adult – Memphis Flyer

Urban Land Institute trend-watcher Chuck DiRocco says everything comes down to real estate.

“If an adjustable-rate mortgage resets from $600 a month to $900 a month, that’s $300 in disposable income that people are not spending elsewhere,” DiRocco said. “It’s going to affect commercial real estate down the line.”

As one of the authors of the land institute’s Emerging Trends in Real Estate, DiRocco was in Memphis last week to present the study’s findings and to discuss which markets are the “ones to watch.”

And, frankly, Memphis wasn’t one of them.

In terms of commercial and multi-family development potential, the study ranked Memphis 38th out of 45 metropolitan areas. Topping the list were Seattle, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston.

“The top markets to watch fall on the coast,” DiRocco said. “It all comes down to global pathways.”

That and what the study calls “24-hour cities.”

“For years, Emerging Trends has extolled the handful of America’s 24-hour cities — multifaceted markets with desirable, walkable residential neighborhoods near commercial cores: New York [City], Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago. These markets — along with Southern California’s suburban agglomeration and more recently Seattle — have gained further status as the preeminent U.S. global gateways,” read the report.

With the economy on a downswing, investors want to be safe, not sorry. But DiRocco noted that logistics experts are beginning to look inland for global gateways. And that is where local panelists think Memphis could succeed.

“Though we’re not a port city,” said local panelist Jim Mercer of CB Richard Ellis, “I think we’re probably the next best thing.”

With FedEx’s hub and the busiest cargo airport in the nation, Memphis is uniquely situated to become what experts call an “aerotropolis,” a city built around a bustling airport and aviation-intensive businesses.

But, as DiRocco says, everything depends on real estate.

Which might explain why, later that same day at a public hearing, representatives from airport area businesses and the Memphis medical community spoke against the city’s proposed sexually oriented business ordinance.

The area around the airport includes an unlikely combination of Smith & Nephew, Medtronic, Elvis Presley Enterprises, FedEx, and various adult businesses.

If enacted, the city ordinance would replace a new county ordinance that outlaws topless dancing and prohibits alcohol in the clubs. The city ordinance would allow beer sales and topless dancing.

If the City Council decides to do nothing, the county ordinance will go into effect countywide January 1st.

“We would prefer to adopt stricter guidelines,” said Bill Griffin, a senior vice president with Smith & Nephew. “We want to make the area around the airport a nice place to do business.”

John Lawrence, head of the Airport Area Development Corporation, said member businesses were concerned about the secondary effects of sexually oriented businesses, such as crime and falling property values.

“Today, it’s an area where industry is bringing in prospect after prospect. They’re bringing in doctors, researchers. Do we value these businesses?” Lawrence asked.

It seems strippers are standing (or dancing) in the way of Memphis’ potential in the global economy. But that’s not quite fair. As a representative for the sexually oriented businesses, attorney Edward Bearman pointed out that nothing in the new ordinance makes sexually oriented businesses safer or reduces crime.

“The reason the clubs are located near the airport is because that’s where the zoning will allow them,” he said. “They have money invested in this town, just the same as other businesses.”

I’m not going to get into whether clubs should close at 3 a.m. or midnight or whether they should allow beer sales or brown-bagging, nude dancing or semi-nude dancing.

But if the city’s goal is to encourage global pathways through Memphis, then the airport area is a precious commodity. Elvis Presley Enterprises, for instance, has a $250 million plan to transform the area around Graceland much like Disney did in Anaheim, California.

If the city doesn’t enact an ordinance, the county ordinance might regulate the strip clubs right out of business. I’m not sure that’s right, but lap dances and back rooms don’t seem to fit with a global commercial hub and an international tourist destination.

Adult businesses may offer something to see, but they won’t make Memphis a market to watch.

At some point, our village elders decided that a teenager becomes an adult at age 18. I am convinced this was determined by folks who had never met any 18-year-olds.

My son left for college this week, and I have to learn to temper my expectations for his tenure at his chosen institution of higher learning so we do not kill each other. He started early with summer school, a strategy adopted by colleges to steer kids away from actually working at summer jobs. Too much reality detracts from the soft, theoretical la-la land of college.

There is a societal pressure for parents to ride kids hard to make good grades, and I wonder if we are not just driving ourselves and our kids nuts by doing so. Kids have to have a light on and want to learn something. It is at this point that they get interested and absorb information that they seek out themselves. Certainly, it seldom has anything to do with reading Chaucer.

We in the U.S. overeducate many kids well beyond their interest in school and, in many cases, their abilities. The reality is that college is often a place to store a kid in the hope that he or she grows up by the time they are done. They learn many life lessons there, such as how much liquor they can hold and how to pay speeding and parking tickets.

My son took a less difficult route than my daughter, who is at Vanderbilt. He wanted to go to a big, state SEC school, and Georgia, our state, which is 49th in education, was a bit ambitious. So he went to Mississippi — securely ranked at number 50.

He is leaving nothing to chance by letting hard classes get in the way of his college experience. At his age, some kids drink from the fountain of knowledge, but he will only gargle and spit it out — probably on a fraternity pledge.

On the bright side, he does have some college ambitions, aside from dressing well and dating lots of co-eds. He knows that Ole Miss is ranked the second-best party school in the country, and he feels strongly that he and a few kids from his high school who are going there with him can soon get it to number one.

In fairness, most of a student’s education in college occurs outside of the classroom. And with all the tenured liberal professors being harbored on today’s campuses, that is sometimes a good thing. And Ole Miss is not as bad as most colleges; I understand it has one professor who once voted for a Republican.

In the end, we have to let our children go and discover life on their own terms. By the time they’re 18, the die is cast, anyway.

My son’s view seems to be that the sooner he gets behind in school, the more time he has to catch up. It will be fun to see if this pans out for him in college.

We seem to agree on very little these days, even on issues like which way his baseball cap should point. He says that if an 18-year-old can fight in Iraq, he ought to be able to drink in the U.S.A. I told him that we agree, and if he wants to sign up for the Marines and serve in Iraq, I certainly would allow him to drink.

A friend reminded me of a scene from Sanford and Son, one of my favorite shows from my youth. Fred Sanford said to his son Lamont: “Didn’t you learn anything from being my son? What do you think I’m doing this all for?”

Lamont answers: “Yourself.”

Fred: “Yeah, you learned something.”

Parents who push their kids too hard are usually doing it for themselves and not for their kids. All we can hope is to keep our kids safe until that light comes on someday and they find something that they really want to pursue. It is rarely what we had in mind.