has no private developer and does not name the operators of the “second-to-none amateur sports venues,” 400,000 square feet of “destination retail,” or the 180-room hotel on the property. It expands the TDZ to three square miles, taking in tax-generating businesses that are up to a mile west and north of the fairgrounds from North Parkway to Overton Square and Cooper-Young. A bag of groceries purchased at Kroger on Union, a round of margaritas at Chiwawa in Overton Square, and a ticket for a football game at the stadium all figure into the deal.

Memphis is going all-in on tourism and big projects supported by increases in future sales taxes. In a supporting letter for the new fairgrounds TDZ, Mayor Wharton wrote “the fairgrounds project will also serve as the central hub of the city’s family-tourism expansion through its developments at Graceland, Bass Pro at the Pyramid, and the Riverfront.”

He makes no mention of the proposed Crosstown project which is less than a mile from the edge of the fairgrounds TDZ and is seeking $15 million in public funds. The Bass Pro Pyramid is part of a separate TDZ. Projections envision three million visitors a year.

In a TDZ, Memphis gets to keep the incremental increase in state and local sales taxes above a baseline number. The lower the baseline, the bigger the increment. In this proposal, the baseline is 2012 sales tax collections.

“The city of Memphis has commissioned the in-depth, serious research by experts.” Well, commissioned experts usually tell you what you want to hear. That goes for both Turley’s aborted project and this one. Turley’s vision was “a place so excellent that it brings major competitions to Memphis” and team sports “as a unifying force where diverse youth find common ground.” Noble thought. Think of the unified school system.

Excellence is in the eyes of the user. In youth sports, that’s a car or bus full of restless teens and pre-teens and their parents. Their priorities are apt to be proximity to a shopping mall, fast food, a cheap motel with a swimming pool, and an easy-to-find location right off a major highway.

In the current proposal, I’m not sure Overton Square, boutique hotels, a 5,000-seat multi-purpose building, “exemplary architectural design,” and “New Urbanist designed retail” in a Midtown “urban village” mesh with that. And if Central Avenue is “a prized site” for retail, then why is Fairview Middle School still there?

The competition for amateur team sports is fierce. In Memphis and DeSoto County, First Tennessee Fields and Snowden Grove get the baseball tournaments, Mike Rose Fields gets the soccer tournaments, and the Racquet Club and Leftwich Tennis Center go after the tennis business.

The real eye-openers, however, are the vast lighted sportsplexes in towns like Jackson, Tennessee, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and New Albany, Mississippi. The people running them know their market, and they have made deals with sponsors and coaches. You might not have heard of Joe Mack Campbell Park on U.S. Highway 63 in Jonesboro, but in Arkansas they have. Fields are sponsored by Arkansas State, NEA Baptist Clinic, Five Guys, and Delta Dental among others.

If football has taught Memphis anything as it aspires to national recognition, it is not to underestimate Arkansas State and “smaller” opponents.

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Opinion

Fairgrounds Redo: Will Third Time Be Charmed?

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The 89-page Fairgrounds redevelopment plan released this week is the third major one since 2006 so I’m taking my time digesting it.

The Looney Ricks Kiss firm did one in 2006 that, obviously, didn’t go anywhere. The RKG Associates consulting firm did a 2009 study as well as the one that came out this week. The 2009 study was pessimistic about the $125-million public/private financing proposal for a sports-oriented Tourism Development Zone. The current one is optimistic about a $233-million public/private proposal for a sports-oriented TDZ.

Same property, same qualified public use facility (Liberty Bowl Stadium), but different economy (recession then, comeback now), different mayor (Herenton then, Wharton now), different developer at risk (Henry Turley and Robert Loeb then, unnamed now), different master/enabler (a city-appointed Fairgrounds Reuse Committee then, Robert Lipscomb, head of the Division of Housing and Community Development, now) and different fate of Fairview school at the key corner of Central and East Parkway (out then, in now).

Turley’s Fair Ground plan, which I wrote about here, is not mentioned in the 2013 RKG report despite the obvious similarities. Turley got state approval for a TDZ but ran afoul of the City Council and Lipscomb, who said his fees were too high, which Turley disputed. The new plan needs state approval, and a presentation is tentatively scheduled in mid-October. After that it will also need City Council approval.

In a supporting letter, Wharton wrote that “the fairgrounds project will also serve as the central hub of the city’s family-tourism expansion through its developments at Graceland, Bass Pro at the Pyramid, and the Riverfront.” He makes no mention of the proposed Crosstown project which is less than a mile from the edge of the Fairgrounds TDZ and is seeking $15 million in public funds. The Bass Pro Pyramid is part of a separate TDZ.

In short, Memphis is betting on a whole lot more free-spending tourists coming our way.

As the name suggests, the key to a TDZ is tourism spending as opposed to local spending that would have gone somewhere else but for the new development. In a TDZ, Memphis gets to keep the incremental increase in state sales taxes above a baseline number.

The baseline number is important in determining what “new” revenue can be used to pay off the bonds. From the new report:

“The analysis by RKG Associates concludes that the projected baseline retail sales are approximately $214 million, and as a result there are ample sales tax revenues — projected at $14.3 million yearly beginning in 2016 — to support the bond payments of $11.9 million annually.”

And from the 2009 RKG report: “The estimated stream of sales tax revenue, while significant, is not necessarily new revenue. Additionally, under the assumptions of the bonding in this analysis, the projected stream of sales tax revenues is insufficient to retire $112,264,000 in bonding.”

One more negative note from the 2009 report: “By the very nature of retail there is always some degree of transferred retail sale. In the context of the Mid-South Fairgrounds, it is likely that the majority of retail sales will be transferred sales from existing merchants.”

The 400,000-square feet of “destination retail” that would bring in new money in the current fairgrounds plan is not named. Nor is the operator of the “180-room hotel/conference center.” The location would be north of Tiger Lane and south of Central Avenue. Obviously, it matters whether the retail is a destination for East Memphians or Nashvillians and Mississippians.

The report says “the Fairgrounds redevelopment is being driven by the City of Memphis as owner” and “based on the city of Memphis vision and design” the city will seek “a retail development company” for the property north of Tiger Lane and another developer/operator for the sports facilities south of Tiger Lane. There is no mention of fees.

However there is this statement:

“Using the TDZ as the vehicle for financing the Fairgrounds redevelopment and carefully calibrating a plan of redevelopment, the City of Memphis continues to build economic engines, as it has done with the redevelopment of The Pyramid into destination retail and a tourist attraction.”

Well, let’s hold that praise until after Bass Pro actually opens. As the report says elsewhere, “there is no assurance that actual events will correspond with the assumptions on which such estimates are based.”

The proposed three-square-mile Fairgrounds TDZ would include big Midtown tax generators such as the Memphis Zoo, Overton Square, Union Avenue and the soon-to-be rebuilt Kroger, and Cooper-Young. The report doesn’t flat come out and state cause and effect, but the assumption is that these things are tied somehow to the fairgrounds and the stadium and therefore their incremental tax revenues should be captured.

Again, the big question is what’s the increment? That depends on what the baseline is. The lower the baseline, the bigger the increment. In this proposal, the baseline is 2012 sales tax collections, adjusted for inflation until 2016 when the retails sales stream starts flowing to the fairgrounds bonds.

RKG’s 2013 optimism starkly contrasts with its 2009 pessimism about fairgrounds retail, which went well beyond the recession: “Approximately 80 percent of the sales that would occur at the fairgrounds would come from residents within the primary trade area. Most all of the sales activity would be reallocated sales already occurring elsewhere in Memphis.”

Fairgrounds retail, RKG said then, “would fill a void in the local market area, however it lacks highway presence and the tenant mix to be a regional consumer draw.”

That was then, this is now.

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Opinion

ASD Makes Its Case in Frayser

Chris Barbic makes his case

  • Chris Barbic makes his case

We’re from the government and we’re here to help you, really. This is not a funeral, this is an opportunity. Trust us. We’re going to take your schools from worst to first.

That’s what Chris Barbic, superintendent of the Achievement School District, said at Denver Elementary School in Frayser Tuesday night. It was, and will be, a tough sell. Denver is one of eight Memphis schools that will join the ASD next year and be matched up with a charter-school operator.

The teachers and parents in the audience were wary. Who wouldn’t be? Everything is harder at poor schools. There are security patrols instead of or in addition to booster clubs. Parents can’t get child care to make it to meetings. Extra money for classroom expenses is hard to scrape up when residents struggle to make ends meet at home. The woman who drove me to the meeting works at an ASD school where the school bus didn’t make a stop the other day because there was too much potential for violence. Better luck tomorrow, kids.

Deandre Brown, founder of Lifeline to Success and Frayser’s “blight patrol”, introduced Barbic and brought along 25 or so green-shirted members of the blight patrol.

Deandre Brown and Chris Barbic

  • Deandre Brown and Chris Barbic

“They (ASD) don’t like the word ‘takeover’ ” he said while inviting audience members to “ask the tough questions.” Another ASD session Monday night at Carver High School resulted in a walkout and “unfavorable reports” on the television news.

“We won’t have that tonight,” Brown said.

Given the magnitude of the change being proposed, the questions were more like statements or multiple questions, and most of them came from teachers at Denver or Frayser High School. At the end of the 90-minute meeting, Brown held a handful of cards with written questions that he and Barbic promised would be addressed later.

The ASD both operates schools (including six in Frayser this year) and authorizes others to run them. Frayser High School, for example, will be MLK Prep next year, under the leadership of principal Bobby White, a Frayser native and community leader. On other ASD schools, Barbic and his staff are trying to thread the needle by announcing them two weeks ago but withholding details about who will run them and work at them until December, following more meetings like the ones this week at Denver and Carver.

“The headline is that there was not a lot of progress here last year,” Barbic said. “We’re not wagging a finger trying to make people feel bad.”

Five Frayser teachers who got to the microphone begged to differ. They said that Denver absorbed hundreds of new students from a neighboring school and made gains anyway, and that Frayser High School was a “takeover” without adequate notice. Barbic nodded sympathetically to some comments and took the microphone to clarify that the process began three years ago.

“At some point we have got to see bigger gains,” he said.

The pressure on the ASD and charter operators is tremendous. Moving schools from the bottom five percent in the state to the top 25 percent without cheating or culling low-scoring students is unprecedented. Reading scores have been especially problematic for the ASD. Teachers like the ones who spoke at Denver Elementary are skeptical that outsiders can do a better job than dedicated veterans.

The teaching insurgents are looking at some long days. After dropping me off at home last night, my friend — a member of the first Teach For America corps in Memphis — declined a dinner invitation. She had to go back to work.

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Opinion

Pension Zombies Threaten Memphis!

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The news gods have not been kind to Memphis the last few years. We’ve had endless budget stories, tax stories, the school system merger and un-merger, six-hour board meetings, five-hour City Council meetings, the preternaturally calm Mayor Wharton, and petty political grievances.

Now comes the public pension “crisis” and a fat file of “valuation and projection assumptions” and alarming claims from budget hawks and union leaders that Detroit-style doom is near and, depending on your point of view, either pensioners or the city administrators are as dangerous as zombies.

Pensions are extremely interesting to the people who are receiving them or are about to receive them. Otherwise, who wants to do the math? Pensions are probably what Robert Penn Warren was thinking of when he wrote in “All The King’s Men” that a politician working a crowd should “make ’em cry, or make ’em laugh” but “don’t try to improve their minds” because “it breaks down their brain cells.”

The trigger for the latest pension blast, first reported by Jackson Baker, was a speech and accompanying report from chief administrative officer George Little about the state of the pension plan. I’ll spare you the details, but the 40-page report, highlighted in red lest anyone miss the point, concludes that the “unfunded actuarial accrued liability of the current plan” is trouble. Union leaders responded by asking if Memphians really want to have “80-year-old fire fighters” and fireman-flight if the pension plan is changed.

As one who gets paid to follow this stuff, a few comments.

First, if a fireman has been working 50 years until he’s 80 years old then he is either really bad at saving money or enjoys the excitement and camaraderie of the fire station more than the golf course. A senior fire fighter makes well over $50,000 a year according to city figures. A savings rate of 5 percent would create a nice sum, apart from a pension. Tennessee has no state income tax, and Memphis has no payroll tax. The cost of living is among the cheapest in the nation.

Just a guess, but I would say the public is tired of hearing police and firemen threaten to move out of the city (in greater numbers than ever) or, worse, put up billboards claiming Memphis is unsafe as a negotiating strategy.

Wharton did not say anything about a pension crisis when he spoke to reporters earlier this summer to assure us that Memphis is not going bankrupt, ala Detroit. Just the opposite. He said the pension plan is much better funded here but some tweaking would be needed. The report that came back last week seems to suggest this will happen sooner rather than later.

The city finance department assumes the pension fund will grow 7.5 percent a year. Standard assumption, they say. But is it? What conservative investor wouldn’t be thrilled to get a safe 4 percent, much less 7.5 percent on his or her retirement savings the last five years? By the compounding rule of 7 and 11, money doubles in 11 years at 7 percent and in 7 years at 11 percent. You wish.

True, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has averaged a return of 8.6 percent over 20 years, 7.3 percent over 10 years, 7 percent over 5 years, and 18 percent over 3 years. But timing is everything. If you took your nest egg out in 2009 after the stock market crash, you “lost” half of it.

Here’s an illustration. One investor, Miss Mattress, had $100,000 under a mattress in 2009 and kept it there. Another investor, Mr. Market, had $100,000 in the stock market and kept it there. Mr. Market lost 50 percent in 2009 and gained 18 percent a year for the next four years. Historically, that is like winning the lottery four years in a row.

Who has more money today? Miss Mattress has $100,000. Mr. Market has about $97,000. A city pension plan has to try to take care of both of them.

Categories
Opinion

Another SNAFU at Beale Street Landing

CREDIT: John Branston

Benny Lendermon

The American Queen won’t be docking at Beale Street Landing when it comes to Memphis Friday. Instead the luxury river cruise boat will tie up at the north end of Mud Island for the second summer in a row, as will other visiting cruise boats.

The mooring arms of the 400-foot dock at Beale Street Landing are being detached this week because of low water at the mouth of the harbor. The daily excursion boats can still use the dock. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is not dredging the harbor this year due to budget cuts.

Meanwhile, the Riverfront Development Corporation’s contract runs out at the end of October. The RDC was on one-year contracts the last two years. The most recent one expired at the end of June — days before the big Fourth of July fireworks show on the river — so it was extended four months. Benny Lendermon, head of the RDC, said he is optimistic it will be renewed.

“We are in negotiations for a long-term contract,” he said in a dockside interview Thursday.

The RDC is also negotiating with a restaurant operator for the landing after no bids were received following the broken deal with the previous operator. The new prospect is said to be Beale Street restaurateur Tommy Peters.

The $42 million riverfront project has been plagued with problems and controversy almost since its inception. Here’s a snapshot history in Memphis Flyer photos.

Mooring arm of BSL dock

  • Mooring arm of BSL dock

The mooring arms raise and lower the dock, which consists of two 200-foot-long barges. They are being temporarily disconnected this week. The river is within five feet of a record low. Lendermon said it would have been possible but costly to design the dock for minus-15 feet on the river gauge, well below the record low. The RDC fired the dock contractor and a lawsuit is pending.

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This plywood section of sidewalk from the shady space outside the future restaurant to Riverside Drive and Beale Street was supposed to be decorative tile. Another contractor screw-up.

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Restaurant partners Charlie Ryan and Bud Chittom decided in May not to go ahead with a much-needed food and beverage oasis, one of the main reasons for building the project in the first place. Ryan says there is not enough parking. A venue for parties and special events is one possible outcome. The only business inside the building is a gift shop and ticket office for daily excursion boats.

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The multicolored elevator shaft, also known as the Beale Street Landing Rubik’s Cube, is the focal point of the project, to the dismay of some local urban design critics. It is supposed to represent . . . oh, never mind. It speaks for itself.

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The American Queen, whose regular visits were supposed to partially justify the cost of Beale Street Landing, will tie up at the north end of Mud Island Friday, just as it did last June when the water was low. Passengers get a bonus tour of Mud Island and Harbor Town by bus or limo enroute to downtown and their hotel. Lendermon said the dock at Beale Street Landing could be back in business for the big boats before the end of the cruise season in November.

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The black fence between the landing and the parking lot is supposed to come down within a week, making it easy for visitors to Tom Lee Park to climb the grassy hill to the top and the fine view of the river. It will also make it possible for some crazy vandal to drive up the hill. There will be a gate of some kind, like the ones currently in use at the parking lot entrances. As for the parking lot next to the landing, it is either not big enough (for a restaurant) or unsightly and unnecessary (design critics and proponents of a more pedestrian-friendly riverfront) because it separates the landing and the rest of Tom Lee Park.

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So near yet so far. A decent high-school quarterback could chunk a football from the dock to the southern tip of Mud Island River Park, but, alas, there is no close connection. To get to both, you have to walk or drive to or from the Mud Island entrance either at the parking garage across from City Hall or the parking lot at the north entrance to the river park.

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Jobs, as always, were one of the justifications for the project. Beale Street Landing was envisioned as a $20-$30 million project and grew to a $40-million-plus project. The grand opening date, pushed back several times, is some time in 2014. Will Memphians embrace it, or shun it as they did Mud Island River Park? Readers of this blog know I have been critical of the overdo, design, and buck passing, but the view is really nice, visitors won’t care about the back story once it opens, and I hope it works now that we have it. See for yourself, but bring your own snacks and drinks.