“Ungodly” is the
latest count against news reporters in the indictments handed up last week by
Ophelia Ford and Willie Herenton.
Pending further
investigation and consultation with attorneys, defendants have not made their
pleas. Besides, sources say more charges may be forthcoming. The ungodly media
is not the only story. The real indictment is missing a story or getting the
story incomplete an ungodly number of times. I was reminded of one such instance
last week when I got a call from developer Waymon “Jackie” Welch Jr.
I met Welch
several years ago when he was selling land along Winchester and Germantown Road
in southeastern Shelby County. He was well known to local politicians and
homebuilders as a force in suburban development and county school site
selection, but he was less well known to the public because suburban sprawl and
the location of new schools were not as widely covered in the local media as
they are today. You can prove this by searching those terms on the Internet.
In 2000, Welch and his partners made a bold move. They bought a choice piece of
land on the north side of Poplar Avenue east of Germantown Baptist Church for a
subdivision of 129 lots called Devonshire Gardens. What was unusual about it was
that the lots were priced from $165,000 to $210,000 apiece, and the houses were
expected to sell for $1 million — a subdivision of million-dollar homes.
Shortly after
that, the Internet bubble burst, and the Nasdaq stock market index went from
5,000 to 1,600. Then 9/11 happened. Welch had sold nine lots. I wrote a story in
which I quoted him saying, with some irony, “All I need is 120 more
millionaires,” and I speculated that he might not get them.
It now looks like
he will. Last week he called to tell me he had nearly sold out his inventory of
lots at Devonshire Gardens. When we drove through the subdivision this week,
mansions stood where there had been vacant lots and ravines and stakes with
little flags on them a few years ago.
“The biggest
problem when I started this was the sticker price,” Welch explained. “It turned
off the builders. They didn’t believe you could sell lots at that price unless
they were on an acre of land. When individuals drove through and didn’t see any
activity, they were reluctant to buy. Then the bankers were worried. They wanted
to know why there wasn’t any activity on that $10 million loan they had up
here.”
Needless to say, the housing market and the economy recovered, interest rates on
home mortgages dropped to historic lows, the wealth migration to Germantown and
Collierville accelerated, St. George’s Day School started a high school next
door to Devonshire, and the lots that didn’t sell for a year at $200,000 now
sell for $240,000.
The million-dollar
home is no longer the rarity in Shelby County that it was seven or eight years
ago. The Shelby County Assessor’s office says there are 638 of them.
Technically, Devonshire Gardens has not lived up to Welch’s billing as a
subdivision of million-dollar homes. I found a nice five-bedroom, four-bath job
for sale for a mere $739,000. And with 17 lots unsold, my skepticism may not
have been entirely off base.
But I’ll concede I
was a false prophet on the whole subject of big money.
In 2001, I thought
housing prices couldn’t go much higher in Germantown and Collierville and
downtown. They did. I thought luxury SUVs and Hummers were a fad. They weren’t.
I thought bench-warming ballplayers couldn’t continue to command $3 million
salaries. Now they get $5 million. I thought CEO pay packages of $2 million
couldn’t go much higher. They now top $10 million.
After 9/11 and Enron and the start of the war in Iraq, I and other reporters
gulped too much of that crap about America being changed forever and
accountability and downsizing. We’re in the dark about God and the political
careers of Ford and Herenton. But what we really don’t get is Mammon.
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