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Opinion The Last Word

Shut Out by the Shutdown

On the 35th day of the partial shutdown, airports along the East Coast experienced significant staffing shortages. Air traffic controllers calling in sick put pressure on the shutdown as flights were delayed in major airports including LaGuardia.

A little over a week ago, federal workers had organized actions demanding an end to the government shutdown. In Memphis, workers rallied outside the IRS’ Memphis Service Center and Downtown at the Civic Center Plaza. More than a thousand IRS workers in the city were told to go back to work without pay.

Serenity Towers

With the partial shutdown now over with the passing of the short-term funding bill, federal employees will be expecting their pay soon, but coming back from the effects of the shutdown will take much longer. As we’ve seen and heard, testimonies have demonstrated how the shutdown has impacted the day-to-day lives of people.

For the residents of Serenity Towers, the shutdown has meant the threat of eviction from their homes. Serenity Towers is an independent living apartment complex on Highland for senior citizens and folks with disabilities. Many seniors living in the apartments receive benefits from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that pay most of their rent. With the shutdown and HUD offices closed, these residents weren’t receiving the assistance that they needed. CNN reported that HUD wasn’t able to renew over 1,600 of the contracts that they have with privately owned businesses, and while HUD claimed that the expiration of these contracts would not mean immediate evictions, residents at Serenity have reported that eviction notices for some had already gone out.

Part of this has to do with the immediate effects of the shutdown and part of it with the management of Serenity at Highland that is currently run by Millennia Housing Management. Early in January, the management sent more than 50 notices to senior tenants, claiming that they owed Millennia money. Many were also sent eviction notices.

Unfortunately for the seniors at Serenity, it is not the first time that the state of their housing security has been questionable, to say the least. For years, under the management of Global Ministries, Serenity and other housing options have left vulnerable populations living in deplorable conditions. The relatively new management of Millennia, which came on last year, brought some sense of hope for change, but in the past months, safety and health inspections of Serenity suggest that not much is changing. That, on top of the shutdown, meant residents were threatened with being unhoused, in danger of not even having a roof over their head.

Residents of Serenity will continue their fight, as they were doing well before the shutdown — and during it. We need to stand with them, support them, and amplify their voices. No one should face housing insecurity. Not in our city and not anywhere else, but that is the reality for many folks. We don’t even have accurate numbers of those who currently are unhoused. The recent Point in Time Count, while it offers some understanding as a snapshot of the population of people experiencing homelessness in Memphis, cannot fully account for everyone, especially when held in one of the coldest days in January.

Those articles that show Memphis as one of the most affordable cities to live? That really applies if you have a salaried job. For example, if you are renting a two-bedroom house for $850, and the cost of one month of housing should be a third of your monthly wages, then you should be earning $2,550 a month (that’s $1,275 every biweekly pay day for 80 hours of work). That means that you should be earning about $15.94 per hour (after taxes) just to make rent on a full-time job. Here’s the thing: Tennessee hasn’t changed its minimum wage since 2008. If you have a full-time job at $7.25 (that’s $1,160 a month) … Well, I’ve never even seen a decent room go for under $400, let alone an apartment or house.

Without going further into the math, I think it’s pretty clear how all these problems add up. It’s hard for people today to find housing, much less to save up and secure comfortable, dignified housing for the future, when they aren’t able to work. We’re already seeing how this impacts senior residents. For those who have no support networks, or no family or friends to reach out to, housing insecurity is even more real. Though the end of the shutdown means federal workers will receive their pay and that housing assistance will be delivered, we need to also consider how to address the stack of problems that were added on because of it. That, of course, can get overwhelming, but we know that folks like the senior tenants at Serenity Towers are already doing the work by making themselves heard and not accepting the unjust conditions created by companies like Millennia.

Aylen Mercado is a brown, queer, Latinx chingona and Memphian pursuing an Urban Studies and Latin American and Latinx Studies degree at Rhodes College.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Dipping into Alex Farms’ chicken salad and Clay’s smoked tuna.

CREDIT: Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Alex Farms sells chicken salad out of its shop in Hickory Hill. The “Alex” of Alex Farms is the daughter of Darwin and Kyra Henderson. Kyra says that Alex has always liked animals and the family joke was that she would one day have a farm. But it is son Darrius who proved to be the impetus for this business.

As Kyra Henderson explains, Darwin made some chicken salad for his son’s fifth grade graduation and it was a big hit. And when it was time for Darrius to go to college, Kyra began to sell the salad at local beauty shops and barber shops to help defray the costs of Darrius’ education.

The Hendersons then opened up a shop in Hickory Ridge Mall in 2015. “We were very successful in the deadest mall in the city,” she says. They moved to their current shop near the Kroger on Riverdale last November.

The key to their success, says Henderson, is their smoked, all white-meat chicken they use in the salad. In fact, their motto is, “Where the smoke changes the game.” There are no eggs in the salad, and it’s not very mayonnaise-y. The secret ingredient, she says, is love.

Alex Farms sells three signature sandwiches — chicken salad on toasted white bread; croissant minis with three croissants; and the chicken salad BLT. The addition of bacon is about as fancy as it gets. Eight ounces of the salad are available for $6; 16 ounces, $10.50; and 32 ounces, $20.50. Platters and pans are sold as well, ranging from $35 to $75.

On the Alex Farms’ logo is a super buff chicken. “Faith is the family’s strength,” Henderson says. The Hendersons vowed to put this strength to work. First, they would help people eat better. Second, they would help other businesses. To that end, the shop hosts pop-ups and gave Bluff City Crab a leg up. “It’s okay to help someone,” she says. “We don’t have to get it all ourselves.”

Alex Farms has thrived on word of mouth. Henderson says they have regulars as from far away as Dallas and Atlanta. Henderson says she appreciates all their customers. “If I’m here,” she says, “they get a ‘thank you’ before they are out the door.”

Alex Farms, 4780 Riverdale,

alexfarms.net

Clay’s Smoked Tuna‘s journey began in Orange Beach at a place called the Pony. Abrian Clay ordered the Pony’s smoked tuna dip, and he thought, “Nobody in Memphis does that.” So he decided to do it himself.

He bought some ingredients and started working on his recipe. Clay’s Smoked Tuna uses rotisserie-smoked yellowfish tuna, which is first marinated in white wine. Clay says, all in all, it’s about a nine-hour process. The results, he says, are “to die for.”

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Abrian Clay drops off dip at Curb Market.

In fact, according to Clay, his dip has a cult following, which Clay has nurtured over the past three years on social media. Clay says an illustration of this was when he pitched the dip to Curb Market. He was told to give out samples at the store and they would see how it goes. He put out the call and ended up moving $600 worth of product in three hours. Needless to say, the product, along with Clay’s Smoked Buffalo Chicken dip, is now sold at Curb Market. You can also find his products at Snappy Sacker Grocery and DeeO’s Seafood.

Clay works out of a commercial kitchen on North Parkway. On the weekends, he sells other smoked foods like chicken wings, salmon, lamb and pork chops. Folks can pick up his dip there, too, but he also makes deliveries.

Clay says he would like to get into more grocery stores and restaurants. (Those interested can call 901 848-5640.) One thing he’s not planning to do is expand his product line. His thinking is pretty much, why mess with perfection? Of his tuna salad, Clay says, “It’s a masterpiece.”

Clay’s Smoked Tuna, 726 N. Parkway, facebook.com/clayssmokedtuna

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

‘Vous and Brew: The Best of Memphis, Old and New

One of the great things about the boom in Memphis craft breweries is what we might call the normalization of local beer. That, and the small buzz of boozy civic pride that goes with showing it off. The taprooms around town are great in their own unique ways, but if your clothes aren’t tight enough to hang out at those places, you can pretty much go to any restaurant and be confident that there will be at least a couple of locals on tap.

That’s good for the people who live here, and it’s good for the people who visit. A friend of mine came into town for a meeting the other day, so we went down to the Rendezvous. For one thing, it’s one of his favorite spots to eat in the city, and second, nothing says “business casual” like having the one sportcoat you packed smell like award-winning barbecue at 8:30 the next morning. He’s also a craft beer enthusiast — and one of the relatively few craft connoisseurs to have actually sampled the vaguely hallucinogenic and entirely unfiltered Murffbrau back in our college days.

I’m old enough to remember when those ribs were invariably paired with an enormous pitcher of Michelob. While I don’t remember anyone ever having a problem with the beer selection back then, the ‘Vous has updated its beer list.

Barbecue packs a lot of flavor, and even the best of the breed can be a bit heavy, so you don’t want to pair it with just anything. But truth to tell, those old commercial American-style lagers went pretty well with ribs, no matter what the dilettantes will tell you. To that end, Wiseacre’s Tiny Bomb lager, with its little twist of honey, would be a great choice. Eventually, though, we went with a couple of Traffic IPAs from Crosstown Brewing.

I once described Crosstown’s Brake Czech (not currently available, because no one asked me) as the cosmic ideal of Budweiser. Traffic IPA certainly fits this mold. It is a West Coast style that fizzes with hints of citrus or fruit, hopped enough to keep it dry and crisp, but not enough to really wallop you with that tongue-sucking bitter. Crosstown does offer an Imperial IPA for the dedicated hophead (and I’ve had my moments), but this isn’t it. Traffic IPA is crisp and drinkable and doesn’t get dense, which is what I like about it with a heavyweight food like barbecue.

Since it opened, Crosstown has done a very good job of not getting too clever with its brews. They don’t seem obsessed with inventing a new beer, but are more focused on making the best of some really great styles. In a world that’s preoccupied with staying on top or ahead of the latest trend — this is refreshing. The way beer ought to be. True, there is no reason to be stodgy about beer-making, but it isn’t all about novelty either.

Of course, to show a visitor the best of Memphis, you have to take them to a restaurant that requires cutting through an alley, around a garbage container, and into an underground bunker. Sneer if you want, but that’s the Rendezvous — and Memphis, too. When the royal British princes came to town a few years back, that’s where they ate. Although, if memory serves, they went in through the other door. Granted, that example is a little misleading, but it is true enough.

So, I thought it fitting to pair some great food from a long-beloved Memphis institution with a local beer rolled out of the newly revamped Crosstown Concourse. It’s pointing to a future that, if we keep our heads about us, will stand on the shoulders of the past. It is the history of Memphis and its future, helping each other out.

No writer worth his salt will ever let a metaphor like that go to waste.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Tulsa 95, Tigers 79

Three days after a so-called “statement win” over UCF, the Tigers found themselves on the receiving end of a statement at Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane — 2-6 in the American Athletic Conference at tip-off — seized command over the game’s opening ten minutes and cruised to the victory. Daquan Jeffries played like the all-conference candidate he is, scoring a game-high 25 points. Curran Scott added 20 to help Tulsa improve to 13-9 for the season.

Freshman guard Tyler Harris scored 18 points — all of them after halftime — to help Memphis stay within nine or ten points late in the contest, but the Tigers couldn’t slow the Tulsa attack for any comeback to prove fruitful. The Tigers got no closer than nine points (80-71 with 4:45 to play) after trailing by 17 (48-31) at halftime. The loss is the Tigers’ fourth straight at Tulsa.

Kyvon Davenport scored 12 points and pulled down 14 rebounds for his seventh double-double of the season. Jeremiah Martin and Raynere Thornton added 14 points each. The Tigers shot 41 percent from the field (Tulsa hit 55 percent) and fell to 13-8 for the season (5-3 in the AAC). Memphis suffered 17 turnovers while handing out but 12 assists.

Now 1-4 in true road games this season, the Tigers visit USF (14-6) Saturday. Tip-off is scheduled for 11 a.m.

Categories
News News Blog

City Will Not Invest Pension Money In Epicenter Fund

A city official confirmed Wednesday that Memphis will not invest a portion of its pension money into a local nonprofit’s investment fund.

Dan Springer, deputy director of media affairs for the city, told the Flyer Wednesday that the city’s pension investment committee won’t consider the proposal from the nonprofit Epicenter.

Epicenter asked the city in December to allocate $10 million of its $2.4 billion pension fund to a pool of money used to invest in entrepreneurs here.

The ask was an attempt by Epicenter to reach its immediate goal of aiding 1,000 entrepreneurs, including 500 new firms by 2025 and its ultimate goal of raising $100 million to fuel a 10-year strategy generating resources in and access to capital, talent, local customers, and technology commercialization.

Epicenter has already managed to raise $40 million for its investment fund, thanks in part to an initial $10 million grant from FedEx Corp.


Looking to grow the fund, Epicenter asked both city and county officials for $10 million from each of their pension funds late last year. The city’s Atlanta-based pension consultant, Segal Marco Advisors, did a preliminary assessment and recommended earlier this month that the city not invest the money into Epicenter’s fund.

In a letter to the city earlier this month, the consultant agency’s vice president Rosemary Guillette said the nonprofit doesn’t meet the city’s rules requiring that money be handled by organizations with a low turnover of personnel, capacity to undertake the fund’s accounts, expertise with similar funds, “demonstrable financial stability,” and a “competitive record of performance.”

Guillette also said that per city rules and strict guidelines around investments with the pension fund, the city’s pension fund can only be “invested for the exclusive benefit of the plan participants and solely in their interest.”

“Our preliminary assessment is that the Epicenter Fund does not meet either of the guidelines listed above and does not meet the fiduciary standards of care needed for a pension fund investment,” Guillette said. “Therefore, Segal Marco Advisors cannot recommend this investment opportunity for the pension fund.”

For this reason, Springer said the point is “moot.” The city suggested in a Facebook post last week that the pension investment committee will have the final decision on whether or not to invest in Epicenter’s fund.

However, Springer confirmed Wednesday that the city’s chief financial officer, Shirley Ford, who heads the committee, will not bring the proposal before the body and that the city will not move forward with the proposal.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

2019 Beer Bracket Coming at Ya!

Folks, let’s all raise a beer! The 2019 Beer Bracket Challenge is returning February 11th. Duking it out for the title of Best Beer of Memphis 2019 will be Crosstown, Meddlesome (last year’s champ!), Wiseacre, Memphis Made, High Cotton, and Ghost River.

The bracket has been shaken up a little this year, with new categories.

Toby Sells, who is in charge of the editorial side of this gig, explains, “Instead of limiting selections to just dark, light, IPA, and seasonal, we want to let our breweries choose which four beers they want to compete. It’ll be a sort of Royal Rumble, winner-take-all kind of thing.”

Sells says, “This year, we’re giving each brewery on opportunity to change one match-up they don’t like. Is your beer up against 201 Hoplar (last year’s winner)? Breweries can swap with another beer in another match up. But they can only do that one time.”

Voting begins Wednesday, February 13th with the first round. Rounds last two days, with the last and fifth round running through February 22nd. Basically, it’s Beer: Thirty all the time!

Beers face off NCAA-style. The beer with the most votes moves on. The final two beers left go head-to-head. The winner will be announced on Thursday, February 28th via Facebook Live.

And if that’s not interactive enough for you, you can get in on the action by taking a picture with one of the competing beers to be entered for a prize. And, all those who vote are entered to win a prize.

But wait that’s not all! All Memphis beer fans are invited to Aldo’s Downtown to watch the seeding on Monday, February 11th, at 4:30 p.m. p.m. And then back again at Aldo’s for the awarding of the VanWyngarden Cup to the winning brewery on February 28th, 3 p.m. Be there!

“We started the Beer Bracket Challenge to promote (and have fun with) Memphis beers and those who make it,” says Sells. “Brewers are fun and hard-working folks and they’re making some of the best damn beers in the U.S.of A. right here in Memphis, Tennessee.”

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Clinic Ordered to Pay $3.2M On Kickback Allegations

An East Memphis clinic gave kickbacks to doctors who referred patients there, according to federal prosecutors, and the clinic got popped for it Tuesday to the tune of more than $3.2 million.

WellBound of Memphis, a home dialysis care center, was order to pay the multi-million fine this week to federal and state government divisions, according to Michael Dunavant, United States Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee.

The payment will settle allegations against the company that it violated anti-kickback laws. A suit claimed in doing so the company effectively made false claims to Medicare, Tricare, and TennCare for services rendered at the Memphis facility. That is, doctors referring patients to the clinic were paid to do so by WellBound, according to Dunavant.

U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant

“When medical providers break the law by defrauding the government by providing illegal inducements in violation of the anti-kickback statute, we will use our resources to combat this fraud and hold them accountable,” Dunavant said in a statement.

Such kickbacks “distorts medical decision-making” and “freezes out competition,” according to Derrick L. Jackson, Special Agent in Charge at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General in Atlanta.

“This settlement sends a strong message that Medicare and Medicaid patients are not for sale,” Jackson said.

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Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Memphis TV News Has a Dateline Issue

TV 5

I almost didn’t post this because I worry about sounding like a broken record on this topic. But a recent WMC Facebook post stands out as a special example of how our broadcast media has abandoned any responsibility to the idea of “first do no harm.”

For years Fly on the Wall has observed local news teams over-reporting crime and padding their broadcasts and social media feeds with crime reporting from other markets. Most out of town stories aren’t introduced with a dateline, giving the initial impression that these scandals and abominations might be local. This dislocation is amplified by headline driven “scroll and share” consumer habits. I’m hardly the first critic of this cheap, media economy approach to news delivery, nor am I the only journalist to suggest that an over-saturation of fear-based reporting coupled to endless stream of brown faces builds stereotypes and cements misleading cultural narratives while triggering racist anxiety and public policy crafted in response to racist anxiety.

The post in question:

On one hand, the link attached to WMC’s post does eventually identify Houston a the location of the event. Many, similar posts don’t even do that and one has to be clicked in order to see a dateline pegging the story to Florida, California, or somewhere else in the heartland. Only, people don’t read news in blocks, taking in all the content at once. We read top to bottom, left to right. So the first information consumers get from WMC’s post is the station’s logo followed by news that five officers have been shot and are being transported to the hospital. At this point in reading, anybody with a husband, wife, son, daughter, or friend on the local force experiences a little heart failure. It may be allayed if they read on, but the messenger has already failed by not providing key information up front while appealing to raw emotion and cravenly picking at the scabs of discontent.

As if on cue one of the first commenters emerges from the disinformed fever swamp to pin this mass shooting of police officers on an imagined “race war” ginned up by President Barack Obama.

So why would the commenter think this drug raid-related shooting was somehow related to younger generations and Obama’s secret race war? Although the linked story doesn’t include the usual mug shot and one has to Google a bit to get the details, these perps were 50-ish and white. 

Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle

But an endless news stream showing crime after crime — brown face after brown face — creates a misleading narrative that lends itself to irrational conclusion. Per the old programmer’s maxim: Garbage in, garbage out.

None of this is accidental. It almost feels trite to remind consumers that content is a market run by enormous financial interests who use trusted, appropriately coiffed personalities to anchor their brands and make you think they care about anything besides where the next dollar’s coming from. That’s glib, but it’s neither incorrect or an understatement to say that news content is determined by market, not the public good. 

For newsrooms, police blotter crime reporting with no context and no followup stories requires very little investment and no investment at all if you’re sharing from an affiliate market. This stuff is as close to free as news content gets. Meanwhile, to borrow from media critic James T. Hamilton, useful and informative but more costly and potentially less clickable stories are left undone due to the “difficulties of translating the public benefits from excellent news coverage into private incentives for [media] owners.”

If TV news is our window on the world, the view is constantly grim and brown is the color of mayhem. The market has spoken and the second comment to the post is the kind of dividend it pays. 

All WMC’s social media person had to do to make this post not abhorrent was include the word “Texas” somewhere in the first sentence. That’s it. So, at this point it may be fair to assume that showing a jot of responsibility really would kill our TV news folks, and someone would no doubt interpret their tragic death as yet another victim of Obama’s fantasy race war.

In other words, we’re doomed: Scene at 11. Thanks WMC. 

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Vive le Brooks! coming this spring

Meet Vive le Brooks!

It’s the newly rebranded Memphis Wine + Food Series for 2019 for Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Twenty-seven years ago, the Art of Good Taste series began and later became the Memphis Wine + Food Series. The fund-raising success of the series has grown over the years. It surpassed all records in 2018 with its guests chefs, winemakers, and artists.

But it was time for a change.

The museum is slated to move from Overton Park to Downtown in five years. “As we set our sights on the bluff and the building project, we just want to have a cohesive, recognizable identity for the fund-raising event,” says Brooks major gifts officer Lindsey Hedgepeth.

The new branding will “ensure the longevity” of the series, she says.

“We’re excited to refresh the series and rebrand as it gets bigger, better and continues to break records,” says Brooks executive director Emily Ballew Neff.

Meet the Winemaker, which will be held March 28th at Brooks, will kick off the series. Following a happy hour, guests will sit down to a dinner prepared by Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman. The food will be paired with hand-selected wines from the 2019 Vive le Smash (formerly Brooks Uncorked) winemaker Jesse Katz, a rising star in the Napa Valley with three labels: Aperture, Devil Proof, and The Setting.

The North Berkeley luncheon will be held May 17th at Catherine & Mary’s, one of the restaurants owned by Ticer and Hudman. Courses will be specially paired with hand-selected wines from Billy Weiss’ portfolio of North Berkeley imports.

The Grand Artisan’s Dinner will take place the same night on the terrace at Brooks. It will include a five-course dinner prepared by Hudman and Ticer that will feature select wines from Heitz Family Cellars, which has been one of the dominant producers in Napa Valley for the last 55 years. Guest chefs will include Ryan Prewitt of New Orleans restaurant Peche Seafood Grill.

The Grand Auction, which will be held May 18th at Brooks, will include a happy hour before bidding takes place on more than 50 live auction lots. These will include rare and high profile wines, exotic trips, jewelry, fine art, private dinners, and tastings. Ticer and Hudman will create the cuisine. Wine will be provided by the featured vintners Katz and Heitz Family Cellars. Charlie Hanavich will be the featured artist.

Vive le Que! – the popular fall barbecue event – will return in the fall. More info to come.

VIve le Brooks! Is the premier fund-raising endeavor of the Brooks. Proceeds will make the arts accessible to children and adults across the Mid-South. The series contributed more than $5 million in net revenue to Brooks over the past 27 years. The money directly supports the museum’s educational and community-outreach programs.

David and Sarah Thompson and Bradley and Emily Rice are the 2019 Vive le Brooks! chairs.

Categories
News News Blog

U of M Looks to Acquire Apartments, Re-purposes Foundation to Do So

The U of M Board of Trustees at its specially-called meeting Tuesday

The University of Memphis is looking to add the Gather on Southern to its stock of residence halls.

The U of M Board of Trustees approved the acquisition Tuesday morning at a specially called meeting.

In order to acquire the property, the university is re-purposing its Tigers of Memphis Athletic Foundation as the University of Memphis Auxiliary Foundation.

The Tigers of Memphis Athletic Foundation was established in 2014 to support the university’s athletic endeavors, but after not being utilized it was absolved by the Secretary of State in 2018.

The foundation was re-established this month and now as the University of Memphis Auxiliary Foundation will be responsible for holding and operating auxiliary enterprises that directly benefit the university.

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Raaj Kurapati, the university’s chief financial adviser, said the model for financing public higher education is shifting from reliance on state support to “an expectation of greater reliance on self-generated revenues.”

“The current administrative structure that governs public institutions of higher education at times impedes the university’s ability to react quickly to opportunities and think creatively to take advantage of alternative mechanisms to sustain the current infrastructure and expand services to support future growth,” Kurapati said in a report to the university board of trustees.

The new foundation will help the university be “nimble” and take advantage of alternative opportunities to make investments in infrastructure, like the Gather on Southern.

The Gather on Southern

The Gather, constructed in 2014 by Dallas-based Rael Development Corp., houses 435 beds and sits adjacent to the university opposite the railroad tracks. The university is looking to enter into a partnership with Municipal Acquisitions to manage and eventually acquire the property after 30 years.

Kurapati said the deal would be economically beneficial to the university because it wouldn’t have to take on too much debt with the proposal.

Aside from the financial benefits, Kurapati said the university’s management of the Gather would lead to greater security measures on that property, citing three major felony-type incidents that took place at the Gather over the past three weeks. The acquisition would allow for the university to expand its secure perimeter to include the Gather and to better control what happens there, he said.

U of M president M David Rudd supported the proposal, saying that the average age of the buildings on the campus is about 57 years, and that constructing new residence halls is an expensive endeavor.

“We have not been able to build the kind of housing that is attractive to students,” Rudd said. “We can’t afford to get in the business of building new housing.”

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Rudd said the newest residence hall, Centennial Place, costs the university upwards of $56 million. Acquiring the Gather is a way to contain costs — an overarching goal of the university.

The university’s plan to acquire the property has been endorsed by state officials, but must also be approved by the Attorney’s General office.

This move by the university comes after the creation of a federal program in 2017 that offers financial incentives for those who want to invest in areas designated as “opportunity zones.”

The program allows businesses or individuals to be forgiven of taxes on capital gains when invested in an opportunity zone. Kurapati said that a significant portion of the properties around the university have been designation as opportunity zones, and that the creation of the University of Memphis Auxiliary Foundation will help the university “fully capture the benefit of the program.”