Tag: Robert Lipscomb

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Will a TDZ TCB? The Future of Memphis’ Fairgrounds

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

A critical decision looms on a years-in-the-making plan that could transform one of the largest pieces of public property in Memphis.

The stakes could not be higher for the city’s plan to turn the largely fallow Memphis Fairgrounds into a youth sports tourist magnet. It’s the end of the road. There’s no appeal. There’s no review-and-update process. The city either gets the money and builds a “world class facility,” or it doesn’t get the money and then, well, who knows? The plan lives or it dies.

The city wants to create a Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) around the Fairgrounds. An increment of state sales taxes would be collected in the zone to pay for the project. The problem is that legislation approved in the Tennessee General Assembly this year deadlined consideration for any and all outstanding TDZs at December 31, 2018. And the only one left to be considered is for Memphis’ youth sports idea.

The high stakes were enough to cause city officials to hone the plan, shrinking the project in scope, size, and price tag. Meanwhile, local grassroots advocates for the Fairgrounds and the Mid-South Coliseum have continued to beat the drum of local access to the property and for re-activiation of the building. Through it all, developers have stayed mostly on the sidelines, waiting to see if the plan gets an up or down vote before they move in.

If the city’s plan is approved by the state, the Fairgrounds could get a brand-new, multi-million-dollar, state-of-the-art indoor sports building, retail shops, a hotel, play areas, and more. It’s a play to attract out-of-towners and their sports-playing children (and the tax dollars that come with them) to the city.

Justin Fox Burks

How We Got Here

The most recent moves to reanimate the Memphis Fairgrounds began in 2005, 13 years ago. Back then, the city was “eager to revitalize and re-imagine,” the Fairgrounds, as reporter Ben Popper wrote in the Flyer at the time. 

“It is really the nexus between East Memphis and what is going on Downtown,” Robert Lipscomb, then-director of the city’s Housing and Community Development (HCD) division, said at the time. “I think it’s under-utilized and potentially has much greater value. Our job is maximizing that asset.”  

That year, Lipscomb formed a special Fairgrounds Redevelopment Committee to envision the Fairgrounds’ future. The architectural firm Looney Ricks Kiss drew up six proposals for the site.

The group picked an option with “large green space, small-scale retail, and 40-plus acres for sports and recreation.” The plan did not include Libertyland, the Mid-South Coliseum, or the Mid-South Fair. The committee’s selection decision came on the same day leaders decided to close Libertyland, citing several years of financial losses.

Retail, green space, sports, and recreation. Sound familiar?

But then-Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton told the Memphis Business Journal‘s Chris Sheffield at the time he wasn’t in a hurry to get anything done “given the nostalgia and fond memories and public importance of the property. There’s nothing wrong with going through a laborious process,” Wharton said in 2006.

Laborious, indeed. Two years later, John Branston, writing for the Flyer, described the scene at the Fairgrounds this way: 

“The stadium and the Children’s Museum [of Memphis] still draw crowds, but the rest of the property is demolished, abandoned, or underused. Libertyland amusement park, part of its roller coaster still standing, is closed. So is the Mid-South Coliseum, home to concerts and basketball games … before giving way to The Pyramid and then FedExForum. 

“Tim McCarver Stadium was demolished a few years ago,” Branston wrote in 2008, “long after it was replaced by AutoZone Park. The annual Mid-South Fair is moving to Tunica, Mississippi, next year. Fairview Junior High School is blighted and has about 300 students. The main feature of the Fairgrounds on most days is several acres of asphalt parking lots.”

Those comments came in Branston’s story about a new group heading up a new push to, finally, finally, finally get something done at the Fairgrounds. It included a heavy-hitting bunch of names: Henry Turley, CEO of Henry Turley Co.; Bob Loeb, president of Loeb Properties; Archie Willis III, president of Community Capital; Mark Yates, now-Chief Visionary Officer of the Black Business Association of Memphis; Jason Wexler, president of business operations at Memphis Grizzlies; Elliot Perry, retired pro basketball player; and Arthur Gilliam Jr., president of Gilliam Communications.

Called “Fair Ground,” the idea was to make the Fairgrounds a common area for all Memphians to meet, play, and mingle. At its core, Fair Ground would have transformed the sleepy area “into a combination of sports complex, renovated stadium, park, and retail center.” Sound familiar? A big difference, though, was that Fair Ground also promised a “network of new public schools” good enough to rival private schools.

In 2007, the city applied for its TDZ with the state and the Salvation Army Kroc Center bought a parcel of land to build upon. But by 2009, Lipscomb was referring to the Fair Ground deal with Turley and his folks in the past tense. He said they couldn’t come to an agreement. He pivoted quickly to a Plan B, in which Lipscomb tapped former Memphis City Council member Tom Marshall to design a plan that centered on — wait for it —  sports, recreation, and retail. 

That $125 million plan was ultimately panned, though the city did add that formal TDZ request to its quiver. A 2009 Flyer headline read, “The Fairgrounds: Big, Complicated, and Leaderless.” 

Come 2013, another plan — this one with a $233 million price tag — centered on (surely you guessed it by now) sports and retail. By 2014, Lipscomb was reported selling the plan to the Shelby County Commissioners in a Flyer story by Jackson Baker. Some commissioners worried the TDZ would “cannibalize” future sales tax from Cooper-Young and Overton Square and that the scheme would siphon funds (maybe $1 million to $2 million every year) from Shelby County Schools. 

“But it hardly seemed to matter as Lipscomb, at his super-salesman best, seemingly had the members of a commission largely revamped by the election of 2014 treating Lipscomb’s propositions like ‘candy in the palm,'” Baker wrote. 

Lipscomb, who Baker described as “the city’s veteran Svengali of urban planning,” said the buildings that would rise on the Fairgrounds would be “world class,” helping to raise “a great new city right before our very eyes.”

Commissioners loved it. Van Turner congratulated Lipscomb. Terry Roland called it a “world-class deal,” and only Steve Basar and Walter Bailey seemed cautious.

That was November, but by December, commissioners shelved a vote on Lipscomb’s plan, hoping to bring a compromise plan of their own. 

In January 2015, Lipscomb told city council members he’d bring his plans to state officials in February. But public concerns crept into Lipscomb’s plans, fears that Fairgrounds neighbors and local stakeholders were being left out the conversation. Lipscomb vowed to get more people involved. That was February. 

To get there, the Urban Land Institute, a third-party group of of city planning professionals, had a look at the plan. Their $184-million recommendation included sports and retail, natch, but also more improvements to Tiger Lane, a park with a lake, a surf park, a “Coliseum stage,” and more. That was in June.

In August, Lipscomb said he’d take the new plan to state officials in October. But when allegations surfaced that Lipscomb had raped a young man, his grand plan for the Fairgrounds was stalled, to say the least. Memphis Mayor Wharton fired Lipscomb immediately.

The Plan’s “New” New Era

Jim Strickland was elected Memphis mayor in October 2015. He hired Paul Young, former director of legislative affairs for Shelby County government, as director of HCD. Plans for the Fairgrounds weren’t really discussed much for two years. 

In 2017, rather than starting from scratch, Young dusted off the recommendations from the Urban Land Institute panel (with youth sports and retail as the centerpiece, of course). But Young and the Strickland administration did something different this go-around. They began the conversation of the Fairgrounds’ future in public forums and actually used some options they got to shape the final plan. This was August 2017, and Young hoped to present his plan to state officials by the end of that year. 

In November, Young unveiled the new $160-million Fairgrounds plan. It included an $80 million youth sports complex, retail and hotel space, a 500-space parking garage, $20 million worth of upgrades to the Liberty Bowl, upgrades to nearby Tobey Park, renovation of the Pipkin and Creative Arts buildings, basketball courts, a track, a soccer and football field, renovations to nearby Melrose High School, and new infrastructure to spur investment at Lamar and Airways.    

But Young (some say on the advice of the state officials who’d vote on the plan) decided to have another look. Earlier this month, he brought a scaled-back, “workable” proposal to Memphis City Council members, who approved it. Almost everything (save for the $20 million improvements for the Liberty Bowl) was shaved. Two youth sports buildings became one. The parking garage was halved, basically. Off-site projects were cut out of the plan. 

Courtesy of Allen & Hoshall

Why?

“As we really dove into the specifics and saw that TDZ revenues were much lower than we expected them to be, it was incumbent on us to take some time and really, really hone down the plan and try to figure out what things do we have to do to make this site activated,” Young said in an interview last week.

So, now — with more than a decade of plans, dreams, opinions, and varying degrees of political will on the project — Young and his team are slated to take their plan to Nashville later this year. If the State Building Commission doesn’t give the city the money, the Fairgrounds will stay largely the same as it is today, Young said.

Money Ball

At the very core of the new plan — and almost every plan proposed so far — is youth sports. That might not be what you think it is. It’s not your kid’s T-ball team sponsored by a local insurance agent. Youth sports is a big, sophisticated business. The teams the city wants to attract are called travel teams or competitive teams. The kids who play are elite (or at least seen that way). Not every kid makes the team. Those who do practice at private facilities, wear custom uniforms, carry custom equipment bags, get elite coaching, travel around the country to tournaments, and pay mightily for the privilege of doing so. Many parents see these teams as a path to help their child get a college scholarship and then, perhaps, to play in the bigs. In short, these parents often are monied and motivated.

How much money? According to WinterGreen Research, an independent organization that tracks the youth sports market, the U.S. market is worth $15.5 billion. There’s more. 

“This is a nascent market, there is no end to growth in sight,” WinterGreen reported in September 2017. “Markets are expected to reach $41.2 billion by 2023.”

Young says the Memphis sports market is worth $120 million, without an indoor youth sports facility. The Rocky Top Sports World in Gatlinburg created $35.4 million in economic impact for that city last year, according to Young’s report. A Fort Myers, Florida, venue yielded $47.7 million. Another in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, grossed a whopping $186 million.     

Critics of the city’s Fairgrounds plan have said that leaders want to build an elite facility for rich kids and their rich parents.

“It’s not for them,” Young responds. “It’s for our economy.”

Young adds that the facility would be available to locals anytime it isn’t being used for youth sports tournaments, which usually run from Thursday through Sunday. 

Jamie Harmon

Reviving the Roundhouse

In 2015, some Memphis folks got together and decided they wanted the Mid-South Coliseum saved and re-opened. After years of community meetings, government meetings, tours of the building, business research, creating a business plan, media interviews, three Roundhouse Revival events, and a top-to-bottom examination of the massive building, they are still at it. They say the future of the Coliseum has never looked brighter. 

“There is a wider wind in our civic sails, and we’re racking up civic win after civic win after civic win with Crosstown Concourse, the Chisca Hotel, the Levitt Shell, the Tennessee Brewery, Broad Avenue, and Clayborn Temple,” says Marvin Stockwell, co-founder of the Coliseum Coalition and a second group, the Friends of the Fairgrounds. “This seems a whole lot more possible than it did when we first started, and way more possible than it did 10 years ago.”

That enthusiasm is shared by Coliseum Coalition president Roy Barnes and Charles “Chooch” Pickard, a coalition member and preservation architect, even as the city’s new plan (and just about every plan so far) aims only to “preserve” the Coliseum. To them, preservation is at least a step away from razing the building, as Lipscomb wanted to do. 

Two Saturdays ago, July 21st, hundreds of people sweated together outside the Coliseum, with 90 degrees of Memphis summer sun blasting from above and radiating back off the parking lot. Barbecue smoke scented the air, vendors sold vintage T-shirts, and a brass band covered the Meters’ classic “Cissy Strut” inside a wrestling ring. 

It was the third spin of the Coliseum Coaltion’s Roundhouse Revival event, which featured music, wrestling, food, and a few public service announcements. “The Coliseum is in great shape,” read a flyer posted on a column. The group has used the events to garther input from community members and garner support for their cause. 

“I just saw these photographs over here that show me that the building is in great shape,” said Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Craig Fitzhugh, at the event. “To me, now it’s a perfect-sized venue. It won’t compete. There’s not any competition for it. They could put a lot of different things in here — from music to wresting to whatever — roller derby. For the Grizzlies, this would be a great place to put their … developmental league team.”

Fitzhugh hit upon the No. 1 problem for re-opening the Coliseum, according to the Coliseum Coalition — the Grizzlies non-compete clause. With the clause, Grizzlies officials have a measure of control over the local entertainment market and local venues. The team is on the hook for any operating losses at the FedExForum (not the local government) and might perceive a revived Mid-South Coliseum as competition.

That was city council members’ central argument against Elvis Presley Enterprises’ proposed $20-million arena in Whitehaven. And it’s been a central argument against re-opening the Coliseum. Barnes thinks it’s bogus.

“There’s nothing in it … that gives the Grizzlies the ability to say, ‘Sorry you can’t re-open the Coliseum,'” Barnes says. “It doesn’t give them the ability to say, ‘You can’t have events there.'”

Only certain events are blocked by the clause, Barnes says. Stockwell says that the perception that the clause blocks any new, large-ish venue from opening is “completely false.” But there is little political will to alienate the Grizzlies, a major city brand and a major corporate citizen, Barnes says.

The Coliseum, Pickard says, should be right-sized to about 4,900 fixed seats with about 1,000-2,000 on the floor. That would make it the perfect venue for up-and-coming artists and established artists who are playing their way back down the musical food chain from arena shows. 

“We’ve gone to the Grizzlies and said, ‘We think there’s a market for that,’ and they said, ‘We don’t think there is, but if there is, we can accommodate those shows,'” Pickard says. “We’re the venue for that.”

While there seems to be little movement ahead for changing perceptions on the non-compete or the clause itself, the Coliseum Coalition is moving ahead, working with city officials to allow them to clean up the inside of the building and, perhaps, hold a new event inside. They hope if the TDZ is approved and successful, funds could be found down the road to save the Coliseum. 

Plan B = Status Quo

So, what if the TDZ is not approved?

Some sources the Flyer talked to said a “no” vote could be used to further punish Memphis for its removal of Confederate statues this year. Others said moderate Republicans have convinced their right-wing colleagues the deal would be an economic development win for the state. Part of that deal, too, sources said, was the satisfyingly loud outcry from Memphis Democrats over the state lawmakers’ removal of $250,000 from the city’s bicentennial celebration, which was some tasty red meat for Republicans.   

In that case, political tea leaves may point to approval of a TDZ for the project. But if it’s defeated, nothing happens. 

“I think the Plan B is the status quo,” Young says. “It’s what we have today. When the mayor came in, he commented that the Fairgrounds, while we’d love to see it maximized, it’s not something that had to be done at that point in time.

“I think that opinion would still ring true. It is underutilized, but it’s not necessarily having a negative impact on the community as it sits today.”

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News The Fly-By

Friends of the Fairgrounds Formed to Build Master Plan for the Site

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

New plans for the Mid-South Coliseum and the Memphis Fairgrounds are being drawn on what two community-led organizations believe is a blank slate for the shuttered building and largely vacant land in the center of Memphis.

When the Coliseum Coalition was created about a year ago, momentum to raze the building and build a huge youth sports complex on the 175-acre Fairgrounds site seemed unstoppable. Heavy equipment was set to roll on East Parkway as soon as Robert Lipscomb, then the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, got state approval for the site’s Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) status, the funding mechanism required to get started. The Coalition helped stall those plans with calls and events to get more community input on the project.

Brandon Dill

Friends of the Fairgrounds will build a master plan for the Coliseum.

Lipscomb is now out of the picture, following an alleged rape scandal. His boss, former mayor A C Wharton, is out of office. And the TDZ funding idea is seemingly off the table.

Marvin Stockwell, a founding member of the Coalition, has now founded Friends of the Fairgrounds (FOTF) to bring Memphis voices together and plan its future with the same grassroots style as the Coalition. He said it is undoubtedly a “new day for the Fairgrounds.”

“It’s always felt like there’s an overarching plan that we could only hope to alter a bit,” Stockwell said. “Now, it feels like there’s a blank slate. What’s it going to be? What would be best for Memphis?”

Stockwell said he wants the FOTF to engage people from neighborhoods around the Fairgrounds and build a master plan “that the entire city can buy into, that is just for Memphians.”

Mike McCarthy, president of the Coalition, considers that last sentiment to be a core statement for his group and for the new push on plans for the Coliseum and the Fairgrounds.

“Whatever happens [at the Fairgrounds and the Coliseum], it’s for us. It’s not like Graceland, which is for them,” McCarthy said, referring to tourists as “them.”

As for next steps, Coalition treasurer Roy Barnes said if Mayor Jim Strickland approves the idea, a team of volunteer architects and engineers are prepared to make a preliminary assessment of the building, which was shuttered in 2006.

Next, the Coalition would form a business plan for the Coliseum to show, possibly, the cost of its renovation and its day-to-day operation. Then, the group would commission an economic impact study of an open, operating Coliseum.

What exactly would operate inside the building remains a question, Barnes said. But he and McCarthy hoped the venue could once again host concerts, many of which are now hosted in venues in North Mississippi.

They hoped the building could be active even without concerts as a home to museums for, perhaps, Memphis wrestling, rhythm and blues, and University of Memphis sports, and as a large community center.

McCarthy maintains that preserving the Coliseum is about building on existing Memphis culture for current and future generations, not “recycling” it in new buildings with no history. Barnes said the Coalition is still fighting the idea that the building’s preservation is tied up with nostalgia.

“It’s a beautiful building,” Barnes said. “More than that, it’s a viable building in the center of Memphis.”

Memphis historian Jimmy Ogle will lead a walking tour around the Fairgrounds and Coliseum this Sunday at 2 p.m.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Mark Woodall’s Viewpoint column, “By Any Name” …

I groaned reading Mark Woodall’s article “By Any Name” where he tries to disassociate Islam from terrorism. This sentence in particular seemed to sum up his thinking: “I’m just going to assume if you are a terrorist, you are a radical, but calling all Muslims terrorists does a great disservice to the six million American-born Muslims in this country, and to millions of peaceful people who worship Islam.”

First of all, nobody but nobody is calling all Muslims terrorists, and second, Islam is the religion of Muslims. They no more worship Islam than Christians worship Christianity.

Almost every day we are told that Islamist terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. That is nonsense, and deep down everyone knows it. This is not just a question of semantics. It is a question of the best way to deal with a problem.

If someone gets sick, how can you treat it if you won’t identify the cause? There are, in fact, different kinds of terrorists, and acting as if Basque separatist terrorists and Irish Republican Army terrorists and radical Islamic terrorists are all the same blinds you to possible motives and inhibits your ability to do an intervention or hopefully prevent an act of terrorism to begin with.

We need to quit denying the obvious: Not all Muslims are terrorists and not all terrorists are Muslims, but in those terrorists that are in fact Muslim, religious motivations do play a role, and we ignore that at our peril.

Bill Runyan

Donald Trump is guilty of fomenting hate against Muslims. If attacks on innocent Muslim men, women, and children in America begin, then he should be held accountable. Innocent Muslims are no more to blame for terrorist acts committed by ISIS and al-Qaeda than Christians are for terrorist acts committed by the KKK or Timothy McVeigh. 

We are a nation of immigrants, but past immigrants, including the Italians, the Irish, and others were not welcomed and even hated in America. It is hard to imagine, though, how much poorer our nation and our culture would be without the contributions made by the people who have come here from countries around the world. 

There is every reason to believe that our Muslim friends and citizens will continue to make many contributions that will enrich American society and culture and make the United States an even greater country.

Philip Williams

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Strickland Gathering No Moss on Governmental or Money Fronts” …

I would still like to know how Strickland plans to stop police officers from leaving. Over 400 officers have retired or resigned in the last three years due to Strickland and the Memphis City Council’s decisions to reduce pay, eliminate retiree healthcare, kick spouses off the healthcare plan, and transform the pension system. Simply put: It makes no sense to work in the sencond-most dangerous city in the U.S. for what officers now receive in pay/benefits.

In order to get back to a force of 2,400 officers, the city would have to hire/train/graduate at least 100 officers per year for the next 4 years AND have no officers retire or resign in that time frame. It’s not going to happen. If the whispers are true that Strickland has his sights set on switching employees to a high-deductible healthcare plan this summer, you can bet at least 400 more officers will flee the department in the next few years.

Firefox

About Jackson Baker’s post, “MHA Head [Maura] Sullivan Headed to Chattanooga” …

Congrats, Maura Sullivan! I’m sure once she got a chance to see what tangled web of corruption Robert Lipscomb left MHA in, she wanted out. Public housing can work with the right director. It is underserving a city of this size.

Truth Hurts

TH: And you came to this conclusion by way of UFO? I may have my issues with Lipscomb, but surely you know what he has worked to change. Section 8 is a federal government program that local governments participate in. That program makes more sense than concentrating poor people in one section of a city. Certainly, we remember the result of that before Lipscomb worked to change it.

1Memphomaniac

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News The Fly-By

Highlights and Lowlights of 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.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ post, “Zoo Grant to Renovate Herpatarium” …

This is good to hear. Long past time for the zoo to do something about that exhibit. Now if they could only get a grant to update the aquarium.

Jeff

Yes, the aquarium is very sad. The exhibit at a tropical fish store is better. Maybe they should just outsource it to a tropical fish store. I bet they’d do it for free.

DatGuy

How about a grant for parking, so the zoo can stop destroying our historical greensward?

Susan Williams

About the Flyer cover story, “The Lipscomb Affair” …

In 2005, my sisters and I got together with friends to form the group Save Libertyland. Mayor Herenton had just closed down the park out of the blue. In early 2006, Save Libertyland began meeting with city officials, mainly Robert Lipscomb. I dubbed him “Man of Many Hats” for his various high-profile, high-paying administrative positions.

For years, until we moved away, my sisters and I got strung along by Lipscomb. He played everyone in Save Libertyland with his “charrettes” and charades. We began calling for a HUD audit of Lipscomb’s offices. Memphis’ current breaking scandal and Lipscomb’s suspension (with pay?!) has shocked former members of Save Libertyland. The mounting allegations against him bring back a flood of sad memories from our long fight to save teenage summer jobs, recreation, tourism, and most importantly, family togetherness. We knew he was a liar with power over people’s lives and livelihoods; we did not know to what extent.

Denise Parkinson

On Bianca Phillips’ post about Troy Goode …

Many questions remain unanswered about the cause of death in the Troy Goode case. It seems to me that the Southaven district attorney’s office, mayor’s office, and police department are not doing anything to get to the bottom of this death. If it turns out that Troy Goode died as a result of police misconduct, this could be a criminal matter. I hope with all of my heart that they continue to look for facts in this matter and do not rest until justice is served for Troy Goode and the family he left behind.

Things the media tell us that are facts: Troy Goode was bitten by police dogs. He was thrown to the ground by police and hog-tied. He was strapped facedown on a gurney while still hog-tied and put into an ambulance. Troy’s family was not able to see him in the ambulance or the hospital. He died while in police custody. He was never arrested or read his rights. 

Troy left behind a wife and baby, as well as his parents, siblings, and many friends. Please help in any way you can to make sure Troy gets justice. 

Dan Tupis

About Eileen Townsend’s story, “With This Ring” …

I care about professional wrestling just a little bit more than I care about Donald Trump, which is to say, not much. But I found myself reading Eileen Townsend’s article about it simply because it’s so beautifully written. As with John McPhee, it’s the prose that dazzles, and the subject becomes secondary.

Corey Mesler

About Jackson Baker’s Politics column, “Close, But No Cigars” …

Terry Roland seems to have settled down to a mostly respectable politician the past couple of years. I honestly don’t know whether he’s angling for Mark Luttrell’s job. I’ve not given him much consideration or respect because of his behavior and rants of past years, but the new Terry Roland is making me consider changing my opinion of him.

Midtown Mark

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Robert Lipscomb Affair

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Robert Lipscomb has been called the most powerful man in Memphis. Power player. Power broker. Dealmaker. Deal breaker. Planning czar. Point man. Puppet master. Shadow operator. Rapist. Motherfucker.

He earned the first set of names from the powerful friends and opponents he made in a nearly 20-year career in two roles, the director of the Memphis division of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and as director of the Memphis Housing Authority (MHA). With those jobs, he directed the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars of government funding to the biggest and highest-profile projects in Memphis. This is how he — an unelected official, a behind-the-scenes operative known largely only to those in government and business — became so powerful.

The last two names in the first paragraph are from a man whose accusations have burned that power to the ground. The man, now 26 and living in Washington State, told Memphis Police Department (MPD) investigators that Lipscomb raped him. The accuser said that Lipscomb lured him into his SUV and then forced him to perform oral sex on him.

This was in 2003, according to a police report, while the accuser said he was a homeless teenager walking the streets of Memphis. The accuser said Lipscomb made him perform oral sex on him more than a dozen times after that, giving him money and promises of a better life to keep him quiet. Since the accuser’s first allegations surfaced two weeks ago, more accusers have called Memphis City Hall with similar stories about Lipscomb, city officials said. Nine by the end of last week, according to their count, though no further details have been forthcoming, either from City Hall or the MPD.

Indeed, they have gone seriously mum on what is presumably an ongoing investigation.

At this point, the allegations are just that, and Lipscomb hasn’t been charged or arrested for anything. But the stories about him have packed a powerful punch. Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, called the allegations “disturbing.” Jack Sammons, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), called them “sickening.” MHA Chairman Ian Randolph called them “horrendous.” Lipscomb quit his job at HCD. He was suspended with pay from the MHA. Investigations have been launched into the criminal aspects of the case, of course, but financial investigators are also shining their lights on the books of every agency Lipscomb directed.

Meanwhile, the ousted Lipscomb maintains his innocence. Although he quit talking to the press under orders of his attorney, Ricky Wilkins, he was telling reporters who showed up at his front door two weeks ago that the allegations are false.

From certain points of view, it hardly matters; the damage is done.

It’s likely that, since the allegations surfaced, anyone who ever had contact with Lipscomb has completely reassessed the man who seemed to have all the puzzle pieces and knew how they fit together. Even as the allegations against Lipscomb remain to be investigated and very probably adjudicated, a new and unflattering light has begun to shine upon Lipscomb.

To many in the public, he is now like a comic-book villain walking half in the bright light of polite society and half in a private darkness with the demons that may lie there. And for all these years, if the accusations against him are true, he would have been carrying a disturbingly divided self around, one with unfettered access both to the city’s most innocent as well as to its most powerful — and with only a thin veil separating his competent and somewhat wonky public personality from an alleged private self that was both violent and profane.

Jackson Baker

Lipscomb overseeing slide presentation of Fairgrounds TDZ project for County Commission earlier this year; with him are architect Tom Marshall and Convention & Visitors Bureau head Kevin Kane

The Rundown

Nearly two weeks have passed since the original allegation surfaced about Lipscomb. Here’s what we know so far. First, the publicly known chronology:

Sunday, Aug. 30 — A late-night memo was sent to the press noting that a man had accused Lipscomb of rape and that Lipscomb had been relieved of duty at HCD.

Monday, Aug. 31 — Lipscomb resigns as HCD director. More Lipscomb accusers reportedly call City Hall. The MPD searches Lipscomb’s house and takes computers, folders, and a camcorder as evidence.

Tuesday, Sept. 1 — Wharton taps HCD Deputy Director Debbie Singleton to run that agency in the interim. He recommends Maura Black Sullivan, the city’s deputy chief administrative officer, to temporarily lead MHA. Even more Lipscomb accusers are said to come forward.

Wednesday, Sept. 2 — MHA suspends Lipscomb with pay, appoints Sullivan as temporary director. Sammons tells the press that Wharton’s office is going quiet on the investigation to let the MPD do its job.

Thursday, Sept. 3 — Lipscomb’s initial accuser talks with several media, including the Flyer, adding a detail here or subtracting one there, but always insisting that Lipscomb promised him a job and a house in return for sexual favors, with the relationship souring, as the accuser put it to the Flyer, after he realized “the motherfucker” was “pulling my leg.”

Tuesday, Sept. 8 — Still no charges filed against Lipscomb.

Toby Sells

Jack Sammons during last week’s MHA meeting

Conversations with Wharton and Sammons, among others, have subsequently filled out these bare-boned details somewhat. The first warning signal had come into City Hall on Thursday, August 20th, with an explicit phone call to the mayor’s office from the Seattle man, who, as was later learned, was a Memphis native with a fairly lengthy police record locally.

Wharton was out campaigning, and the first to learn about the call was CAO Sammons, who had just returned from official business in Nashville. The most riveting aspect of the call, that which convinced Sammons — and later Wharton and Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong — that the matter had to be taken seriously was the caller’s insistence that he had Western Union receipts of blackmail payments from Lipscomb.

The caller had also spoken of a police complaint he had filed against Lipscomb in 2010, one that was virtually identical to his renewed complaint in 2015. The 2010 complaint was dismissed — on the basis, police records showed, that the complainant, who was homeless at the time, could not be located.

The similarity of the two accounts, five years apart, was a convincing fact to Sammons, who explained further that the complainant chose to repeat his charges again as a form of release recommended by a therapist in Seattle.

Acquainted with the basic facts upon his return to his office, Wharton called in Director Armstrong, on Friday, August 21st, and the two of them contacted the Seattle man, who repeated his tale and also forwarded photostats of the Western Union receipts.

Jackson Baker

Mayor Wharton faces a press scrum about Lipscomb matter

As the mayor would explain to the Flyer, he deferred to the judgment of his seasoned police director, who decided the matter was serious enough to merit a personal visit to Seattle to meet with the accuser. Armstrong would arrange for such a visit, by himself and a group of investigators, for the middle of the next week.

Between that weekend and the Armstrong party’s return from Seattle on Sunday, August 30th, there were meetings about various pending projects in City Hall involving Lipscomb, Wharton, and Sammons. They were conducted in a business-as-usual manner, with nothing said to Lipscomb about the caller from Seattle.

But on Sunday, Armstrong and his assisting officers were back in town, and they met with Wharton and Sammons at City Hall with a full briefing on what had been two full days of investigation in Seattle. The convened group then learned that the accuser from Seattle had contacted Fox-13 news with his accusations, and a reporter from that station had called, wanting details.

That fact sped up an itinerary that otherwise might have taken days or even weeks to develop. Lipscomb was called and asked to come to the mayor’s office for a meeting, which, he apparently presumed, had to do with some hitch in one of his ongoing projects.

When he arrived, however, he found out otherwise, and arrangements were made in the tense atmosphere of that meeting for him to begin the process of separating himself from city service.

The Upshot

Heading into its third week, the Lipscomb affair has seemingly settled into an incubation mode, with dormant legal and political implications that could either simmer quietly or explode into an ever-expanding crisis.

On the legal front, the deposed planning czar’s attorney, Wilkins, an able veteran who is as familiar both with Lipscomb and with the way city government operates as anybody around, was keeping his cards — such as have been dealt — close to his chest, with the full expectation that more surprises might be yet to come.

Wilkins has made it clear, though, that he felt his client’s rights had been put in jeopardy and that he will have much to say about several aspects of what has so far transpired at some point in the future.

Meanwhile, the implications of the affair for city business and the mayoral race that was just entering its stretch drive are still being assessed.

Politically, it is too early to tell. Wharton was receiving credit in some quarters for acting quickly and decisively in dealing with the problem, once it came up. Others were prepared to fault the mayor for not seeing the situation develop under his nose or for even looking the other way from potential trouble.

Further development in the Lipscomb saga could determine which view would prevail, at a time when polls show the mayor with only a slight lead over his closest opponent, Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland.

On the governmental front, it has long been a fact of life in City Hall that Lipscomb was calling the shots on city planning ventures, which included numerous neighborhood developments, the just-completed Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid attraction, and a $200 million pending TDZ (Tourism Development Zone) project involving the Fairgrounds.

John Branston

Lipscomb’s projects include the Pyramid,

John Branston

Heritage Trail,

Bianca Phillips

and Foote Homes.

Under two mayors, former city chief executive Willie Herenton and now Wharton, Lipscomb has been influential to the point that a common jest was to suggest that Herenton and Wharton had worked for Lipscomb rather than the other way around.

It was no joke, however, that under both his titles, Lipscomb had extraordinary power and bargaining ability, which left most members of the city council, even some who were privately critical of him, unable to say no to Lipscomb when pressed for a vote. Among other things, he had the ability to route developmental funding into their districts, or not, as he saw fit.

The Projects

No matter what was going on in his personal life, Lipscomb’s professional life as the director of the HCD and as the director of the MHA made him the point man on a number of massive city projects.

What will become of those projects — ranging from Foote Homes to the Fairgrounds redevelopment — remains to be seen, but the new MHA interim director, Sullivan, said she will be working with the new HCD interim director, Singleton, to evaluate each one in the coming months.

“Ms. Singleton and I have years of a good working relationship already and will work in concert to ensure the progress of the projects, but more importantly, the success of the city’s residents,” Sullivan said. “These projects are all multi-faceted and involve various divisions of city government. We are both currently evaluating the businesses, and the forward progress of each of these projects is a part of that evaluation.”

Here’s a rundown of a few of the projects Lipscomb’s departure leaves unfinished:

Foote Homes: Through the Memphis Heritage Trail project, Lipscomb had a vision to raze the city’s public housing projects and replace them with multi-income housing. And he saw through the eradication of five of the city’s six housing projects (and the displacement of their residents via housing vouchers) between 2001, when LeMoyne Gardens were razed and redeveloped as College Park, to 2014 when Cleaborn Homes were torn down and rebuilt as Cleaborn Pointe at Heritage Landing.

But the last housing project left in the city — Foote Homes — remains as MHA awaits a decision on the federal department of Housing and Urban Development’s Choice Neighborhoods grant. Winners of the grant are expected to be announced this month.

Kenneth Reardon, the former University of Memphis urban planning professor who led the Vance Avenue Collaborative (the group opposing the demolition of Foote Homes), believes Lipscomb’s sudden departure could put that grant at risk.

“What does Robert’s departure mean? He has been viewed as one of the most effective public housing directors in the country. So his departure, as the major planner/architect/public manager/guy who put the financing together, at this late stage, could have a serious negative effect on the city’s ability to get this [grant]. It’s hard to really know,” said Reardon, who recently moved to Boston to take a job as director of the graduate program for urban planning and development at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

At least Reardon is hoping the city doesn’t get the grant to tear down Foote Homes, which he believes is a colossally bad idea.

“We still think the city’s approach to Foote Homes is ill-conceived and certainly not the most creative and transformative proposal they could put forward, given that the number of low-income people needing deeply subsidized housing and the proportion of those who need to be downtown for employment and medical, educational reasons,” Reardon said. “Foote Homes remains a vital asset.”

Jordan Danelz, Mike McCarthy, and Marvin Stockwell of the Coliseum Coalition

The Fairgrounds: With Singleton named as the new interim director at HCD, Marvin Stockwell, the spokesman for the Coliseum Coalition, said the organization is prepared to continue talks with the city. Lipscomb was a proponent for the redevelopment of the Fairgrounds, possibly as a multi-purpose youth sports complex, and he was planning to go to the state after the October 8th election to push for TDZ status for the Fairgrounds, a move that was opposed by many. The Coliseum Coalition aims to save the long-vacant Mid-South Coliseum.

“We at the Coliseum Coalition stand ready to work with anyone and everyone to reopen and reuse the Mid-South Coliseum,” Stockwell said. “I think part of the reason that public opinion has continued to move in the direction of reopening the Coliseum is because we’ve been able to have a respectful dialogue with the city. We had that type of back-and-forth with Lipscomb, and we have every confidence that will carry forward. We’re going to pick up where we left off.”

Whitehaven: Whitehaven’s revitalization is dependent upon the area in its entirety, rather than only focusing on Southbrook Mall, which was a point of contention within the administration — and Lipscomb, who was secretly recorded earlier this year saying that some city leaders were “throwing darts” at a proposal to revamp the aging mall. Mayor A C Wharton will be heading a committee to enact the Whitehaven plan.

The Pinch District: Lipscomb’s involvement in the Pinch District development — the pressure on which has been mounting since far before Bass Pro Shops’ opening earlier this year — were first focused on making sure the hunting and fishing mega-store got up and running smoothly. During the rezoning of the Pinch District in 2013, Lipscomb was quoted as saying that the Pinch was “second priority” to Bass Pro Shops. With that complete, there’s been talk of a new hotel coming into the area. Tanja Mitchell, community development coordinator for Uptown Memphis, is hopeful that Lipscomb’s departure won’t affect the area’s redevelopment.

Toby Sells

a marquee board at the Memphis Housing Authority

“We’re happy to work with any agency to get the Pinch redeveloped, because that’s something that needs to happen. The Pinch needs to come to life again,” Mitchell said.

All these, and a pending $30 million federal development grant, are potentially hostages to fortune in the uncertain atmosphere of the moment, but Wharton and other city officials have expressed optimism that all can still proceed as before.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Seeing Promise in Turmoil

CREDIT: Power Box

What difference a day makes.

In one day — overnight, actually — a man’s career and name are ruined.

Now let’s look at the flip side of that: What a difference a day doesn’t make. A teen walks into a police precinct and describes a crime — and then nothing. Not a day, not days, not months … years until the claim is truly pursued.

This week’s cover story is about the charges leveled at Robert Lipscomb. The only truth we have at this point is that someone isn’t telling the truth.

Rumor has it that this is a plot to clear the mayor of any unpleasantness before October’s elections. Rumor has it that this is a plot to defile the mayor before October’s elections.

And then there’s the Cosby Effect people have been throwing around about the additional alleged victims. Are others latching on for attention? Are they for real? Maybe they aren’t, but let’s note that no one believed Cosby’s victims until it was nearly in the double digits.

Whatever shakes out in this case, maybe something positive will come. Maybe someone inclined toward abuse will think twice. Maybe some kid who’s been abused will say, Enough!

I recently profiled Tami Sawyer and her business Power Box for Memphis magazine’s 901 blog. She saw promise in turmoil. We can all learn from her example.

Sawyer is a native Memphian and a social activist. She lived in Washington, D.C., for 10 years. She jokes that she aged out of D.C., but admits that family and a new spark in the city drew her back home.

Last November, two days before Thanksgiving to be exact, a grand jury moved not to indict Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown. Social media erupted. There were calls to boycott Black Friday.

Sawyer saw a different path. Instead of boycotting, she tweeted out, we should buy black on Black Friday. She began Instragramming black businesses. A germ of an idea for Power Box was formed.

Power Box, which launched on August 18th, connects black-owned businesses with consumers. Each week, Power Box profiles businesses, offering giveaways of products from those businesses.

Sawyer has recruited nearly 800 black-owned businesses for the site. She says between 400 and 500 more are in her queue to check out.

Sawyer says the name of Power Box was very deliberate. She latched onto the idea of including “power” early on, but the box came later. As she explains “power box” has meaning. “It’s the transformer. It’s the light in everybody’s head.”

She says of Power Box, “This is a way to have a collective impact. For me, this is true social activism.”

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Robert Lipscomb’s Influence and Playing the Gamble

In this week’s cover story, we, like the rest of the Memphis media, have begun to scratch the surface (and, for once, that oft-used cliché seems to be the right metaphor) of an ongoing problem in city government.

Yes, we mean the Lipscomb affair, for sure — a saga, rivaling anything in Sophocles or Shakespeare, of a sudden and dramatic fall from the heights of power to the depths of apparent ruin and disgrace. And one, moreover, that leaves a slew of unanswered questions in its wake: How was one man allowed, through two successive city administrations, to accumulate so much power and influence that, to all intent and purpose, he was unbossed at City Hall, able not only to chart his own course but, it would seem, to decide the direction of city government itself in matters of development?

It was Lipscomb single-handedly who came up with the Bass Pro solution to the riddle of an empty but debt-consuming Pyramid. He committed the city to sticking with that strategy in the face of other suggestions, some of which might have had merits of their own, and through year after year of what seemed never-ending delays. As of now, it appears that Lipscomb was right, that his gamble paid off. (Ask us again in 10 years.)

Other projects, like the apparently abandoned Heritage Trail TIF (Tax Increment Financing) proposal of a few years back, would have put enormous swaths of the city in potential hock to pay for what seemed, finally, disproportionately modest developments within a limited geographical area. The purpose, to pay homage to the city’s civil rights legacy while upgrading a depressed area, was fine, but the whole thing seemed out of scale, and it would have involved the disingenuous premise of having the entirety of downtown — which, all things considered, has been enjoying a boom — classified technically as a slum.

That project, like Bass Pro, might have paid off, too, but it ultimately seemed too much a gamble — one in which the ante seemed out of scale with the potential payoff.

The jury is still out (another cliché that somehow seems wholly appropriate) on another Lipscomb leftover, an ongoing Fairgrounds TDZ (Tourism Development Zone) proposal, which the administration of Mayor A C Wharton evidently still hopes to win state approval for, though there have been abundant objections to it from citizens’ groups and preservationists.

Don’t misunderstand. Lipscomb had a certain genius for dreaming up these projects, all of which aimed artfully at snagging state or federal monies (or both) that our cash-poor city would have trouble coming up with otherwise. Maybe Memphis needed — and needs — to take a few risks.

But it now seems clear that some obvious cautions are in order, as well. When we mentioned scratching the surface of a problem, we didn’t mean the Lipscomb affair alone. We meant that civic tendency, so much in evidence that a state comptroller was forced to upbraid us for it not along ago, to live entirely at risk, without sufficient oversight, like a giddy Mr. Micawber with a habit for playing the lottery.

We can still dream; we just need to have enough wakefulness about us to know what’s going on in reality.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

After Early Openness, Mayor Adopts Policy of Wariness on Details of Lipscomb Crisis

CREDIT: JB

JB

Wharton surrounded by reporters on Thrsday

As the Robert Lipscomb crisis wears on, Mayor A C Wharton — who was reasonably forthcoming in a Wednesday-morning interview with the Flyer — has begun a new policy of responding to inquiries with a wariness that he puts forth as conforming to legal scruple.

He gave a demonstration of the policy as he was surrounded by reporters Thursday morning as he left a meeting room at the Convention Center during a break in the action of the National Conversation about Prosperity which he is hosting.

Even as reporters began to sally forth their questions, Wharton began with a dose of caution regarding the matter of how he weighed a Seattle accuser’s allegations of sexual abuse that in fairly short order led to city czar Lipscomb’s dismissal from city service.

“I will not touch on the evidence, not at all,” the Mayor said, acknowledging a legal presumption of Lipscomb’s innocence of misdeeds “until proven guilty” but saying that he had acted in accordance with “the welfare of this city,” and that, “I will do what is necessary to protect this city.”

Asked what transpired when he first confronted Lipscomb about the Seattle man’s accusations, Wharton said, “I declined to comment on it when I was asked about it before, and I’m not gong to comment on it. It’s an investigation. One’s action or reaction n cold become an issue in the courts, and I’m not going to comment on it.”

References to an ongoing “investigation” are now the Mayor’s inevitable response to most questions that probe into the heart of the matter. Elaborating, he said, “I don’t jump into criminal matters. It goes through the Police Department. The only reason I was in on the front of this one was because a call came in to me personally.”

This was a reference to the Seattle man’s telephone call to the Mayor of Thursday, August 21, that triggered his prompt dispatching of Police Director Toney Armstrong and other officers to the Washington city to hear out the accuser in person.

Both the Mayor and other city officials have talked about the emergence of at least 9 other accusers besides the Seattle man who have surfaced since the Lipscomb story broke early in the week — an echo of what happened when entertainer Bill Cosby began to be accused of raping various women.

The difference is that all of Cosby’s accusers went on the record and have been promptly identified as to their names and the circumstances of their accusations. In the Lipscomb case there have been no details at all as to who the accusers are, where they are located, and what they say happened to them or when.

Asked for such details on Thursday, the Mayor went to his mantra: “That gets into the investigation.”

One question Wharton dismissed with a point blank answer of sorts. Asked about allegations made by the Seattle accuser in an interview with local FOX-13 television that the city had made promises to him of “compensation,” the Mayor said, “I will say no to that.

He said that all that had been proffered to the Seattle man was available to all of “those who think they were victimized,” and that was access to the city’s Crime Victims’ Assistance Center. “And that’s it.”

Meanwhile, fragments of information about the Seattle accuser are coalescing into the portrait of a man whose probity is beginning to come under question.

For details of our own extended conversation with the accuser, “Lipscomb’s Accuser Speaks to the Flyer” go here.

Categories
News News Blog

Lipscomb’s Accuser Speaks to the Flyer

In a rambling telephone conversation, former Memphian living in Seattle speaks of his claims against the now-resigned city planning czar, his fears of retribution for speaking out, and his recipe for making things right.

In a telephone conversation with the Flyer on Thursday afternoon, the accuser of former city planning czar Robert Lipscomb asserted that he had spoken with Mayor A C Wharton by phone two weeks ago about alleged sexual improprieties committed against him by Lipscomb, and that, on the succeeding weekend, he had talked directly about the matter with Police Director Toney Armstrong and other Memphis police officials dispatched to Seattle by Wharton.

His in-person conversation with Armstrong and the other officers stretched across Friday and Saturday of that weekend for a cumulative total of about eight hours, according to the accuser, who spoke with the Flyer on condition that his name not be used.

The accuser (as he will be referred to henceforth in this article) attended at various times Booker T. Washington High School, Treadwell High School, and Central High School when he lived in Memphis, he said. It was during his high school years, “the summer of 2005,” when he was 16, that he was offered a ride by Lipscomb, who forcibly compelled him to perform oral sex.

On that first occasion, he said, Lipscomb paid him “$60 cash, then reached into his wallet and paid me another $140.” (That would explain why the lesser sum was included in a complaint eventually filed with the police four years later, in 2010, while recent news reports have used a figure of $200.)

“I was 16, I was homeless, I was manipulated, raped, and abused by Robert Lipscomb,” the accuser said.

As has been reported, the accuser acknowledges that he and Lipscomb maintained a subsequent sexual relationship for years but says that he never considered the then high-ranking city official to be a friend, mentor, or benefactor — merely someone who made him promises of advantages, including a house to live in, that never materialized. “The motherfucker promised me a roof over my head and a job,” but he failed to deliver, the accuser said.

“He continued to abuse me, which is when the relationship began to go sour as I began to recognize that this guy was pulling my leg,” the accuser said.

He was asked what evidence he had presented to Armstrong et al. to convince them of the truth of his claims. Specifically, he was asked if he made them aware of any emails or voice mails from Lipscomb. He said no, that what he had and what he showed the officers was a telegram from Lipscomb that corroborated an exchange that he said the two of them had had some years ago — presumably on or about the time of his 2010 police report.

It was not clear whether by “telegram” he was referring to alleged blackmail payments made to him by Lipscomb through Western Union.

What the “telegram” attested to, the accuser said, was that Lipscomb had requested — and he had sent the city official — a letter in which he stated explicitly that Lipscomb had done nothing improper with him sexually. He says that Lipscomb promised him, in return, that he would buy the accuser a house and perform other useful favors.

He said that he sent such a letter, but that he got no further response from Lipscomb after he sent it, and he asserts that he did not hear again from the city official.

The accuser was asked what other evidence he had shown the Memphis officers that would incriminate Lipscomb. “I told them I could describe Mr. Lipscomb’s penis,” he said. Told that it was hard to imagine situations whereby either the police, the Mayor, or any city officials would ask Lipscomb to drop his pants to check out such a description, the accuser responded, “This is a sexual investigation, so I think they should have to drop the man’s pants.”

Asked if he had been involved in other sexual relationships like the one he had with Lipscomb, the accuser said only, “I can’t speak about other investigations.”

He spoke of one other issue worthy of complaint — an occasion in 2011 when, he said, the police pushed him down and “injured me.” He did not say where this incident happened. (Reporter Jeni DiPrizio of WATN-TV, who has also talked to the accuser and done additional research, unearthed evidence in a Thursday night broadcast of several criminal charges formerly filed against the accuser, who at one point in his conversation with the Flyer, spoke, without elaborating, of having a “probation officer.”)

The accuser said that, before this story broke at large, he had tried to communicate it to several Memphis TV stations, but that only FOX-13 had originally treated his account seriously and expressed interest in following up on it. The station sent a reporter to Seattle to interview him and has broadcast brief excerpts from their interviews, which include claims — denied by city officials — that, like Lipscomb, they had defaulted on promises.

The city had offered him “compensation, exoneration, and justice, and they are delaying each one of those,” the accuser says in one excerpt broadcast by Fox.

The accuser said another Memphis station had sent a crew to Seattle to speak to him, but that, while he talked with them briefly by phone, he had refused to meet with them. “Naw, I told them to suck my weenie. They just fly out here without asking and think they can get an interview.”

The accuser said he worried about people arriving in Seattle with the intent to do him harm. He said if “a killer” came after him “with a gun or waving a knife, he’s going to get hurt.”

The accuser said his manhood had been injured by Lipscomb’s actions and that he had been tormented “psychologically, emotionally, and mentally.” He said, “I can’t move forward with this behind me.”

“It behooves Mr. Lipscomb to come out,” he said, “forgive himself so I can forgive him.” He said that if Lipscomb (who has been charged with no crime) ended up going to jail, he would be killed by another prisoner as a child molester.

“He has to pay for what he did. He has to pay me back for all the pain and suffering he’s caused me over last 10 years. All he has to do now is come out and admit what he did.”

There had been suggestions that the accuser expected financial compensation from Lipscomb. Asked about that, the accuser said only that “admitting and apologizing are starting on the payment.”