Category: News Feature

When Holiday Inns founder Kemmons Wilson announced over a year ago that he was giving the University of Memphis a $15 million hotel school, it looked like the start of a beautiful relationship.

The university is trying to raise its profile and supplement its budget-cramped state appropriations with private gifts. The irrepressibly upbeat Wilson, 88, is a local and international business legend. A hotel and resort management school would be a nice fit with the Fogelman College of Business and Economics and executive conference center. It would be the only hotel school in the Mid-South and serve, among others, Memphis and the booming casino industry in Mississippi.

That was the plan, at least. Sixteen months after the gift was announced, the project finally got under way in August with the removal of several large trees on the site at Central and Deloach and approval by the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development.

Executing the plan, it turns out, has been anything but simple. Complications include everything from the resignation of University of Memphis President Lane Rawlins to possible association with the gambling industry, impact on surrounding neighborhoods and Poplar Avenue, and the university’s — and Wilson’s — reputation for architecture known more for efficiency and functionality than aesthetic merits.

Construction of the four-story, 82-room, all-suites hotel and 1,000-seat ballroom is supposed to be finished in August 2001. Questions remain, however, about operating funds and staffing for the hotel school and the next move by neighborhood opponents, who are wealthy, battle-tested, and influential.

Meanwhile, Wilson is not getting any younger.

“I’ve never seen so much red tape,” Wilson says. “It’s hard to give money away, it looks like. I guarantee I could have built it in that length of time. I think they’ve done all the nitpicking they can do at this point.”

Wilson, who did not finish high school much less college, says he has a soft spot for the University of Memphis as his adopted alma mater. For 55 years, he has lived a few blocks away on the edge of Galloway Golf Course. He says he got the idea for a hotel school from the Conrad N. Hilton College at the University of Houston. That college, started in 1969, has an 86-room hotel, conference center, and 21 full-time faculty and is considered one of the top programs in the country along with Cornell, Purdue, and Michigan State.

The Kemmons Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management will award a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a major in hospitality and resort management, says John Pepin, dean of the Fogelman College.

“It will be a working school,” says Pepin. “We feel it could be a terrific benefit to Memphis. We are going to train managers of hotels and restaurants; we are not going to train chefs.”

Nor will it train casino workers on the gambling side of operations. There are no alliances at this time with any of the Tunica casinos with their 6,000 hotel rooms 20 miles south of Memphis. But Pepin says, “I could see where we could work with them on the hotel-restaurant side.”

Rawlins, a Mormon, was opposed to gambling.

“I believe the position is changing” regarding possible relationships with casinos, Pepin says.

The university and board of regents took some pains to insure that the hotel school will not resemble a Wilson World or Wilson Inn, known for their pink stucco-like exteriors. The building will be covered with brick, which Wilson and university officials both approved.

“This will be much more expensive,” Wilson says.

The $15 million, Wilson’s estimate of the cost, includes everything from sheets on the beds to flatware on the dinner tables, says U of M spokesman Curt Guenther. The school will look for professionals to run the hotel and possibly operate it under a licensing agreement. The academic staff will be university professors, although at this point they haven’t been hired, and the $15 million gift does not include funding for instructors.

That’s one of several concerns of the neighbors, who include several prominent bankers, developers, and lawyers such as Charles Newman, who helped stop Interstate 40 through Overton Park, and Jim McGehee, former head of the Memphis Shelby County Airport Authority.

Neighborhood leaders see the university getting a hotel first and worrying about a school later while they dramatically change the neighborhood and one of the last residential stretches of Poplar Avenue. As precedent, they point to the destruction of homes on Conlee and Deloach (small streets that run between Poplar and Central), the low-cost married students housing on the south side of Poplar, and a general lack of adherence to long-term planning on the university’s part.

“I think they’re going to destroy Poplar Avenue,” says Doug Ferris, chairman of the Poplar Avenue Committee for the Red Acres Neighborhood Association. “They’re going to change the whole character of the neighborhood.”

Poplar will eventually be the major northern entrance to the university, Ferris believes. The houses on Conlee have already been bulldozed, and the university has requested that the city of Memphis undedicate it and give it to the U of M. The university, through the state board of regents, also owns all but one of the dozen or so houses on Deloach between Poplar and Central, according to county records. Adding a hotel and 1,000-seat ballroom to the parking lot, Lipman Early Childhood School, and married student housing already located north of Central will inevitably lead to a major entrance and traffic light on Poplar, particularly if the university ever gets its wish for a performing arts center in the same general area, Ferris says.

“Where’s the stopping?” Ferris asks. “All the way west to Patterson or Highland? There is no planning and nobody communicates.”

Not to worry, says Guenther. The performing arts center is on hold, at best, and “I don’t see how a small hotel is going to have that much impact on traffic,” he says. The university rents the houses it owns on Deloach to faculty and staff and has no pending plans to change that.

Ferris is skeptical. He has no quarrel with the hotel as such but thinks it would be better located south of Central near the athletic facilities. But putting it at Central and Deloach, closing Conlee, and tying Conlee in with Zach Curlin Drive, as planned, will inevitably mean a major entrance off of Poplar. Moreover, Ferris says, the university, as a state entity, is doing something a private hotel developer could never have done on its own hook.

“They deliberately try to defuse something when they know damn well where they are going,” says Ferris. “It’s invasive, like having a bunch of weeds in your yard.”

Few are mincing words in this controversy. Jeanne Coors Arthur, a real estate agent whose son lives in the U of M area, called it “this monstrous development” in a letter to the county planning staff. In July, however, the Land Use Control Board approved the closing of Conlee Street with minor reservations.

Among the likely consequences, the planning report admitted: more traffic on Poplar, a traffic light, and expedited widening of Poplar.

THIS STORY ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE SEPTEMBER 2000 ISSUE OF MEMPHIS MAGAZINE.

(You can write John Branston at branston@memphismagazine.com)

Of all the corporations in Memphis, AutoZone would seem to be one of the least likely to be hit with a major discrimination lawsuit. But that’s what happened last week when the Equal Opportunity Commission took the auto-parts retailer to federal court — something that happens in less than one percent of the thousands of charges filed each year with the EEOC in Memphis.

The allegations in the widely publicized 10-page complaint could still be settled before they go to trial, but the damage to AutoZone’s reputation has already been done. The complaint says AutoZone’s Memphis headquarters has a white-guy job network with a “pattern and practice” of discrimination against blacks and females.

That hits AutoZone where it lives. Minorities are the backbone of the $4 billion company’s customer base, and from the CEO to the rank-and-file, AutoZone’s rah-rah corporate culture of red shirts and acronyms like DIY for “do-it-yourselfer” is based on being customer-friendly.

The annual report is printed in Spanish as well as English, and minorities are prominently featured (portrayed by actors) in the company’s television commercials.

Company founder J.R. “Pitt” Hyde III is a staunch patron of the National Civil Rights Museum, and CEO John Adams Jr. was cochairman of the NAACP’s Freedom Fund Gala this year. In a move the company says is unrelated to the EEOC action, Adams, 52, announced last week he plans to resign later this year or early next year to spend more time with his family.

Image is at odds with reality, however, when it comes to some black and female AutoZoners, according to the EEOC complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that AutoZone has engaged in unlawful employment practices since 1993, with most of the specific complaints coming from 1993-1995:

* At least 59 official/manager positions were filled from 1993-1995 but none by blacks.

* Qualified blacks and women were passed over in favor of white males for jobs as technicians, service workers, security guards, project manager, construction manager, and technical writer.

* A word-of-mouth job network within AutoZone’s largely white male workforce deprived blacks and women of promotions and opportunities.

“Defendant employer at all relevant times acted with malice or reckless indifference to the federally protected rights of black applicants,” the lawsuit says.

AutoZone vice president of communications and training Lesley Hartney said the company follows state and federal laws regarding fairness and equal employment, but otherwise company officials have not commented since the lawsuit was filed last week.

Celia Liner, senior trial attorney for the EEOC in the Memphis district, said the office was still fielding calls this week from current or former AutoZoners inquiring about joining the class-action lawsuit which asks for back pay, relocation expenses, job search expenses, and compensation for emotional pain and suffering.

“A lot of them want to be heard,” she said.

She did not know exactly how many employees were involved in the earlier complaints that have already been investigated. But she said the long-time lag is not unusual. Only 30-60 of the more than 10,000 charges filed in the Memphis district, which includes Little Rock and Nashville, result in lawsuits.

After a charge is investigated, the EEOC issues a “determination of reasonable cause” if it has merit. Then there is a “period of conciliation” during which the EEOC tries to resolve the matter — sort of like a plea bargain in the criminal justice system, with the added advantage of no publicity. If that fails, the charges go to the EEOC office in Washington D.C., headed by chairwoman Ida Castro, which decides whether or not to file a complaint in federal court.

“It’s not unusual for larger cases to take quite a while,” Liner said.

The names of the people who made the charges will be revealed during the discovery process, Liner said.

“Nothing gets changed if somebody doesn’t take a step,” she said. “I think they’re very brave. They lay an awful lot on the line.”

The lawsuit was filed at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and news crews were outside the company’s Front Street headquarters an hour later. Privately, some AutoZone officials suspected the EEOC of tipping the media, but Liner “categorically” denied that.

(You can write John Branston at branston@memphismagazine.com)

The Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) has a website (http://www.memphisriverfront.com/) that features “pollin’ on the River,” an interactive newsboard that allows visitors to make their voices heard in matters relating to the development of Memphis’ “Big Muddy” western border. Mayor Willie Herenton entrusted the RDC to develop the riverfront with the help of both professional consultants, namely Cooper-Robertson & Partners of New York and Civitas, Inc. of Denver, as well as Memphis citizens.

While the RDC expects the entire analysis for the river to take roughly nine months, the non-profit organization says that the consulting firms will complete the first stage of the river plan by Oct. 19th.

The message board is set up into eight sections, each addressing a specific area on the riverfront. For example, one popular section is the “Mud Island River Park” newsgroup. Visitors are asked to answer questions like “What is special to you about Mud Island?”; “How do you feel about being at Mud Island after dark?”; and “Would you show Mud Island to an out-of-town visitor?”

However, controversy can also be a part of the discussion. Recently, some visitors have expressed concern over the RDC’s decision to work on the cobblestones between Tom Lee Park and Confederate Park. These decisions came before the input from citizens was made possible through the website and comes well in advance of the consultant companies’ date of completion of the first stage of the river plan.

However, Benny Lendermon, President of the RDC, stresses that such measures will not affect the overall scope of the river project. On the website, he posts, “Coopers and Robertson felt the project would provide immediate benefit and be appropriate with any conceivable future plans they might develop.”

The forum also allows some less-serious discussion as well. Recently, there was a suggestion that the famous Memphis bridge with its tell-tale ‘M’ should be lit up in more impressive colors such as red and green or blue. Lendermon’s response was, to say the least, interesting.

According to Lendermon, red and green lights are used by the Coast Guard as navigation lights and are thus prohibited. Blue bridge lights are prohibited by the FAA because landing strips at airports use blue for run-way lights. Lendermon quips, “Just think, a 747 landing on the Memphis Bridge.”

(You can write Chris Przybyszewski at chris@memphisflyer.com

Imagine the Gnome scientists tinkering with N’Sync.

Picturing a hundred waxed, puny pecked, faked tanned, lisping wussy boys with strategically mussed hair? A group of duh-faced designer clothes wearing pin-ups with the intellectual depth of a Madonna chapbook?

After halftime, if you went to the bathroom to vomit as I did, you might have missed the Proposal competition in which contestants got down on one knee and described how they would pop the question. How tempting it must have been for the host, a tepidly funny Caroline Rhea, not to pop them in their whitened teeth. Virginia Beach skyrocketed to first place at that point by holding Rhea’s mascara caked gaze with his stalker glare. But those scoring at home knew all along that this smoothy had the edge. He consistently scored high with the judges: two soap opera actresses, two models, and Nicole Eggert, the slut daughter from Charles in Charge and washed up Baywatch uniboob. Models and actresses know a well-executed image when they see it. Providing skybox commentary was a couple of blow up dolls wearing more make-up than Leeza Gibbons. They sputtered witticisms throughout the evening such as “That’s beefcake good enough to eat.”

Though it was a challenge to tell the beefcake apart at times, the most shameful denunciation of traditional– and obsolete?– manliness came from a guy who incessantly winked and pistol shot the audience. This misled fellow whose hair was gelled, sprayed, dried, and then apparently curled to one side, sang a line from a boy band hit. Look for his album in the fall of 2000 and never. One could just sense the other guys holding their breath as if their fellow contestant might impulsively confess to loving Bette Midler and blow his cover. True, some women swooned over this Backstreet display, but most probably were reminded of that ass who was voted Prom King but is now assistant manager at their hometown Target.

The remaining eight simply fit a stereotype. And what network does a better stereotype than Fox? There was David from Jersey, a guy dressed like a gay Miami housekeeper in capris, a tight pastel T and leather flip flops. Winner of the highest hair award, Mr. Jersey tried to explain that the greatest achievement of his life was being the first person in his family to graduate from college. He punctuated that sentimental confession with “Exactamundo.” Rocky almost walked away with Congenial Genital honors when during the swimsuit competition, he pranced around the stage in testicle hugging hot pants.

Taking home honors for originality was a floppy-eared Illinois cop who cashed in the “Long Walk on the Beach” scenario during the Proposal Talent division when he brilliantly promised to write, “Will You Marry Me?” in the sand on a secluded beach. One can only imagine the beta bitch who would swim upstream for that.

There was a 10-way-tie for Greatest Liar of All Time, but special recognition went to Reed Randoy (not his Playgirl name) for saying that the best part of a woman’s body is her eyes. The only contestant brave enough to forgo hair gel, this sloppily shaven ex-baseball player from Arizona paused before stepping deeper in it. “The soul is what you can see in eyes that you’re looking into. Eyes can be looked into to see the soul.” Amazingly, Reed then ripped his latex mask off to reveal, gasp!, George W. Bush.

Fox could have saved itself a good hour if they just would have jumped to the penis comparison and tongue agility contest. I’m assuming that the word “sex,” was mentioned at the Sexiest Bachelor concept meeting. But maybe that’s unfair. Obviously, the American woman’s idea of what’s desirable is morphing into something that looks and acts just as dainty as them. Gone are the real cowboys with calluses. In their place are men who apply bronzer and wear ten gallons of cologne. According to Fox, the millennial woman needs a man’s commitment, yet the last time I met my girlfriends for Sunday breakfast, they weren’t talking about how big their Saturday night date’s dowry is.

But that’s not to say that the network is totally off-base. They kicked off a season of quality trash that, unlike last night, I don’t hear anyone yelling, “Take it off!”

(You can write Ashley Fantz at ashley@memphisflyer.com)

Earlier this week City Council Chairman Barbara Swearengen Holt decided to raise the daily food allowance for traveling council members from $20 without receipts and $45 with receipts to $45 without receipts and $75 with receipts.

Holt defends this decision by saying, “You can’t eat at McDonald’s for that,” referring to the daily meal allowance before it was increased.

Actually, Chairman Holt, you can eat at McDonald’s quite a bit for that.

At $20 a day, the previous amount without a receipt, a council member could eat five extra value meals (sandwich, fries and a drink, typically priced at $3.50) and have some change left over. If the council member was particularly hungry, they could opt to “supersize” their meal (for about 80 cents) and still eat four sandwiches, orders of fries and drink four soft drinks. If the council member elected to have an apple pie or a hot fudge sundae, they could only order four regular-sized extra value meals, but could have dessert three times a day. Similarly, at the previous $45 a day allowance with receipts, a council member could eat 12 extra value meals a day, ten if they wanted those meals supersized.

(The Flyer would like to point out that most McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants will not charge a customer for their meal if the customer was not issued a receipt. Therefore, if a council member doesn’t get a receipt from McDonald’s, then they can eat 10 regular-sized extra value meals a day under the $20 per diem.)

Under the new daily allowance, a council member that does not elect to supersize can eat 12 extra value meals a day without receipts (actually 24, if they tell a manager that they didn’t receive a receipt) and a whopping 21 regular sized extra value meals at the $75 rate, and still have some change for a sundae. (This, of course, is not to be confused with Burger King’s Whopper meal — also a sandwich, fries and a drink — which a council member could order about 18 times a day for $75.)

If a council member were required to drive from Memphis to Los Angeles (though we doubt they’d be asked to) the council member could eat at 36 of the 78 McDonald’s along the way, if they stopped for a single value meal at each one on the approximately three day drive under the $45 previous allowance. But now, under the $75 allowance, a council member can stop 63 of the 78 restaurants and order a value meal at each in three days time. However, considering that the council member would be stopping so many times, it is doubtful that they would actually make it to Los Angeles in under a week.

In seven days time, at $75 a day, a council member could eat at every single McDonald’s between here and Los Angeles twice, with ten of the restaurants getting three visits.

With that much fast food, perhaps Holt should have given the council members national memberships to the YMCA too.

(You can write Rebekah Gleaves at gleaves@memphisflyer.com)

The city of Memphis has narrowed the field to three finalists for the job of outsourcing its computers and telecommunications.

The three companies (chosen from an initial field of 17 firms) are Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), headquartered in Dallas; Electronic Data Systems (EDS), also headquartered in Dallas; and Systems & Computer Technology (SCT), with headquarters in Malvern, Pa.

The contract for the rapidly growing computer and telephone operations could be worth as much as $70 million or more, based on the budget for the Division of Information Services, which is being outsourced. It will be for at least five and possibly seven years, according to Roland McElrath, director of the Division of Finance and Administration.

“We are still going through our evaluation,” said McElrath. “We have completed a technical review and we are going through a business evaluation of the proposals. We planned to go through oral presentations next week, and the target date to sign an agreement is early December. We are on schedule to hit that.”

The outsourcing effects only about 45 employees, but in dollar terms it is by far the largest in city history. McElrath declined to put a number on it because the bids will be negotiated, but the Division of Information Services was budgeted for about $10 million a year.

“Our strategy is to downselect to two companies and negotiate prices with them,” said McElrath.

Information systems includes computers and telephones for all city departments except the Memphis Police Department, which is on the Shelby County phone system.

Adding an unusual twist to the story are embarrassing financial disclosures, a dizzying sequence of management resignations, and allegations of fraud at SCB Computer Technology, the city’s consulting partner.

SCB Computer Technology, a Germantown company, has a $468,000 contract to help choose the outsourcing firm but is excluded from bidding on the job itself. Since the contract was signed in 1998, however, SCB has been in turmoil. It has paid the federal government $1.6 million to settle an overbilling complaint by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Its top management, independent auditor, and a board member have resigned. Its stock has been delisted by the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. And its credibility has been battered by company admissions of overstating earnings and hyping press releases in order to inflate revenues. Several lawsuits have been filed alleging that shareholders were defrauded.

“We are aware of the financial difficulty they have had but those have not had any adverse impact on the services they provided to us,” said McElrath. “The services we contracted for with them will be completed by the end of the year.”

The city has also hired the Washington D.C. law firm Shaw Pittman to advise it on legalities of the outsourcing.

SCB Computer Technology, founded by T. Scott Cobb and Ben Bryant Jr., became a publicly traded company in 1996. The stock traded for as high as $13 a share but had fallen to just over $2 a share when the company announced possible accounting problems in April. The Nasdaq delisted the stock, meaning trading was halted. SCB appealed the delisting but it was affirmed in August.

In July, SCB admitted overstating its earnings from 1998-2000 by $4.18 million and exaggerating the impact of four contracts on future earnings. The contracts, which did not include Memphis, were either canceled, under review, or worth less than SCB stated they were.

Cobb resigned as chairman last November along with board member Joe McLeary. Bryant replaced Cobb as chairman, then Bryant also resigned as chairman and CEO in May of this year and Cobb returned as CEO. Former chief financial officer and president Gary McCarter resigned in July. And Bryant resigned as a director and employee of the company in September, according to the company proxy statement released last week. The new chairman of the board is Jack Blair, formerly an executive with Smith & Nephew in Memphis.

The city has put together an evaluation committee that includes McElrath, CAO Rick Masson, City Councilman Tom Marshall, Abe Kani of the former Information Systems division, internal auditor Elizabeth Moore, and Deputy Human Resources Director Charmaine Claxton. The committee will make a recommendation to Mayor Willie Herenton.

(You can write John Branston at branston@memphismagazine.com).

With the Memphis Music Foundation recently adding staff and
expanding its programming in the form of the Memphis Music Resource
Center and an alliance of local music-related businesses coming
together in the form of Music Memphis (see Music Feature, page
26), the long-maligned Memphis & Shelby County Music
Commission would seem to be in danger of further slipping off the
city’s musical radar.

But the lone governmental arm of the local music community made its
own bit of news last week with the arrival of its latest executive
director, Johnnie Walker.

Walker, a longtime music-industry executive, is a Mississippi native
who got her break in Memphis radio before being hired by Russell
Simmons in 1990 to work for his Def Jam label. Walker worked
her way up to senior vice president of promotions for the Def Jam Music
Group but left the company earlier this decade to become head of urban
promotion for DreamWorks Records. Walker is also the founder of
the National Association of Black Female Executives in Music and
Entertainment.

Walker was hired to lead the music commission this past summer and
made her debut last week at a monthly commission meeting that was
reportedly sparsely attended (by commissioners). Whether Walker’s
tenure will revive an organization that has lost relevancy in recent
years or be more of the same remains to be seen.

This will be a good weekend for local folk music fans.
Louisiana-born, Nashville-based folk singer Kate Campbell, who
brings a decidedly “grit-lit” sensibility to her work, makes a
semiregular appearance at the Center for Southern Folklore this
weekend. Campbell, whose latest album, Save the Day, is a
collection of songs inspired by literary works and historical icons
from To Kill a Mockingbird to Henry Ford, plays the center
Saturday, November 22nd, at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $15 to $25.

The next night, the Memphis Acoustic Music Association
returns for its first concert in six months when it hosts British
guitarist and folk singer Martin Simpson at the Pink Palace
Mansion Theatre. Simpson is touring the U.S. for the first time in
five years and will be stopping at the Pink Place for a 7 p.m. show
Sunday, November 23rd. Tickets are $20 and are available at
Otherlands Coffee Bar and Davis-Kidd Booksellers.

Speaking of Otherlands, the Midtown venue will be hosting a
fund-raiser concert for the Memphis-based Folk Alliance Friday,
November 21st, with The Dan Montgomery Three, Deering &
Down, and Marissa Lynae.

Congratulations are in order to a couple of Memphians who will be
recipients of the Blues Foundation‘s Keeping the Blues
Alive award. The awards will be given as part of the International
Blues Challenge weekend in February, but winners were announced this
month and included local documentarian Willy Bearden in the
“Film, Television, and Video” category and Betsie Brown in the
“Publicist” category.

Brown works with roots acts of all stripes via her Blind
Raccoon company and has a couple of clients making news right now.
Memphis musician Kim Richardson recently won the
singer-songwriter contest at the Ozark Folk Festival in Eureka
Springs, Arkansas. Richardson has a new album out, True
North, and will next perform locally alongside Susan
Marshall and Reba Russell at Otherlands on December 6th.

Additionally, area blues stalwarts Billy Gibson and Super
Chikan recently traveled to Spitzbergen, Norway, to perform at the
Dark Season Blues Festival.

Local rockers Lucero have been quiet since signing to
major-label Universal earlier this year and celebrating with their
second-annual Lucero Family Picnic. With guitarist Brian Venable
celebrating the birth of his first son, frontman Ben Nichols has
taken the opportunity to record his solo debut, The Last Pale
Light in the West.

A seven-track “mini LP,” The Last Pale Light in the West was
recorded with occasional Lucero sidemen Rick Steff and Todd
Beene and features songs inspired by the Cormac McCarthy novel
Blood Meridian. The album will be released in January on the
band’s own Liberty & Lament label. But you can get it early
— meaning now — via the band’s website,
LuceroMusic.com, either in
hard-copy form or as an instant MP3 download. Nichols has also recorded
a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Delia’s Gone” for All Aboard: A Tribute
to Johnny Cash, now available on Anchorless Records.