Tag: Jim Strickland

The Year Ahead in Memphis

Post author By Memphis Flyer Staff
Post date December 24, 2015

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Business

Bass Pro Shops: Last year, right here in this very same spot in this very same issue, we said the opening for the Bass Pro store in the Pyramid was delayed until May 2015. (We apologized because in 2013, right here in this very same spot in this very same issue, we said you’d be doing your 2014 holiday shopping there. Remember? No? Well…)

It’s not big news that the wait is over. Bass Pro Shops in the Pyramid opened April 29th with a line of customers that stretched into the parking lot. More than 35,000 visitors cranked the turnstiles that day.

Brandon Dill

Bass Pro: now open.

By August 4th, more than one million people had visited Bass Pro Shops in the Pyramid. In mid-December, store officials said Bass Pro had seen more than two million visitors. Also, the store sold more than 27 tons of fudge in about eight months.

Ikea: Memphis rode high on the 2014 news that Ikea, the Swedish retailer with a cult following, announced it was building a store in Memphis, not “It-City” Nashville. And, boy, did we rub Nashville’s nose in it (on social media). Nashville, ya burnt! Ha!

Then, we noticed that no work — nothing — was being done on the Ikea site behind Costco on Germantown Parkway. The store, the source of our cool cachet, was held up by a tax dispute. The city breathed a sigh of relief when, in late November, locals came up with a tax-payment workaround and Ikea said it would go ahead with the Memphis store, with a late 2016 opening date.

Brandon Dill

What’s in store for the Mid-South Coliseum?

Mid-South Coliseum: Can rape allegations save a building? Maybe. Last January, the Mid-South Coliseum seemed destined for the wrecking ball. Locals were considering the Tourist Development Zone deal, which would fund a huge plan to reinvent the Mid-South Fairgrounds into a youth sports destination. That plan had no place for the Coliseum.

A grassroots group, the Coliseum Coalition, started organizing. They hosted two events, called Roundhouse Revivals, to get people to the Coliseum and to get them to share their thoughts as to what it could be. The Urban Land Institute even said part of the Coliseum should be saved.

Then this summer, Robert Lipscomb, the city’s former director of Housing and Community Development and the major backer of the youth sports plan, was accused of raping a Memphis teenager, years ago. Lipscomb was fired, and the entire Fairgrounds deal, which includes the Coliseum’s future, was left up in the air, where it remains.

Tennessee Brewery: The only bad news about the Tennessee Brewery this year was for the thousands who loved drinking beer in its makeshift annual beer garden. Developer Billy Orgel bought the brewery building in 2014, a big win for preservationists, as the building was slated for demolition. In January, Orgel and his team unveiled a plan that included apartments, a parking garage, retail shops, and more, in a $25 million project called the Brewery District. Orgel promises a restoration of the historic building and a renewed vibrancy to South Main. He’s said the buildings could be complete and occupied in 2016.

The Pinch District: Not much is yet known about the future of The Pinch, except local leaders are making plans for changes.

In January, the district was in the crosshairs of the Tennessee Historical Commission, slated to be removed from the National Register of Historic Places. The plan was thwarted, then a MEMFix event in April brought in thousands.

In October, Memphis City Council member, Berlin Boyd, assembled government and business leaders to announce they were moving forward with plans in the Pinch. Though Boyd didn’t share many details, he did say that the area’s two largest tenants — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Bass Pro — would likely drive much of the direction of the plan. That meeting came right before St. Jude announced an expansion plan for its Memphis campus worth about $9 billion (yes, billion with a “B”).

The Commercial Appeal: Until this year, the city’s daily paper had had one owner — Scripps — since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. But it got a new owner in the spring of 2015 — Journal Media Group — and will likely have another by March.

Gannett Co., the largest newspaper company in the U.S., agreed in October to buy JMG for about $280 million. If the deal is approved by stakeholders and the government, it is expected to close in the first three months of 2016.

The move could possibly bring more layoffs in the CA newsroom. Some analysts are concerned the move could mean less emphasis on local reporting and bring a homogenous USA Today format to the paper’s look and writing. The deal also worries some media watchers, as it would mean Gannett would own all but one of the state’s major dailies.

Midtown Market: Those blighted buildings on the southwest corner of Union and McLean could be gone by June. That was developer Ron Belz’s prediction earlier this month to Memphis City Council members.

Later that day, the council agreed the city would take out a loan for $4 million to help Belz build “Midtown Market,” a mix of apartments, retail shops, and, perhaps, an “upscale” or “boutique” grocery store.

The city’s part of the funding was one of the last (and most critical) pieces of funding Belz said he needed to make the project work. City officials are still working on a plan to control traffic around the site, which will also soon have a new, expanded Kroger nearby.

Central Station: Want to watch a movie downtown next year? Well, it’s likely that you’ll be able to. Developers want to transform the 101-year-old Central Station building and the area around it at the corner of G.E. Patterson and Main into a residential and entertainment campus.

Henry Turley Co. and Community Capital LLC plan to transform the station building into a hotel, with a restaurant and some retail shops. Around the corner, they hope to build a Malco movie theater, apartment buildings, and, possibly, a grocery store.

The city council approved $600,000 for the project this month, which developers said they needed to begin construction. Expect dirt to move on the project soon.

One Beale: Scrapped during the recession, One Beale is expected to rise at the western end of Beale in 2016. If built, the $150 million project will change the city’s skyline with two — possibly three — new towers right on the Mississippi River: a 12-story office building, a 22-story hotel, and a 30-story apartment tower. Construction could take more than two years, pushing the grand opening to sometime in 2018. — Toby Sells

Food & Drink

The Green Room: The latest project from Jeff Johnson of Local/Oshi Burger Bar/Agave Maria, will be an event space and restaurant with a pop-up concept. Johnson is hoping to start holding events in the Green Room, located in the old Evergreen Grill space on Overton Park, as soon as January. He’s also planning to launch the restaurant that same month.

The pop-up aspect is ambitious. Fare and chefs will change on a regular basis. One idea Johnson is currently contemplating is a French brasserie. Johnson says he’s been in contact with chefs from Memphis and around the country to work in the Green Room. As for the name, he says it’s a nod to the location, the Evergreen neighborhood, as well as to green rooms, a space for celebrities and VIPs at TV shows and concerts. Johnson says he wants customers to feel like they’re the star of the show.

Justin Fox Burks

Lyfe Kitchen

LYFE Kitchen and Catherine & Mary’s in the Chisca: The opening date is unknown at this point for these two restaurants set for the old Chisca Hotel, though it should be sometime in the coming year. The Carlisle Corporation, which has been renovating the Chisca, bought a minority share of LYFE in 2015 and moved its headquarters to Memphis. Carlisle opened the first Memphis LYFE, offering healthier meals in a fast-casual setting, in East Memphis.

In regards to Catherine & Mary’s, the partnership with Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman of Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, Hog & Hominy, and Porcellino’s was a bit of a surprise, as Ticer and Hudman seemed dedicated to building something of a restaurant commune on Brookhaven Circle. Catherine & Mary’s, according to a press release that announced the deal, will serve “traditional Italian cooking through the lens of the American South.”

The Curb Market: The Curb Market is a hyper-local market set to open in the old Easy Way space on Cooper in late January. It’s owned by Peter Schutt, who is also owner of two farms as well as The Daily News Publishing Co. Ben Fant of Farmhouse is working with Curb on its marketing. Fant says in an email: “Completely LOCALLY sourced produce, meats, and groceries. The goal of the market is to support local farmers and source their goods first. Depending on seasons, they will source regionally and on occasion, nationally, but always U.S.A. All meats will be grass-fed and free-range. Everything in the market will be economically viable and sustainable … The focus is on agriculture not agribusiness.”

Wine in Grocery Stores: It’s happening. Area grocery stores can start carrying wine in July. — Susan Ellis

Crime & Public Safety

Despite a shortage of Memphis Police officers, crime steadily decreased in 2015. Comparing statistics from January to November, crime was down 1.5 percent countywide and .6 percent in the city.

But the drop since 2006 has been phenomenal — 17.8 percent countywide and 13.6 percent in the city. That’s when the Memphis Police Department (MPD) first started using data-driven policing via its Blue Crush model. It was also the first year of Operation: Safe Community (OSC), a massive, multi-agency, crime-fighting initiative from the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission that addresses everything from offender recidivism to truancy.

“We’re down significantly from 2006, and if you go back to what some might say are the good old days of the late 1980s, we’re considerably down from those numbers as well,” said Crime Commission interim director Rick Masson.

It’s impossible to predict crime rates for 2016, but Masson said he believes we’re on track to continue the crime decrease. Next year will be the last year for the current version of OSC, and various law enforcement agencies will be coming together to work on another five-year OSC plan to launch in 2017.

The MPD will gain a new police director in 2016. Current Director Toney Armstrong announced in October that’d step down once Mayor-elect Jim Strickland found a replacement. One challenge for Strickland and the new police director will be hiring and retaining officers.

“There’s a shortage of police officers, so that’s something that will have to be addressed by the new administration,” Masson said.

At a public forum this month, Strickland’s transition team threw out a few ideas to reduce crime. They set a goal of decreasing police resignations by 20 percent in his first year and 30 percent each year during the rest of his term. They also want to reduce police response time to an average of three minutes, educate the public on the proper use of 911, and fully staff the 911 call center, and seek public/private partnerships to offset the costs of police recruitment classes.

The city’s rape kit testing backlog should be cleared in 2016, according to Memphis Sexual Assault Kit Task Force coordinator Doug McGowen. “We hope to have the vast majority of the kits tested in 2016. We ship about 300 a month out, and we have about 3,900 that need additional analysis, so we’ll be very close to meeting that goal,” McGowen said.

McGowen, who has been tapped by Strickland as the city’s new chief operating officer, said he’d continue to run the task force for the foreseeable future.

— Bianca Phillips

Music

The New Daisy: After signing an exclusive booking deal with Live Nation, the New Daisy went through major renovations and became one of the best places to see live music in Memphis. The “new” New Daisy features a state-of-the-art sound system and stage lighting, and even a VIP area known as the Big Star Room.

After years of being the bookend on the dark side of Beale Street, the New Daisy is alive and well, and bringing big names like Dropkick Murphys and Disturbed to Memphis in 2016.

FedExForum: The Forum has a stacked calendar early in 2016, with Barry Manilow, The Doobie Brothers, and Billy Joel (the Piano Man’s only Tennessee appearance) coming to town.

The Hi-Tone: The club changed hands just over a year ago, but the Crosstown venue is still going strong under the direction of Brian “Skinny” McCabe, hosting festivals such as Gonerfest and Rock For Love, in addition to specializing in metal, punk, and garage rock shows.

Bar DKDC: This small Cooper-Young restaurant/bar has become a full-fledged venue, with local and touring talent playing the room on a weekly basis. Don’t expect that to stop anytime soon.

Rocket Science Audio: RSA continues to be one of the most intriguing venues/recording studios in Memphis, and their monthly Variety Show has come a long way since its inception. Expect big things from them in 2016.

Found: Another new venue worth a mention is the vintage clothing/furniture store on Broad Avenue that every so often hosts musical up-and-comers of all kinds in its back room.

Lafayette’s: The signature music club in Overton Square continues to make the Square a hot destination for tourists and locals alike by booking bands every night of the week. Expect that to continue in 2016.

Levitt Shell: It was recently announced that the Shell will undergo $4 million dollars in renovations. The Overton Park outdoor venue will receive upgrades to its sound system, bathrooms, and musician load-in area. In addition, a bigger, permanent area for vendors will be constructed. All those improvements should make for an exciting (and packed) Concert Series.

The Bands: Plenty of Memphis acts had strong years in 2015, including NOTS, Cities Aviv, Julien Baker, and Lucero, to name but a few.

NOTS released their debut We Are Nots late last November, then did lots of touring before impressing the U.K. label Heavenly Recordings at South by Southwest. The label brought NOTS to Europe last month for a slew of shows. NOTS begin working on their sophomore LP in January.

Cities Aviv also continued to be one of the most intriguing figures in the Memphis rap community, even if he spent most of the year in New York City. He’s back in Memphis now, and his new album Your Discretion is Trust, is some of his best work.

After conquering Europe with his sidekick Quinton-JeVon Lee, aka RPLD GHSTS, expect to see plenty of Cities Aviv in 2016, starting with a Hi-Tone show in early January.

Andrea Morales

Julien Baker

Julien Baker is another Memphian who had to leave the city to get national recognition (she currently attends MTSU). Her debut album Sprained Ankle, released this fall, has been championed by NPR, Pitchfork, and every other music media outlet that has good taste.

Other local bands to watch out for in 2016 include Deering and Down (who have a new album coming in early 2016 from BAA), HEELS, Aquarian Blood, Evil Army, RPLD GHSTS, and the Sheiks, who are already headed back to Europe in 2016 with Jack Oblivian.

Hometown champs, Lucero, dropped a great new record that they recorded at Ardent with Ted Hutt, and they also join the ranks of Memphis bands crossing the pond in early 2016.

Deck the Halls: The 2015 openings of the Blues Hall of Fame and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame were notable events, creating two worthwhile institutions that will honor Memphis music for years to come, in addition to bringing in tourism revenue. The opening ceremony of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame brought Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake, and Keith Richards to town, making for one of the most star-studded events of the year.

Vinyl Thoughts: The Memphis Record Pressing plant is up and running, cranking out records for Sony, Fat Possum and Goner, and bringing the vinyl business back to the birthplace of rock-and-roll. It’s an amazing addition to our music resume to be one of the few cities in the United States to have a vinyl pressing plant. Take that, Nashville! — Chris Shaw

Politics

Hillary’s Boast and Red-state Reality: The most obvious political fact about 2016 is that it’s a presidential-election year, and that fact would ordinarily not be expected to ruffle Tennessee’s red-state Republican feathers, except that presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has already barnstormed the state once, declaring that she intends to “turn Tennessee blue” again by dint of hard and purposeful campaigning here — something that Barack Obama conspicuously did not do in either 2008 or 2012.

Of course, presidential elections still call out Democrats in disproportionate numbers to the polls, and if Donald Trump should keep on keeping on and succeed in telling the Republican establishment, “You’re fired,” then really weird things could happen here.

But, as things stand now, Clinton would have to recreate a state party infrastructure, more or less Phoenix-like, from the ashes.

City Council and County Commission: Memphis’ newly configured city council seems well-stocked with youthful, business-friendly members, a good match-up with the city’s new mayor, Jim Strickland, who made his name as a council advocate of fiscal solvency above all. (Which means that the core issue of how to retain a stable police force in the absence of restored benefits will continue to be a vexation.) And, while Democrats are nominally a majority-of-one on the Shelby County Commission, the chairman, Terry Roland, is a Republican, and, on key votes, Democrats Justin Ford and Eddie Jones fairly persistently go with the GOP, more than canceling out Republican Steve Basar’s working relationship with the Democrats.

Beyond matters of partisanship, the unresolved issue in county government is whether the current commission power struggle with county Mayor Mark Luttrell succeeds, and to what extent.

Electoral Matters: It wouldn’t be an even-numbered election year without somebody venturing once again to do that which so far nobody has succeeded in doing — namely, mounting a serious challenge against 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen.

Among those who have been talked up — by themselves or by others — as itching to take a shot are attorney Ricky Wilkins (a redux case from 2014), state Representative G.A. Hardaway, and, most recently, state Senator Lee Harris.

And, though Harris’ seat wouldn’t be the right location geographically, current Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, an East Memphis Republican, is looking hard at making a run, ASAP, for the state legislature. That’s why Shafer, the commission’s budget chair for three years running, opted to chair the legislative affairs committee this time around.

Haslam’s Task: The 2016 session of the General Assembly is just around the corner, convening on January 12th. And that aforesaid GOP legislative majority has seemingly peaked out at a hyper-conservative level too daunting for either of moderate GOP governor Bill Haslam’s two major wish-list items — his Insure Tennessee proposal for Medicaid (TennCare) expansion, which was blocked in the General Assembly last year, or any form of a gasoline tax to fund overdue attention to the state’s increasingly obsolete infrastructure.

State Senator Ron Ramsey, the state’s lieutenant governor and presiding officer of the Senate, usually calls the shots on such things, and he has basically declared that the Medicaid-expansion matter will not be considered until and unless an elected Republican president, post-2016, proposes the additional funding via block grants to the states.

As for the question of infrastructure improvements, a little bit of good news — a modest windfall in unexpectedly good state revenue collections — may extend the bad news of inaction on creating new funding sources for roads, bridges, and the like. Current thinking within the legislature is apparently to sprinkle the bonus funds where they are most needed but to eschew any major upgrades. — Jackson Baker

LGBT Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality nationwide will ensure that 2015 goes down as perhaps the most important year in the fight for LGBT rights.

But, in Tennessee (and a handful of other conservative states), the battle might not be over. The Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act was filed in September, and if passed, it would revert the state definition of marriage back to one man and one woman, and it would require the state attorney general to defend local government officials who refuse to recognize the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling.

Justin Fox Burks

Cole Bradley

“The federal government doesn’t preempt the action of legislatures. In other words, if the federal government gets wind of an unconstitutional bill being filed, they don’t send a note to the legislature saying, by the way, you can’t do that,” said Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) Executive Director Chris Sanders.

“What happens is the legislature passes its law, and it goes into effect. It harms someone, and then someone has the basis to sue the state. If passed, it could temporarily interrupt marriage equality,” he said.

Sanders believes the bill would eventually be struck down, once lawsuits make their way to the Supreme Court.

“I think they’ll lose at every turn. That’s why we all pray for [Supreme Court Justice] Ruth Bader Ginsberg every night,” Sanders said.

Sanders said TEP is also watching a state Pastor Protection Act, which would “protect religious clergy” from having to perform same-sex weddings. But he points out that such a bill would be redundant since pastors are already protected by the First Amendment.

“There could also be bills that ‘protect’ businesses from having to do business with our community, particularly wedding vendors,” Sanders said. “And another possible bill would exempt local government officials, like a county clerk, from having to serve our community. That’s a Kim Davis-style bill.”

Transgender rights also may be on the line in Tennessee in 2016. Tennessee Representative Bud Hulsey announced his intention to file a bill that would prevent transgender students from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

Some possible bills may have a direct impact on LGBT equality in Memphis.

“We’ve heard some rumors that there could be a bill to try and undo existing local nondiscrimination ordinances, like the one in Memphis,” Sanders said.

On a more positive note, the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center (MGLCC) has announced that they will launch a new program in 2016 to house homeless LGBT youth. Dubbed the Metamorphosis Project, it will employ refurbished shipping containers as transitional housing structures, and it will be the first housing project for LGBT young adults in the city. The shipping containers will be set up on property the MGLCC has purchased in Orange Mound from the Shelby County Land Bank.

“We’re going to alter the containers by adding windows and doors and making them into individual living spaces with a bedroom and a bathroom,” said MGLCC Youth Services Manager Stephanie Reyes. “And we’ll have an administration building there with a classroom, where we’ll teach classes on writing a resume, nutrition, and life skills.”

— Bianca Phillips

Film

The new year will kick off with Ocsar hopefuls like The Revenant hitting Memphis screens, and the Sundance Film Festival debuting the year’s crop of indie and arthouse pictures. We’ll get to see if the long-delayed Western Jane Got a Gun starring Natalie Portman was salvaged after a troubled production. February looks livelier than usual with the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!, the Marvel comedy superhero Deadpool, and Zoolander 2, which heralds the return of Ben Stiller’s beloved male model. March gets us the Iraq War comedy/drama Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and the long awaited Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice which, if the trailers are any indication, could be a historic debacle. More intriguing is the biopic I Saw the Light where Tom Hiddleston (aka Loki) plays Hank Williams.

Richard Linklater’s new film Everybody Wants Some debuts in April, as does Iron Man director Jon Favreau’s live action adaptation of The Jungle Book, which presumably has some reason to exist. Summer blockbuster season starts in earnest with the new Marvel epic Captain America: Civil War and X-Men: Apocalyspe. For the more serious-minded, there’s Snowden, the tale of the NSA whistleblower. June brings us the big-budget video game adaptation Warcraft, helmed by Moon director Duncan Jones, and the sequel to Finding Nemo, Finding Dory.

July sees Steven Spielberg’s Roald Dahl adaptation The BFG and The Legend of Tarzan, directed by Harry Potter‘s David Yates from a script penned by Memphis’ own Craig Brewer. Then the all-female Ghostbusters remake will do battle with Star Trek Beyond. In August we get the all-villain comic book oddity Suicide Squad and the story of the gulf oil spill in Deepwater Horizon.

The theme for November will be magic, with Marvel’s sorcerer supreme Doctor Strange squaring off against J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, while Indie Memphis brings the scrappy underdogs to Memphis screens. December will be once again dominated by Star Wars with Rogue One telling the story of how Princess Leia got the plans to the Death Star.

Tags 2016 Presidential campaign, Bass Pro Shop Pyramid, Best Films 2016, Best Memphis Recordings 2015, Catherine & Mary's, Central Station, Chisca, Curb Market, Hillary Clinton, Jim Strickland, LYFE Kitchen, Midtown Market, Predictions for Memphis 2016, The Green Room, Toney Armstrong

News The Fly-By

Highlights and Lowlights of 2015

Post author By
Post date December 24, 2015

January

• Redevelopment plans for the Tennessee Brewery building were unveiled. Developer Billy Orgel plans to convert the historic building into apartments, build an adjacent six-story residential structure called the Wash House, and build a four-story parking garage across Tennessee Street.

• Wanda Wilson, the flamboyant and much-loved long time proprietor of Midtown’s P&H Cafe, died. Wilson was beloved by generations of Memphis’ artists, actors, journalists, students, and eccentrics of every stripe.

February

• Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) President Paul Morris announced that he would step down in the summer. Morris has gone on to work with his family business at Jack Morris Auto Glass. In September, Terence Patterson was selected to replace Morris. Patterson was treasurer of the DMC’s Center City Development Corporation.

Zeke Logan

• WXMX 98.1 radio personality Zeke Logan, co-host of the Drake & Zeke show, died. Logan, whose real name was David Millar, was diagnosed with cancer several months earlier.

March

• Mayor A C Wharton announced his intention to hire Jack Sammons, former Memphis-Shelby Airport Authority board chair/former city councilman/president of Ampro Industries, Inc. hair products company, as the city chief administrative officer. Sammons replaced George Little, who was moved to the position of special assistant for minority and women’s affairs and safety.

April

• Long time Memphis City Councilman Shea Flinn resigned his post after accepting a new job as senior vice president of the Greater Memphis Chamber’s Chairman’s Circle. Attorney Alan Crone was appointed to Flinn’s seat, but in January, newly elected Philip Spinosa Jr. will take the seat.

• Goldcrest 51 beer enthusiast Kenn Flemmons of Little Rock recreated the classic Memphis beer. He offered the first taste at the Revival beer garden in the Tennessee Brewery. Select bars across the city continue to sell Goldcrest 51 on draft.

• Bass Pro Shops opened its long-awaited super store in the long-vacant Pyramid. The sporting goods store features a bowling alley, a swamp with live alligators, a restaurant and hotel, and elevator rides to the top of the Pyramid.

May

• Blues legend B.B. King died in his sleep at age 89. He had been struggling with diabetes and was in hospice care.

• The Tennessee Department of Transportation announced that they planned to close the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge (the “Old Bridge”) for up to nine months in 2017 during a proposed, three-year construction project on the I-55 interchange at E.H. Crump. In July, TDOT decided to pause the project and further study its economic impact.

• Noura Jackson, who was sentenced to 20 years and nine months for second-degree murder in her mother’s 2005 stabbing death, accepted an Alford plea and will be released from prison in spring 2017. Her conviction was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court last year, which cited then-Assistant District Attorney Amy Weirich with suppression of evidence in the case and illegal statements in her closing argument against Jackson.

June

• Ballet Memphis unveiled plans to raze the old, crumbling French Quarter Inn in Overton Square and erect a new studio space.

• Local same-sex couples lined up to marry after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality. Memphians Chris and Bradley Brower were the first Shelby County couple to marry.

July

• Nineteen-year-old Darrius Stewart, who was unarmed, was shot and killed by Memphis Police officer Connor Schilling during a traffic stop. In November, Weirich recommended Schilling be indicted for the shooting, but a grand jury failed to indict. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation file on the case was released in December, and it shows discrepancies between Schilling’s story and the stories of multiple witnesses.

Darrius Stewart

• A macaque monkey named Zimm escaped her enclosure at the Memphis Zoo, sending Zoo officials on a wild, um, monkey chase through the Zoo’s culvert system. Someone quickly launched a @Zimm901 Twitter account. Zimm was located a few days later.

• Widespread Panic fan Troy Goode died after being hog-tied by Southaven Police. Goode had taken LSD and was acting erractically when police attempted to subdue him. An attorney for Goode’s family ordered an independent autopsy, which concluded that Goode died from complications related to being hog-tied. The Mississippi state autopsy report claimed Goode died of an LSD overdose.

August

• Memphis Police officer Sean Bolton was shot and killed by Tremaine Wilbourn after Bolton stopped to check on an illegally parked car that Wilbourn was a passenger in. Wilbourn ran but turned himself in a few days after the shooting. In December, Wilbourn was indicted on federal carjacking charges and felony possession of a firearm. He also faces state charges for murder.

• After white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine church members at a historically black church in Charleston, North Carolina, in June, Memphis joined other cities and states in calling for the removal of Confederate symbols. The city council approved an ordinance allowing the city to remove the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue in Health Sciences Park, and they also approved a resolution to move the remains of Forrest and his wife, which are buried at the park.

• Longtime Action News 5 chief meteorologist Dave Brown retired after a 53-year career in radio and TV.

Robert Lipscomb

• Robert Lipscomb, the director of Housing and Community Development, was relieved of duties following an anonymous complaint that he had sexual relations with a minor. After news broke, other accusers alleged similar relations with Lipscomb. Lipscomb was also suspended from his role as director of the Memphis Housing Authority.

September

• Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong announced that officers will begin wearing body cameras. By year-end, he said they should have 2,000 cameras deployed.

• Trader Joe’s finally confirmed they were opening a store in Germantown in 2016.

October

• Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland defeats incumbent Wharton in the mayoral race. Strickland will begin his new job as city leader in January.

• Armstrong, who has served as police director since 2011, announced that he’ll retire once Strickland finds a replacement.

• Police officer Terence Oldridge was shot and killed outside his home, apparently after a dispute with neighbor Lorenzo Clark. Clark was indicted for being a felon in possession of guns.

November

• The Urban Land Institute suggested a portion of the Mid-South Coliseum should be saved and used for concerts, but they also suggested the Fairgrounds needed a youth sports facility. The issue of what to do with the Coliseum had been a point of contention all year between preservationists and the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development, which had been pushing to raze the arena, acquire TDZ status for the land, and build a youth sports facility.

• The Economic Development Growth Engine approved an extension of IKEA’s PILOT agreement, and the Swedish retailer officially announced that it would open its Germantown Parkway store in the fall of 2016.

December

• Eugene Cashman, president of the nonprofit Urban Child Institue (UCI), announced his retirement plans in December. A Flyer story in August reported that critics say UCI sits on a huge investment fund but gives little of it to the community and also noted that Cashman has for a long time made a top-of-the-line salary.

• Strickland announced his transition team, which includes new Memphis Fire Director Gina Sweat, Chief of Staff Lisa Geater, Chief Operating Officer Doug McGowen, and former reporters Ursala Madden and Kyle Veazey on his communications team, among others.

Tags A C Wharton, Darrius Stewart, Goldcrest 51, Jim Strickland, Robert Lipscomb, Zeke Logan

Politics Politics Feature

2015: A Year of Change in Memphis Politics

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date December 24, 2015

Sitting uneasily at the same table for the annual Myron Lowery prayer breakfast on January 1, 2015 were future antagonists Mayor A C Wharton (left) and Jim Strickland (in center). At far right is Council candidate Mickell Lowery, who would be upset in a Council race by underdog Martavius Jones.

The year 2015 began with a bizarre New Year’s Day event in which Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland was asked to stand up by a reigning figure in city politics, whereupon said official, council chairman Myron Lowery, basically called Strickland out for his presumption in considering a race against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

The year will end with the selfsame Strickland preparing to stand on a stage on New Year’s Day 2016 and take the oath as mayor, while both Wharton and Lowery exit city government, and Mickell Lowery, the latter’s son, wonders what went wrong with his own failed bid to succeed his father on the council.

On the national stage, similar head-scratching must be going on at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport and in other establishmentarian councils where the old reliable form sheets seem to have gone suddenly and sadly out of date.

Everywhere, it would seem, the representatives and figureheads of things-as-usual are hearing variations on “You’re fired,” which is how it might be put by Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire and political eccentric whose out-of-nowhere surge to the top of the pack among Republican presidential contenders is one of the obvious indicators of the new mood.

One of the most trusted end-of-year polls of the GOP race had Trump at 42 percent and Jeb Bush at 3 percent. Less extremely, back in our own bailiwick, the formerly invincible Wharton, whose two earlier mayoral races netted him victory totals of 70 percent and 60 percent, finished his 2015 reelection effort with a woeful 22 percent of the vote, a full 20 points behind the victorious Strickland, in what was essentially a four-person race.

It takes no crystal ball or soothsaying skill to see that there was discontent against traditional management — again, what we call the establishment — in all the public places: locally, nationally, and even statewide. Governor Bill Haslam, a pleasant, well-intentioned man with a little sense and sensibility, was spurned by the leadership and rank-and-file of his own Republican Party in the General Assembly in Nashville.

His prize proposal, a home-grown version of Medicaid (TennCare) expansion called Insure Tennessee, was just different enough from the semantically vulnerable Obamacare to pass muster with the state’s hospitals, medical professionals, and — according to polls — the Tennessee public at large. It was opposed by the GOP speakers of the two legislative chambers in both a special session in February and the regular session later on and kept thereby from ever getting a vote on the floor of either the House or the Senate.

As Haslam noted in a barnstorming expedition across the state later in the year, the state also had a serious need for upgrading of its roads, bridges, and infrastructure in general, but — once burned and twice shy from the rejection of Insure Tennessee — he dared not advocate a gasoline tax or any other specific plan to raise revenue for infrastructure purposes. He was reduced instead to voicing a hope at each of his stops that an aroused public itself would clamor for such remedies. No such luck.

Meanwhile, the once-dominant Democratic Party had become such a shell of its former self that it was powerless to suggest anything of its own legislatively or to oppose any initiative of the Republicans, who owned a super-majority — and a Tea Party-dominated one — in both houses.

What the Democrats could do, in Shelby County and statewide, was outfit themselves with new leaders. Mary Mancini, a veteran activist from Nashville, became the new state party chairman, while Randa Spears was elected in Memphis to head Shelby County Democratic Party and to impose overdue reform on what had been some serious mismanagement of the party’s finances.

The local Republican Party elected a female chair, too, Mary Wagner, suggesting the existence of a trend and the possibility that, as confidence in the old order continued to erode, political folks were increasingly looking to the women in their ranks as a source of new leadership.

• City and county politics were crucially affected by budgetary matters during 2015.

In the case of the city, austerity measures approved by both Mayor Wharton and a council majority — specifically pension reform and reduction of health benefits for city employees — would taint public confidence in city government and shape the resultant four-way mayoral race to the incumbent’s disadvantage.

Even such seeming talking points for the mayor as the new Electrolux and Mitsubishi plants failed to diminish local unemployment to the degree that had been expected.

Mayoral candidate Harold Collins was telling with his mockery of the $10-an-hour jobs for temps he said prevailed at both locations. Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams embodied resentment of lost benefits for first responders in his mayoral bid.

And, most effectively, the aforementioned Strickland hammered away at a triad of issues — public safety, blight, and a need for more accountability on the part of public officials — that his polling suggested were winning themes among voters of all ethnicities and economic classes.

Some considered these mere housekeeping issues, but as poll-derived distillations of the Memphis electorate’s concerns about the here and now, they were evidently on point — enough so that Strickland, in many ways a generic white man, would eventually capture 25 percent of the city’s black vote, pulling his mathematical share against African-American candidates Wharton, Collins, and Williams.

On the council front, six new members were chosen in open races, and in each case it was the most business-friendly candidate who won. This was undeniably the case with candidates such as Philip Spinosa, a young FedEx executive who raised a prohibitive $200,000 in an at-large race, avoiding public forums with his five opponents or much public contact of any kind except for a forest of yard signs bearing his name along the major traffic arteries of central and East Memphis.

Another financially well-endowed council newcomer, Worth Morgan, advertised himself similarly, but was willing to confront the rest of his field — and in the runoff a well-regarded Republican activist — in open debate, where he held his own.

Along with Strickland’s nonstop emphasis on public safety, there was an abundance of pro-police rhetoric among the winners of city races. The question — one that achieved the level of irony — was how all this public empathy, short of restoring lost benefits, could arrest the ongoing fallout from the ranks. Some 200 to 300 cops had already responded to benefit cuts by going elsewhere.

The general sense of rebellion that, in one way or another, seemed to characterize the political scene in 2015 may have found its fullest fruition in Shelby County government, where, after enacting various expected rituals of partisan rivalry amongst themselves, the county comissioners began to mount a coordinated campaign as a body against the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell. This development was a direct outgrowth of the budget season, during which commissioners on both sides of the party line convinced themselves that they were being spoon-fed half-truths about money available for public purposes and at year’s end were attempting to assert their own authority as superceding that of the mayor.

As with so much else on the political landscape in 2015, the accustomed way was under challenge. The new year of 2016 will presumably have to come up with some answers.

Tags AC Wharton, Bill Haslam, Heidi Shafer, Hillary Clinton, Jim Strickland, Mark Luttrell, Mickell Lowery, Myron Lowery, Ron Ramsey, Terry Roland

News The Fly-By

A Look at the News of the Week

Post author By Toby Sells
Post date December 17, 2015

Here’s a rundown of the stories that will likely prove to be the most talked-about this week. Some of the events mentioned below happened after Flyer press time.

City Council Says Goodbye, Hello

Tuesday’s meeting this week was the last for council members Jim Strickland, Wanda Halbert, Bill Boyd, Harold Collins, and Alan Crone.

New council members — Berlin Boyd, Frank Colvett Jr., Patrice Robinson, Jamita Swearengen, Martavius Jones, and Philip Spinosa Jr. — will start work in January.

Liberty Bowl Renovations

On Tuesday, the Memphis City Council was scheduled for a vote on a $4.8 million upgrade to the Liberty Bowl stadium that would add about 4,000 new, premium seats (seats with seat backs).

The city would essentially front the funds to the stadium and would be paid back within a year by the University of Memphis.

Midtown Market, Strickland, Schilling, Stewart, and the Liberty Bowl

Midtown Market Project

The council was also set to consider this week a plan to transform the corner of Union and McLean into an apartment complex, shops, and, perhaps, an “upscale grocery store.”

Belz Enterprises and Harbour Retail Partners want to build a $43.5 million project called “Midtown Market” on the now-blighted corner.

The project got $10.5 million in tax breaks from the Memphis Center City Revenue Finance Corp. earlier this year. Now, the developers want the city council to ask for $4 million in grant funds for the project from the federal government.

Darrius Stewart File

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation file on the Darrius Stewart case was released for public viewing on Tuesday.

Last week, Shelby County Chancellor James R. Newsom III ruled that the files should be open but stayed the order until December 15th to allow Memphis Police officer Connor Schilling, who shot and killed the unarmed Stewart on July 17th, time to file an appeal.

Schilling’s attorney had been fighting to keep the report closed to the public, citing a concern that he might be facing a federal indictment and opening the record would jeopardize his right to an impartial jury.

A quick glance at the file revealed multiple witness accounts stating that Schilling and Stewart were wrestling on the ground when Schilling shot Stewart a first time. Stewart was a shot a second time, in the back, as he attempted to flee, witnesses said.

Loflin Corner Key Shop Project

The Center City Development Corp. was scheduled to vote Wednesday to loan and grant $65,425 to a company looking to transform the Loflin Safe and Lock Co. building in the South End into a bar and restaurant.

The two-story building was most recently home to a horse stable. The building’s new owner cleaned up the site and hopes to make it into a neighborhood entertainment destination. The building’s first floor would have the bar and restaurant. The second floor would be residential.

Behind the building is a 10,000-square-foot lawn that would be used for horseshoes, ping-pong, cornhole, bocce ball, and croquet, according to the documents from Loflin LLC, the site’s new owner. A barn in the backyard would be used for weddings, corporate events, and private parties.

Strickland Transition Team

Mayor-elect Jim Strickland’s vision for the city was to become clearer Wednesday as his transition team was scheduled to present ideas to him in a public forum.

Strickland packed an agenda to fill the afternoon Wednesday at the University of Memphis. His team will give recommendations on city planning, crime, financial responsibility, accountability, minority business development, poverty, youth, and more.

Tags Darrius Stewart, Jim Strickland, Liberty Bowl, Loflin Corner Key Shop

Editorial Opinion

Pounds & Pennies in Memphis

Post author By
Post date November 26, 2015

Remember the old saw, “It takes money to make money”? That’s a classic, right up there with, “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” which makes the same kind of sense. The idea behind both sayings is that all good

results have to be seeded in advance from somewhere, somehow. Merely consider turning those two chestnuts upside down: “It takes the absence of money to make money;” “The Lord helps those who decline to help themselves,” and you get instant nonsense. Or at least fodder for debate.

And the same insight applies to some of the other standard proverbs. Such as, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” You gotta have the acorns to start with, of course.

This principle — call it “priming the pump” — came to mind this week when we read that the federal government is going to try to reclaim from the city of Memphis some $3.8 million that it advanced the city to build an automobile inspection station off Appling in East Memphis. That’s the amount that was advanced by the feds under an air-quality initiative to build a facility that cost a total of $6 million to construct. That’s real American money, nothing theoretical about it, and, unless our various representatives in the state and federal government can work out some swaps or pro rata reductions that will take the city wholly or partly off the hook, it will take … $3.8 million to pay the money back.

That’s dead loss, and if you start to consider some of the intangibles involved in the affair, you begin to realize that it’s more than likely that the abolition of the testing station on Appling and the others that the city used to operate will already have resulted in various damages to the ecology and urban infrastructure in undetected air pollution, a greater incidence in traffic accidents and fatalities, and work-time lost from unanticipated glitches in people’s personal transportation.

A similar loss has afflicted the city with the departure of an estimated 300 to 400 first-responders who have resigned, due to a loss of or decrease in their health benefits as a result of budget cuts undertaken by the mayor and city council over the last couple of years.

Mayor-elect Jim Strickland made it a chief plank in his electoral platform to reinforce public safety, so as to make Memphis a desirable place to live and work, and to stabilize and stop the drain of people and resources from the area. But as councilman, Strickland had been among those advocating and voting for the cuts in benefits. Now the circle has come full and the problem is back in his mayoral lap. To which, we say, good luck, Jim!

We’re not even going to get started on the abysmal cost to the state of Tennessee — hundreds of millions of dollars, plus lives lost, health ruined, and hospitals shuttered — as a result of the state government’s refusal to accept Medicaid-expansion. The sheer moral and fiscal irresponsibility of that folly continues to counter all human logic.

But, so be it. Can we be penny foolish and pound foolish at the same time? The answer appears to be yes. Oh, well, Happy Thanksgiving, all the same!

Tags Budgetary issues in Memphis and the state of Tennessee, City inspection garage facility, Jim Strickland, Medicaid expansion, Penny Wise Pound Foolish, Police and fire personnel cuts

News The Fly-By

Bus Riders’ Union and Bus Drivers’ Union Team Up

Post author By Micaela Watts
Post date November 19, 2015

Less than a week after the announced partnership between the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 713 (the local bus drivers’ union) and the Memphis Bus Riders Union (MBRU), Congressman Steve Cohen announced that $2.6 million in federal funds, secured through the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), would be allocated to fund three electric trolleys for downtown Memphis.

Members of the MBRU congregated at their monthly meeting at the Memphis Center for Independent Living said the funding felt like a familiar slap in the face; so familiar, that the funding announcement invoked little surprise, and the discussion quickly refocused to the litany of problems faced by everyday Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) users.

“When you put money [only] downtown where the trolleys are, you’re forgetting about your citizens,” said Cynthia Bailey, outreach coordinator for MBRU. “You’re forgetting about the people who need transportation to get to jobs and destinations.”

The narrative of bus riders and drivers drawing attention to unmet transit needs while money continues to pour into the trolley system is hardly new, but with each announcement of trolley funding, members of both unions have become increasingly desperate to look for solutions.

According to both Bailey and Sammie Hunter, MBRU’s co-chair, the bus riders’ union has little faith left in MATA’s CEO and general manager Ron Garrison, who they said showed initial interest in solving MATA’s problems but has not followed through with solutions.

“We took his word, but I think he’s all about the money instead of the citizens,” Bailey said. Hunter nodded in agreement and added, “I never trusted him from the beginning, and now his true colors are coming out. He’s not about the citizens.”

According to Bailey, if both the MBRU and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 713 (ATU) are able to meet with Mayor-elect Jim Strickland and bypass Garrison, it will be a victory.

“I think [Stickland will] understand us better,” Bailey said. “The ATU has experience with the board on the inside, and we have experience from the riders’ perspective on the outside. If we’re merged together as one organization, it will have a big impact.”

Local 713’s business manager William Barber not only echoes MBRU’s concerns but is also eager that the union merger will erase the long-standing perception of blame-placing that pits the bus drivers against the bus riders.

“What I want our public to realize, is that it’s not drivers against the public, it’s management against the public,” Barber said. “We want everybody to join us, listen to our rally points, get on board with the unions and MATA so we can make this city better for everybody, not just for a certain group of people.”

Barber is also quick to point out that he’s highly in favor of trolley drivers having jobs. “We want everyone to benefit,” Barber said.

Garrison said that he wants to keep an open dialogue with both unions.

“I think to the extent that we can make ourselves available, my staff and I would be happy to sit down with them to work through their concerns. I’ve tried to meet with them a number of times and have,” said Garrison, who noted that there have been no additional funds spent on the trolleys except for specific funds that can only be used on trolleys.

Additionally, the funds recently granted by TDOT could mean that the current buses used in lieu of trolleys on Main could be redistributed to MATA’s fleet.

“I welcome anyone to talk to our mayor, and I would be glad to do that with or without them,” Garrison said. “I would like to partner with them to get additional funds.”

Tags Jim Strickland, MATA, Memphis Area Transit Authority, Memphis Bus Riders Union, Ron Garrison

Editorial Opinion

Memphis’ Winning Streak

Post author By
Post date October 22, 2015

Here we are on the seam of two athletic seasons, and we’re getting a little giddy. There’s the collegiate football season still underway for the University of Memphis, but already, with the Tigers not just bowl-eligible but undefeated and, after the near-blowout victory over Ole Miss, ranked, the commentators are saying, quite seriously, the Tigers could play in a New Year’s Day bowl. For the uninitiated, that’s when the Big Boys from the Big Conferences play their bowl games.

Now, if we can just manage to stay off the cover of Sports Illustrated — as dependable a hex as any uncovered thus far by paranormal investigators. And beyond that, if we can manage to hold on to Justin Fuente for a season or two more.

And basketball season is right around the corner. We’ve learned, happily, during the course of the last several seasons, that we no longer need be dependent on the basketball Tigers’ pulling rabbits (and NCAA bids) out of the hat, because, hey, we’ve also got the Grizzlies, dependable title challengers in the NBA’s tough Western Conference, year after year. They’ve been on the cover of SI already — and ridden out the dependable curse the Fates always bestow on the headiness that comes with that honor. Now maybe the Grizz are immunized from any further blowback, such as the playoff loss that followed the last such cover, in 2013.

As always, a little rain must fall, however. The fact that success on the part of Josh Pastner and the basketball Tigers isn’t quite as imperative for our mental health and psychic well-being as it used to be doesn’t mean that Pastner and company get a pass, especially if this becomes another season in which the Tigers are no longer a factor in the national rankings. We have this uncomfortable feeling — shared by many sports pundits — that it’s this year or else for Josh. Like him or not, the Svengali who preceded Pastner got Memphis sports fans spoiled in that regard.

In other ways, we seem to be, well, getting there. Against all expectations, the Bass Pro Shop version of our iconic Pyramid turned out to be just the kind of new and shiny tourist draw that we hoped it would be. Not that it helped turn things around for Mayor A C Wharton or the irredeemably tainted Robert Lipscomb, the two personages who did the most to arrange the presence of that magnetic bauble on our riverfront.

Wharton’s elected successor as mayor, the thus far likeable and city-government-wise Jim Strickland, will start out his term in January. Like any political honeymooner, he’ll have the community’s best wishes at his disposal — for a while, at least.

He would do well, however, to remember that his predecessor, in two city elections within the last decade, won elections with 60 to 70 percent of the vote. That number came all the way down to 22 percent on Election Day this year.

Even as we are enjoying the successes of the football Tigers and the Grizz and the hope that it will spill over into the political life of our community, it pays to remember: The scoreboard can change in a hurry. Let’s hope it doesn’t. We like the idea of being on a winning streak.

Tags Bass Pro Shop, Jim Strickland, Josh Pastner, Memphis Grizzlies, Memphis Winning Streak, University of Memphis Football Tigers

Opinion The Last Word

Thanks, Mayor Wharton

Post author By Tim Sampson
Post date October 15, 2015

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Toby Sells

Mayor A C Wharton

This is an open letter to Memphis Mayor A C Wharton. Yes, you’re still the mayor. You will be until December 31st, 2015. That gives you roughly 10 weeks left in office as the leader of Memphis. I’m just wondering what you plan to do in the next 10 weeks.

First, let me say that I have no beef whatsoever with Mayor-elect Jim Strickland. I haven’t met Mr. Strickland yet, and I hope he is wildly successful in making the hometown I love so much a better place. More than anything right now, though, I want to thank you, Mayor Wharton, for doing just that.

I think you have done a fantastic job in your roles as public defender, county mayor, and mayor of the city, despite the odds you have faced. In addition to your passionate work to get guns off the streets, help incarcerated, mentally disabled people get a fair shake, make Memphis a healthier city, and help distressed neighborhoods become thriving centers of commerce, culture, and hope, you have done this with grace, intelligence, and the sharpest sense of both honest concern and a sense of humor. You are one of the funniest people I’ve ever known, and I love that about you. A wit as quick as yours in a politician? Pretty rare.

But I also love your serious side and the fact that you seem to be able to always be at 10 places at once every day of every week. When something bad happens, you are there to try to come up with the answers. When something good happens, you are there to share the moment and pat people on the back for a job well done. You’re an incredible ambassador for Memphis, everywhere you go. Are you perfect? Nah. Nobody is. I don’t know a lot about politics, but I know something about good people, and you are certainly that. I’m proud to call you a friend.

The day after the October 8th election, I read a very disconcerting headline that proclaimed, “In humiliating loss, Wharton has only self to blame.” You’re probably too much of a gentleman to respond to that opinionated, kick-’em-when-they’re-down kind of smear tactic, but I will go on record saying that you have nothing to be humiliated about. It’s politics. Times change. The world keeps spinning. And the 15 million or so people who come here from all over the world every year to experience Memphis will continue to come to one of the coolest cities in the world, a city in which the majority of its residents don’t have a clue what a pilgrimage that is for so many of them.

Because so many people blame you for every single thing that goes wrong in Memphis, I’m going to give you credit here for every good thing that has happened during your mayoral tenure. Your Mayor’s Innovation Team, under your direction, has done wonders for areas like Broad Avenue and Crosstown. Those once-dilapidated, sad places are now so thriving that other cities should be following the revitalization model your team has set forth. While a lot of other people also deserve credit for that, you should certainly take credit, too. The transformations began under your watch. Likewise with Overton Square, one of the best urban success stories in the country right now. Same with the South Main Arts District, Chisca Hotel, Front Street, Soulsville, Beale Street, Cooper Street, and now, finally, hopefully, Clayborn Temple across from the FedExForum. Take credit, Mr. Mayor. A lot of great things have happened in Memphis with you at the helm.

Perhaps the most existentially important things that have happened on your watch are the renaming of the city parks formerly known as Confederate Park, Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, and Jefferson Davis Park, things that baffled those 15 million visitors a year to Memphis — and many of us who live here. That was an awesome accomplishment and proof of progress directed at no longer honoring and paying tribute to slave owners. Yep, it’s that simple.

Which brings me back to my initial question of what you plan to do in these last 10 weeks in office. In the aforementioned newspaper article that declared your mayoral election results a “humiliating loss,” the writer also mentioned that “Everyone’s seen the cranes in Nashville, seen the resurgence so many other cities are enjoying, and wondering why they weren’t seeing enough of it here.”

First off, the reason there are so many cranes in Nashville is that over there they are demolishing historic landmarks as fast as they can to build hideous, generic-looking condominiums. The resurgence of Memphis has been more carefully executed. It’s a bit subtler than Nashville, but then Nashville is more about glitz and glamour.

I would like to see one big crane, though. I remember my heart sort of leaping out of my chest not too long ago, when I read or heard that you, the mayor, personally issued a request that the city remove the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest that still resides in the park on Union Avenue that used to bear his name. I don’t know what the status of that request is now. The crane I’d like to see before you leave office is the one extracting the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest from that park and moving it wherever it is most out of view. The park has been renamed, so why not move it? I would give anything if you could pull that off by the time your term is up. I’d be happy to help.

Tags Hotel Chisca, Jim Strickland, Mayor's Innovation Team, Memphis Mayor AC Wharton, Nathan Bedford Forrest statue, Overton Square, Soulsville

Politics Politics Feature

Old Country, New World

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date October 8, 2015

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

PARIS — Some clichés have outlived their usefulness. One of them is the myth of French rudeness. I just returned from a whirlwind tour of four countries — Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, France— on a bucket-list trip I contracted for back in the spring, before I realized how close to the end of the election season it would fall. (I know. I know.)

In any case, most of the trip took place in French-speaking Europe, and most of that was in La Belle France itself. Not once did I utter a syntactically complete and correct French sentence to a native of the country, and seldom did I even attempt it. (Well, make an exception for “Où est la toilette?”)

Moreover, I was in a group that had its share of American-style rowdies. But no French person — clerk, waiter, or citizen — was anything but kind and responsive and willing to try to navigate across the language barrier in our direction.

Nor was there anything goose-steppy or overbearing about the Germans our group encountered in Munich, or elsewhere in the swaths of Bavaria or western Germany we traversed. Even as reports of newly indigenous German pacifism indicate, and just as the song says, this country ain’t gonna study war no more.

A stark reminder of the reasons for that was evidenced in the human and architectural tableau that occurs every afternoon in Munich’s downtown square of Marienplatz, where a crowd, composed of both locals and visitors (the latter drawn last week from an estimated 6 million of diverse nationalities in town for the ongoing Oktoberfest), gathers at 5 p.m. in front of the city’s medieval city hall structure.

As the bells chime out the time, what follows is a mechanical musical template involving two sequential levels of drama enacted by painted wooden figures in the building’s belfry — the higher of which shows a pair of jousting knights, while the lower sets in motion wooden figures of celebrants dancing in glee as the slumping of one of the knights on his horse indicates that the trouble above is all over.

The cheers that issue forth from the massive crowd in the square are clearly for the depicted revelry and not for the little show of combat that preceded it. Ain’t gonna study war no more.

Off to the right of Marienplatz is a tall, yellowish building with long, cone-shaped spires that make it look simultaneously medieval and futurist and which somehow has the look of a movie prop rather than a truly functional structure. And, indeed, one is told that this is the site of the old city hall, totally destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II and replaced by a concrete facade with squares painted on to simulate the building’s original stones.

Munich wishes above all to manifest its ancient traditions of Gemütlichkeit — hence, the massive annual carnival of Oktoberfest (the original one so named, mind you, and one that dwarfs all imitative festivals, in Memphis or elsewhere).

The city is doing its best to live down its reputation as an erstwhile Nazi capital, of sorts. It was here that an ex-solider named Adolf Hitler attempted to begin a putsch against the newly established Weimar Republic in 1923, and it was here that Hitler, after release from a slap-on-the-wrist prison term, established his party headquarters, biding his time until the international Depression in the early 1930s generated enough new chaos for an already traumatized people to see his iron-hand rule as a last, desperate way out.

We know the story, and, believe me, so do the Germans. They maintain Dachau, the suburban retention facility that became the new regime’s first concentration camp, as an object lesson for themselves as well as for the steady train of international visitors that come to see it.

As for the erstwhile headquarters building of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party that served as the site for the signing of the fateful Munich Agreement of 1938 and that, against all odds, survived the war intact, it has been converted into a Hochschule für Musik, a conservatory.

As for the prospect of tensions between Islamic immigrants and long-term inhabitants of the predominant ethnicity anywhere in Europe, I offer only two images, admittedly incomplete, to suggest the spectrum.

There was the kids’ soccer team in Munich, taking a break from practice at an ice cream store, with one of the players, a swarthy lad with the name Mohamed identifying him on his jersey, joking at ease with his blondish teammates. So there can be, and is, some acceptance.

And in Paris, warily patrolling the edge of a large throng gathered in front of an ongoing mass and communion at Notre Dame Cathedral, were members of a SWAT squadron, making their presence felt as a clear warning to any would-be militants of the sort that famously have staged murderous raids in the recent past and have begun to cast the faint shadow of fear on the edifices and attractions of the City of Light. So there can be, and is, apprehension.

• MEMPHIS, Tennessee — I know the foregoing, strictly speaking, isn’t political in the way that readers of this column expect. Nor is it explicitly relevant to the issues and possible outcomes of the pivotal city election that is just concluding.

And yet, there are legitimate points of reference. Ethnic pre-judgments — whether uttered afresh by Donald Trump or whomever or merely passed sotto voce through the medium of voters’ habits — will have played a role in the results here in Memphis. There is a reason why demographic categories exist in all legitimate polls of likely election outcomes.

There is a “white vote,” and there is a “black vote,” and both categories are spoken of freely and taken stock of in the estimations and planning sessions of all serious campaigns.

When, after this week, we look at the results of the 2015 races for mayor, city clerk, and at-large Memphis City Council races, it will be truly revealing to gauge the strength of habitual ethnic voting patterns vis-à-vis the impact of economics or a myriad of issues that transcend race.

Was there a significant impact from the last-minute revelations of a lucrative contract (now canceled under pressure) that was bestowed on Deidre Malone, Mayor A C Wharton‘s campaign manager, to promote the city’s new police body cameras?

With four mayoral candidates all drawing significant votes from various constituencies, where will vote splits have mattered most decisively — in the “black vote” that Wharton needed a commanding share of to prevail? Or within the ranks of voters anxious for change and uncertain as to which of three challengers to give their votes to?

Within that choice lie two different outcomes, and how the choice will have been made is one key to the mayoral outcome, as, for that matter, will have been the relative turnouts of major voting blocs.

If there is a single undoubtable given in the mayor’s race, it is in the nearly monolithic vote that Councilman Jim Strickland, regarded as Wharton’s leading challenger, was expected to receive from white voters. Strickland was doing his best to court disaffected black voters, as well, and the results will demonstrate whether that effort, perhaps abetted by the aforementioned “September Surprise,” came to something or nothing.

Both Councilman Harold Collins and Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams seemed to be making late converts. To what result?

What was the voter takeaway from the Lipscomb Affair? That’s another enigma.

How effective was the unprecedented outpouring of money by the two leading mayoral candidates and by a few candidates, hitherto political unknowns, for council positions?

As we speak, all these questions are about to be answered.

Meanwhile, suspense will continue in the several expected runoffs in single-district Council races, not to be decided until November 19th.

Tags AC Wharton, Jackson Baker goes to Europe, Jim Strickland, Memphis mayor's race 2015, Munich Octoberfest, Paris, the Louvre, World War II battlefields

Cover Feature News

Memphis Decision 2015

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date September 24, 2015

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Change is in the air. That is a given. That’s the message of the slight but obvious up-tick in early voting statistics over the equivalent period four years ago. That is what the pollsters and pundits are telling us as they assess the chances of prevailing for this or that candidate for mayor in the 2015 Memphis city election, which is just two weeks away, on October 8th.

So will the race for City Court Clerk, unique on the ballot for its lack of any real bellwether content, and so will those for the six of the 13 City Council seats selected by voters at large, the results of which races may well turn out to have long-term significance indeed.

The change of direction may not be obvious then. There are seven other City Council races decided by geographic district. These are discussed on page 12, and several of these may persist in uncertainty for six more weeks — until the runoff date of November 19th.

But meanwhile, we’ll likely have a good sense of the shape of our future from the election of our next mayor. The next mayor could be the same mayor we already have, of course — A C Wharton, who signaled change when he came into City Hall via the special election of 2009. Back then, his supporters were chanting his slogan of “One Memphis,” to define the shift from the mayor he succeeded — Willie Herenton — a great change-maker himself when he narrowly won election in 1991 as Memphis’ first elected black mayor, and an ambitious reformer until four complete terms and a portion of another finally wore him down into resignation (both figurative and literal).

Has the time come, after only six years in office, for Wharton to pass from the scene as well? Manifestly, he doesn’t think so, but the voters might. A dozen private polls, formal and informal, suggested that possibility, including a public one, done by Mason-Dixon for The Commercial Appeal that was taken very seriously in its prognosis of a tight race, that being almost a toss-up between the mayor and his closest challenger, Councilman Jim Strickland.

Strickland, a two-time budget chairman who made his reputation as a champion of austerity, has been running for mayor in his mind ever since his election to the council on his second try in 2007. His thinking was sped up by a snarled and straitened city fiscal situation that drew a pointed rebuke from State Comptroller Justin Wilson in 2013 and in the last year forced service reductions and severe cuts in employee benefits and pensions.

The remedy Strickland has proposed is less a new vision than a prescription for tightening up and cracking down. Mindful of the violent flash mobs of 2014, he calls for tougher containment action against teen perpetrators. He wants Blue CRUSH writ large and would lobby, too, for elevating repeat domestic abuse to the status of felony. He would rid the city of blight, and he talks of stricter and more transparent accountability standards for public employees.

In the election-year environment, Strickland has downplayed his erstwhile fiscal concerns, perhaps in view of public uneasiness regarding cuts in employee benefits and many resignations in the ranks of the city’s first responders.

This latter concern is very much on the minds of the two other serious challengers for mayor — Councilman Harold Collins and Mike Williams, the president of the Memphis Police Association, on sabbatical for the duration of this election campaign. Both have made restoration of the lost benefits, in whole or in part, a centerpiece of their campaigns.

Collins and Williams also say they would pursue strategies on behalf of citizens trapped on the lower economic rungs, building prosperity from the ground up. Collins questions the value of what he calls the “$9 and $10” jobs resulting from the city’s current industrial recruitment policy and insists on a crash program to provide well-paid high-tech jobs to keep the city’s youth from seeking greener pastures.

Williams has talked of slowing the quest for big industry — and the tax abatements that go with it — long enough to upgrade city government’s core services, and to focus on helping smaller businesses survive. He has evolved his campaign from what many assumed would be a concentration on the lost-benefits issue alone into a wider-ranging consideration of matters like solar energy and a revamping of the city’s MATA bus service.

The challengers offer competing versions of change, and the mayor himself has focused on a revised urban future for Memphis — pitching to millennials and touting new parks and greenways and up-by-the-bootstraps programs and boasting of his ability to latch on to funding from outside the city, meanwhile promising more new and shiny treasures like the Bass Pro Pyramid.

In the course of their campaigns, these candidates have set forth four distinct and divergent pathways to the future.

Jackson Baker

ßL to R: Harold Collins, Jim Strickland, Sharon Webb, A C Wharton, and Mike Williams

There have been several mayoral debates this campaign year, most of them involving the core four — Wharton, Strickland, Collins, and Williams. Here, as one example of their approaches, are excerpts from their statements at a Sierra Club/League of Women Voters forum held on Monday night, one that focused entirely on environmental concerns.

(The quoted remarks are from their summations except that of Strickland, who had to leave early. His opening remarks are excerpted from instead.)

Strickland: “I’m running for Mayor because, in general, I want to clean up Memphis. … I have sponsored the volunteer code enforcement officer position [for individuals] to work with code officials and clean up their neighborhoods and other neighborhoods in the city. I have led the effort to create a grant program [to rehab] tax-dead properties. I want to work on a residential PILOT program, a tax incentive to help repopulate the inner city. We need to bring people into this city. We’re not growing in population; we’re not growing in jobs. I ask for your support.”

Collins: “The choice is really, really clear: [Will we be] a cleaner city, a better city? Is our transportation system antiquated or up-to-date? Blight has caused a decline in our population and increased apathy among our citizens and crime hotspots in our city. We should not continue down this road any longer. [We need] real choices, real change, a sense of urgency to deal with these problems. These are not election year problems. We have heard these now for six years, or maybe even 13 years.”

Williams: “We need a master development plan, and then we need to do smart development. … We need to tear down or repurpose certain properties in our city. … Since we are the 22nd largest city in the United States, we need a transportation system that is commensurate with that. To say that we’re going to stop developing or bringing in businesses to property that is available is nonsense. It’s time for new, innovative ideas.”

Wharton: “I’ve had the courage to stand up and lead in the face of tremendous opposition. I revived Shelby Farms Park. [There are] the bike lanes; everybody loves them now. … There are those who had questions about the conservancies, who now embrace conservancies. And I will do even more. We have to dream big, of bike lanes across the Mississippi River, along the levee, of bike lanes throughout our city, and programs to get the bikes for the children there, taking children all over the state to see our parks. They’ll come back here. That’s the vision I have for the city. Let me continue that.”

There they are in one brief snapshot: Strickland as technocrat; Collins as alarm-sounder; Williams as evolving planner; Wharton as self-styled futurist. All of them are rounder characters than that, of course, and one of them will guide us into the next age of Memphis. There are two more weeks to check them out, and we’ll doubtless have some more to say about them between now and October 8th.

Jackson Baker

Council races attracted more than the usual amount of attention this year. Here a crowd at Trinity United Methodist Church followed a debate involving seven candidates running for an open 5t6h District seat.

Meanwhile, here are summaries of the at-large City Council positions that will be resolved for sure on Election Day.

Super District 8, Position 1: This, like all the Super District contests, is winner-take-all, as a result of the 1991 ruling by the late federal Judge Jerry Turner that banned runoffs in at-large races — a category that, besides the mayor’s race and that for City Court Clerk, includes the two super-districts, each of which encompasses roughly half the city’s population.

Super District 8, predominantly African-American, encompasses the city’s western half, including the city’s inner-city core.

“In so many words or less,” as Position 1 incumbent Joe Brown would say, he should have easy going against unsung opponents George Thompson and Victoria E. Young, Super District 8, Position 2: Janis Fullilove, notable for her firebrand advocacy of inner-city concerns, notorious for her penchant for getting into embarrassing scrapes, and somewhat beloved by (most of) her council mates for all that, is equally well-situated to prevail against opponents J. Eason and Isaac Wright.

Super District 8, Position 3: Now here’s a race — or at least a contest with the potential to be one. Mickell Lowery, son of the seat’s longtime possessor, the venerable Myron Lowery, has had abundant fund-raisers and significant shows of support resulting from them, and appears to be in good shape against opponents Jacqueline Camper and Martavius Jones.

Neither is a pushover, especially not Jones, who cut quite a figure as a pivotal member of the old Memphis School Board and was as responsible as anybody for the MCS charter surrender that led to the oh-so-temporary city/county school merger. But, once again, as with his near-loss last year to Reginald Milton in a County Commission race, Jones is running more or less on his own, without much money or a support network, as such.

Super District 9 basically encompasses the eastern part of the city and has a larger preponderance of white voters.

Jackson Baker

Super District 9, Position 3 seat, make their pitches to picnicking Democrats Steve Steffens (left) and Joe Weinberg.

Super District 9, Position 1: You can’t fault Robin Spielberger, who has been ubiquitous in her cost-conscious campaign for a council seat and has picked up any number of across-the-spectrum endorsements in the process. And you can say about as much for Charley Burch, the perpetually youthful federal air traffic officer who is also, like Spielberger, challenging the seemingly entrenched incumbent, Kemp Conrad.

Spielberger and Burch are so into it that their intensity has boiled over into an ongoing quarrel over the placement of their signs, with Burch claiming that Spielberger has uprooted a key sign of his and replaced it with hers. (She denies it, blaming an errant supporter.)

Conrad is seen by both of his challengers (and by supporters of CLERB, for his sponsorship of a delay in council consideration of the police-review agency) as a symbol of the establishment. Conrad, who has generous support from business interests, probably wouldn’t quarrel with that idea. His incumbency and a visibility sure to be enforced by sufficient advertising (which he can afford) in the campaign’s latter days give him a major edge.

Super District 9, Position 2: Who is Philip Spinosa? Between now and October 8th, you will have seen him — or images of him — on your TV set in well-produced commercials and, if you reside in the sprawling District 9 area, in your mailbox in equally well-produced mailers. Now that early voting has started, you have a fair chance of seeing him greeting arrivals at this or that polling place. (That’s if Spinosa follows the example of Reid Hedgepeth, who won election to the council in 2007 by following that formula.)

Where you probably won’t see the youthful FedEx sales executive, who — thanks to the generosity of the city’s business elite — has a massive campaign treasury, is in a public forum in a give-and-take situation alongside four rival candidates.

Each of those others has a story to tell. Pastor and former school board member Kenneth Whalum, a self-styled “gadfly,” is a declared foe of the status quo and an apostle for a newly configured municipal school district. He heads an informal “education slate” composed of council candidates in other races. Paul Shaffer, an official of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, has a working-class outlook and good name recognition in union circles and among democrats at large.

Stephanie Gatewood is another former school board member with a record of involvement in numerous causes. And Lynn Moss, a Cordovan, belongs to that stable of disaffected Memphians who are running hard for rank-and-file causes like restored employee benefits, saving the Mid-South Coliseum, and, in her case, for the right of de-annexation.

Spinosa’s financial edge, blue-ribbon sponsorship, and ongoing advertising blitz all give him an edge in a winner-take-all format. Although Moss gave him at least nominal opposition for the official Shelby County Republican endorsement, Spinosa also ended up claiming that credential.

Super District 9, Position 3: The aforementioned Hedgepeth has served on the council quietly and, in the judgment of many, effectively — faithfully representing the point of view of the business community, but suggesting development projects of his own and backing those of his colleagues, including those dear to the hearts of inner-city residents, like the Raleigh Springs Mall renovation.

Hedgepeth’s proudest moment came in 2012, when he broke his customary silence to make a powerful and probably decisive statement in favor of adding “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the language of the city’s workplace-protection ordinance. That action won him the endorsement this year of the Tennessee Equality Project, even though one of his two opponents, Zachary Ferguson, the director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries at St. John’s United Methodist Church, is openly gay.

The other candidate, Stephen Christian, a Nike employee, is, like Ferguson, a political newcomer whose horizons may be somewhat down the line.

The well-financed Hedgepeth, whose campaign signs rival those of Spinosa and Morgan in omnipresence, should finish well ahead.

City Court Clerk: This is another non-runoff race, and it would be strange indeed if Kay Spalding Robilio, who logged 30-odd years as a judge, first in City Court, then in Circuit Court, did not end up with a comfortable plurality.

Not that her opponents are slouches. What they amount to en masse is an unusually concentrated collection of African-American candidates with governmental experience or name recognition or, in most cases, both. And that’s the problem. There are so many of them that they will inevitably slice up and splinter each other’s vote totals (such is the demographic fact of life, like it or not), leaving Robilio, a white female still well-regarded and liked in the community at large, well in the lead.

Robilio was basically pressured to resign her Circuit Court judgeship in 2013 at a time when she was charged with misconduct by a state ethics board for personally investigating facts pertaining to a child custody case in her court. The reality is that, while such a breach of the canon might — and did — appear serious within the legal community, it is not the sort of offense likely to seem especially scandalous to a lay public.

Meanwhile, several of Robilio’s opponents have had their own bumps in the road. But, again, their main drawback as aspirants for the clerkship is that they will seriously reduce each other’s vote totals. For the record, they include: County Commissioner Justin Ford; current councilwoman and former school board member Wanda Halbert; and former councilman and Juvenile Court Clerk, Shep Wilbun.

In addition, Thomas Long II bears a name so close to that of his father, the outgoing clerk, as to be seriously confusing, and William Chism Jr.‘s last name will remind voters of former county commisioner and interim state Senator Sidney Chism, who still remains a political broker of note. Antonio Harris, a longtime employee of the clerk’s office, can tout his experience there, unique in the field.

Tags AC Wharton, Harold Collins, Jim Strickland, Memphis City Council Election 2015, Memphis City Court Clerk Election 2015, Memphis City Election 2015, Memphis Mayoral Race 2015, Mike Williams