Tag: Robert Lipscomb

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News News Blog

HUD Announces Job Program For Foote Homes Residents

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Residents of Foote Homes, the city’s last remaining public housing project, were chosen for a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) pilot program aimed at helping them find and train for jobs.

The Jobs Plus pilot program was announced at a press conference at Foote Homes on Thursday afternoon. HUD’s General Deputy Assistant Secretary of Public Housing Jemine Bryon said HUD will give the Memphis Housing Authority $3 million to implement the program

Memphis is one of nine U.S. cities chosen to receive the funding for its public housing residents. Bryon said 57 cities applied. The funds will be invested into opportunities for public housing residents to increase their income through employment-related services, financial incentives, and community support for work.

There are more than 1,000 people living in 414 households at Foote Homes. Bryon said the program has a goal of enrolling 291 of those residents into the Jobs Plus program and placing 60 of them into jobs.

“Just because public housing residents are of modest means doesn’t mean they have modest dreams,” Bryon told those gathered at the conference, many of whom were residents of Foote Homes.

City officials plan to submit an application in September to HUD to raze Foote Homes’ 57 buildings. HUD denied the city the $30 million grant for the project last year. But city Director of Housing and Community Development Robert Lipscomb will try again this year. Lipscomb is overseeing a plan to tear down the aging complex and replace it with a mixed-income housing development like Legends Park, Cleaborne Pointe, University Place, and others.

Residents of Foote Homes, backed by the Vance Avenue Collaborative, have been fighting the city’s plan to tear down their apartment complex for years. They’ve released alternative plans, calling on the city to spruce up the complex with bigger porches, rain gardens, better lighting, walkways, and more trees.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Oh, Puck

When I moved to Memphis from Pittsburgh in the early 1990s, my son, who was 11 at the time, was a hockey player. He worshipped Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins. He’d even been to a Stanley Cup finals game. His greatest fear about moving South was that he wouldn’t be able to play hockey.

So I asked around, and it turned out, there was a local youth hockey league. At the group’s pre-season organizational meeting, when they learned we were from Pittsburgh, they asked if I could skate. “A little,” I said. Then they asked if I knew the rules of hockey. “Yes,” I said, “pretty much.”

“Good,” they said. “You’re a coach.”

And so, for the next three years, I spent many nights and afternoons in the Mid-South Coliseum, coaching the “red team.” We took the “big ice” whenever we could get it. The only other rink in town was at the Mall of Memphis, where spectators carried shopping bags and munched fast food and wondered out loud what the hell them kids were up to.

So, for what it’s worth, the Coliseum used to be a great spot for at least one “youth sport” — which is the foundation around which the city’s proposed Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) is being spun. But, as Toby Sells’ cover story makes clear, the place has been mothballed since 2006 and, depending on whose numbers you believe, it will take many millions to bring it back to viability. In the meantime, the local youth hockey program has moved to Southaven, along with most of the concerts that would logically work well at the old 11,000-seat venue.

Now, a growing movement to stop the destruction of the Coliseum is running smack-dab into the city’s plan to reinvent the Fairgrounds. Both sides have work to do before the issue is decided.

As others have pointed out in these pages, the city is asking taxpayers to trust the city to be able to “develop” the Fairgrounds without putting all the cards on the table. We don’t know who or what might move in. A hotel? What kind of hotel? Youth sports? Really? The competition in that market is fierce. Retail? Big box? Boutique? Fast food? There are lots of loose parts in play.

In the case of two other iconic local public-private partnerships — the Bass Pro Pyramid and the Sears Crosstown Building — the partners are known and the surrounding neighborhoods are pretty firmly behind the projects. In Cooper Young, on the other hand, opposition is building to the TDZ plan, in general, and to the destruction of the Coliseum, in particular.

Maybe a compromise can be concocted. Maybe not. But it would behoove the city not to ignore the will of a determined bunch of citizens. There’s a reason that I-40 doesn’t run through the middle of Overton Park. Memphians can be a stubborn bunch. And if you try to cross the blue line ahead of the puck, they will check you.

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Cover Feature News

The Coliseum: Should it stay or should it go?

Echoes from my boot heels clicked thinly off the asphalt and bricks outside the Mid-South Coliseum. I paused and looked way up to its domed roof before I walked in. Driving up Southern Avenue was the closest I’d ever been to the building before. My only real fascination with it now was story research. I had no idea why anyone would want to save the Coliseum — or tear it down. I had no idea I’d find the answers to both questions under the big dome.  

The service entrance was open on the east side. It was the large, roll-up gate where 18-wheelers would load in lights and sound gear for concerts. I stepped forward and my foot falls were muffled as I passed through the tunnel and into the still air and massive darkness of the Coliseum’s dome.

Photographs by Brandon Dill

A shaft of light from the door exposed three or four white semi-truck trailers parked close to the center of the floor. They sat under the old scoreboard, which was analog but still big by today’s standards. I knew the trailers housed the pieces of the old Memphis Grand Carousel, now destined for the Children’s Museum of Memphis. But what made me pause was how easily the Coliseum swallowed those huge truck trailers.

I touched base with the city official who had let us all in — a television news crew, a video production team, reporters and a photographer from The Commercial Appeal, and me. The official said to just go and look at whatever I wanted, a golden permission slip.

Pictures of what’s left inside the Coliseum.

Crumbles of loose black material (that looked like dirt but weren’t dirt) were scattered over the floor, but the place wasn’t as much dirty as it was cluttered. Stacks of chairs; rolls of chain link fence; paisley couch cushions stacked on pallets; a giant red “M” peeking out of a crate. Kyle Veazey, the CA‘s politics team leader, told me it was the old “Memphis” sign from the now-demolished Lone Star concrete plant downtown.

Tiles were missing from the once-white ceiling. It reminded me somehow of the incomplete Death Star from Return of the Jedi. Nails and bits of metal clinked away from my boots as I walked. I clicked on my phone’s flashlight.

Outdoor light shone through on the west side of the floor. The concourse looked like it had been just closed the night before. With a broom and a mop, the place would be ready for guests. Several office windows were shattered, vandalized. Fluorescent light bulbs stuck out of the tops of trash cans. The entrance doors had been broken and boarded up.

On the second level, rows and rows of empty seats sat folded. I unfolded one and sat down. Veazey laughed and reminded me how dusty and/or moldy I’d be. I jumped up, thinking of the decade of mold on my back and the slow death that was sure to follow. But even in the brief time I sat in the chair, I could imagine seeing a show or a graduation there.

The day before I’d seen a photo of the Beatles playing the Coliseum. I mentally overlaid the image where I thought it should go. I mentally replayed the YouTube video of Jerry Lawler’s and Terry Funk’s “empty arena” wrestling match in 1981. I imagined David Copperfield making 13 audience members disappear in his 2001 “Tornado of Fire” television special. And then I thought about the last show, in 2006 and how the final sounds at the Coliseum were the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s heavy metal Christmas music.

Old tickets to Coliseum events

I remembered another internet picture of Cher and her then-husband Gregg Allman walking from a Coliseum dressing room. I wanted to see those dressing rooms. A single fluorescent bulb flickered and buzzed down a long dusty hallway, like something out of a creepy video game. A boiler somewhere knocked and moaned, right out of Scooby-Doo. I saw a flash to my right and found CA photographer, Mike Brown, shooting in the only dressing room with any light. 

I poked my head into a team dressing room down the hall. It had a king-sized mattress and a weathered copy of Vibe magazine that asked: “Is Mase for real?” Then I spotted a concession stand with an open door. A dried up bag of nacho cheese. A stack of Bud Light cups from three logos ago. And a menu board: Large Coke = $3. Draft beer = $4. Nachos = $3. Polish dog = $3. Underneath the prices and the logos, someone used the letters to write “EAT SHIT THANKS”

Toby Sells

I understood why people want to save the Coliseum. It’s huge, it doesn’t seem to be in terrible shape, and there are a lot of great memories in there. But its size seems to equal the behemoth effort it would take to bring it back to life and actually make a go of a successful business inside.

But it’s a place big enough for dreamers, and the Coliseum is the center of a dream for a cadre of Memphians who believe that the place where so much of the city’s music, sports, and entertainment history happened should be preserved.

Robert Lipscomb, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, also has a dream for the Fairgrounds, and the Coliseum doesn’t belong in it.

No one knows yet what will happen when those dreams collide.

Save the Coliseum

The Mid-South Coliseum should be saved, not just because it holds a lot of history, but also because there’s a good potential use for the building that speaks to the city’s brands in music, wrestling, and basketball.

That’s the vision of members of the newly formed Coliseum Coalition, a group that has organized a grassroots but sophisticated movement to save the building and ensure public input is heard on any plan to redevelop the Fairgrounds. 

The group (and general sentiment against the proposed youth sports complex at the Fairgrounds) is growing. The Save the Mid-South Coliseum Facebook group has swelled to 3,540 members in a few weeks. The official Mid-South Coliseum Facebook page has more than 11,000 likes.    

“We think it would be shortsighted to raze the Coliseum to pursue what we think is a fairly poorly thought-through plan that might leave tax payers on the hook and might leave Midtown with something it doesn’t want,” said coalition member Marvin Stockwell. “For that, we’re going to sacrifice a place that contains not only so much history — music history, especially, which is Memphis’ strongest brand — but basketball for sure. Before we had the Grizzlies, we had the Tigers. And then wrestling, I mean [Jerry] Lawler fought Andy Kaufman there. It’s not just the memories, it’s the possibility.” 

Stockwell, and Coalition members Mike McCarthy and Jordan Danelz, gathered last week to talk about the Coliseum at Cooper-Young’s Java Cabana, a stone’s throw from the building they’re trying to protect. 

The three wanted to clear up a few things from recent media reports: their efforts are not fueled entirely by nostalgia, they’re not fighting progress at the Fairgrounds, but it is true they don’t have a clear idea of what the Coliseum should be or even could be.

What they do believe is that the building should be saved. They point to the success of revitalization projects such as the Chisca Hotel, the Sears Crosstown building, the Tennessee Brewery, and Broad Avenue. They say that government leaders should listen to the community, especially those who would be neighbors to the proposed youth sports complex for the next 30 years of the proposed Tourist Development Zone (TDZ). 

Memphis is missing out on major opportunities by keeping the Coliseum closed, McCarthy said, noting that his daughter recently saw Jack White at Snowden Grove in Southaven, Mississippi. 

“We live right over there on Nelson,” McCarthy said. “I could’ve just walked over there with her to the Coliseum to see the show and every bit of tax money — or money, period — that was spent could’ve been generated inside Midtown. The Coliseum could be the largest tax generator in Midtown, given the opportunity.”

The big snag there is the non-compete clause in FedExForum’s  contract with the city of Memphis. The clause says an “important element of the success of the Arena Complex is to limit direct competition” from the Coliseum or the Pyramid. It mandates any show with more than 5,000 seats is the sole property of the Forum. 

The Coliseum has more than 11,000 seats. Coalition members are still analyzing the language of the non-compete. Does it affect only new places, or renovated places, or both? But it’s a huge question that hampers the way forward for any new idea the group may have for the Coliseum. 

“That’s why you’re at a disadvantage when you try to say what it could become,” Stockwell said. “That’s an unbelievably huge variable that’s going to make you go one way or another.”

But ideas are there for the Coliseum, and they keep coming: A rock-and-roll museum. A brewery. Give it to the University of Memphis Tigers. A music venue. An ice skating rink. A basketball museum. A soundstage for local film and television production. A wrestling museum. A rehearsal hall for touring acts.

A city report puts the price tag at about $32.8 million to bring the Coliseum back to working order. The largest chunk of the money ($8.6 million) would be spent just to get it current with the Americans with Disabilities Act. But McCarthy doesn’t trust the figure. 

“If the Liberty Bowl was saved for what [former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton] said was going to be $50 million, which turned out to be $9 million, then the Coliseum can be saved for probably $9 million or $10 million as well,” McCarthy said. “That’s not just pulling a figure out of the air. That’s based on the Liberty Bowl, which was built at the same time with the same reinforced steel and concrete and everything else.”

Danelz said the youth sports complex idea (at the heart of the current Fairgrounds redevelopment plan) has failed in numerous cities across the country. He said the current process has not been transparent and criticized Memphis Mayor A C Wharton’s plan to get the TDZ first and divulge a more detailed plan later. 

“They’re saying, don’t worry about it; let’s get that money and then we’ll figure out what we’re doing,” Danelz said. “In what Business 101 class can you say, ‘Let’s get a loan and then figure out a business plan’? Would you pass that class? 

“Yet, here you have the highest power in our city government saying exactly that for $220 million. They have nothing on the table to show us — no blueprints, no private partners, nothing.”

Wharton and Lipscomb have seemingly hit the pause button on the project for now and the Coalition members said it’s a welcome sign. They hope to have planning sessions with community members, conversations with Lipscomb about the Fairgrounds plan, and some pre-vitalization events (a la Brewery Untapped or New Face for an Old Broad) to bring people to the Coliseum and get them dreaming about its potential.

“If you went to Orange Mound, Belt Line, Edwin Circle, Cooper Young, you would be sorely pressed to find any citizen of Memphis who wants to tear down the Coliseum,” McCarthy said. “This is all coming from the top down. We’re better than that.” 

Tear it Down

The Mid-South Coliseum should be razed because it’s too costly to renovate and it doesn’t fit in with future development plans at the Fairgrounds.

That’s according to city officials who believe the Coliseum has to go in order to move forward on the proposed Tourism Development Zone retail and youth sports complex at the Fairgrounds. It’s a point that does not seem to delight to Robert Lipscomb, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, but he’s repeated that the demolition is an integral part of making the Fairgrounds a sports and retail tourist destination.

Back in 2009, O.T. Marshall Architects said it would cost about $29.5 million to fix the Coliseum. They looked at everything from drywall and kitchen equipment to plumbing and sprinklers. 

A year later, O.T. Marshall revised the figure to about $32.8 million. They said the building would have to be brought up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards ($8.6 million), get seismic structural updates ($5 million), get a new roof ($550,000), new flooring ($2 million), and general code updates in mechanical, plumbing, electrical, and fire protection and alarms ($9 million).

Code Solutions Group LLC analyzed code issues inside the Coliseum in 2009. They found that the layout of the building creates a “dangerous condition in the event of an emergency.” A plan to fix the problem would require 168 sections of hand rails, dozens of new stair steps, replacing the ceilings inside the arena and in the concourse, more than a dozen new bathrooms, adding a new lighting system, adding a sprinkler system, and more. The report noted that the building is a “landmark” but questioned if the costs of upgrades to the Coliseum would better serve Memphis than a new building.

“If a dedicated performing arts venue, seating 8,000 to 12,000 people is needed, then a new building with a full working stage, fly gallery, proscenium protection, good acoustics, theatrical lighting, and adequate exit capacity for the designed seating, and with full sprinkler protection might be the right answer,” said the 2009 report. “While the Coliseum is a unique building, there is physically no way a 1960s multi-functional facility could be redesigned to provide this type of venue.”

During the final three years of its active life, the Coliseum lost more than $880,000, according to city documents. In 2006, it was on course to lose at least $300,000.

So, city leaders looked closely at the Coliseum. In 2006, they were hoping to attract new events such as hockey, soccer, or arena football, but only if the tenants could work within the terms of the FedExForum’s non-compete clause.

They considered new federal tax credits to keep the Coliseum going. They considered the pros and cons of demolishing it or even building a new structure. In the end, the Coliseum was mothballed. It’s now used primarily as storage for truck trailers containing the Memphis Grand Carousel. 

Lipscomb said the building has been in “full shut-down” since around 2006, meaning limited utilities and no heating or cooling. He told the Memphis City Council earlier this month that he has been in talks with the Coliseum Coalition and will continue to talk with them about efforts to save the building. 

“I don’t have a dog in the fight one way or another,” Lipscomb said. “I just want to make sure that whatever we construct — either the renovation of the Coliseum or a new building — satisfies the needs for our future.”

To Lipscomb, that future includes getting into the youth and amateur sports business. It’s the cornerstone of his plan for the redevelopment of the Fairgrounds that also includes, a hotel, retail shops, and restaurants. 

“Youth sports” include indoor activities such as basketball, volleyball, cheerleading, gymnastics, track, and more. Those sports require what Lipscomb calls a multi-purpose building — one that can be transformed inside to accommodate all the different sports, and “the Coliseum is not feasible as a multi-purpose building.” 

Kevin Kane, president of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, concurred. “If you want a first-class indoor youth sports complex, you cannot physically do that inside the Coliseum,” Kane told council members. “I’m not an architect, but I can tell you, you can’t do it. Even if you gut it out, you can’t make the Coliseum where you can have six or seven basketball courts in there. There’s no way.”

Kane’s comments came after a question from councilmember Harold Collins, who said he envisioned a new building that could be used for youth sports and then changed to house concerts and even large high school graduations. Kane told him youth sports is one thing, “but if you want an arena, maybe you should figure out a way to fix the Mid-South Coliseum.”

Other council members questioned Lipscomb on the viability of the youth sports market. He pointed to a letter he said he got from Amateur Athletic Union President Dr. Roger Goudy that Lipscomb said it read, basically, “if you build it, they will come.”

“I know a lot of people have been critical [of the youth sports idea] but there’s a big market for that, still,” Lipscomb said. “So we have a great opportunity for that. 

“Some people will say we missed the boat on that. They’ll say, Memphis is not positioned to be a youth and recreation sports team and amateur athletics city. So, I think this letter dispels that myth.”

But the Coliseum still stands. City officials have taken a step back and invited the Urban Land Institute to have a look at their plans and the Fairgrounds, to determine if the two are a match.

Council members also made it clear to Lipscomb earlier this month that any development at the Fairgrounds will first need the council’s approval.

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News The Fly-By

Group Devises Plan to Save Foote Homes from Destruction

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Foote Homes doesn’t need to be torn down. It needs rain gardens, trees, individual porches, a new drainage system, updated lighting, and walkways. That’s according to the Vance Avenue Collaborative, a community group trying to save the public housing complex from demolition. 

The group held a meeting last week to discuss how Foote Homes can be saved.

City officials will submit an application in September to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to raze Foote Homes’ 57 buildings. HUD denied the city the $30 million grant for the project last year. But that did not deter Robert Lipscomb, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, who said the process is competitive and that the city would simply try again in 2015. 

Bianca Phillips

Foote Homes

Should the city be selected for the $30 million Hope VI grant this year, the project would require $12.7 million from city taxpayers and $60 million from a private developer. In all, the project would cost $102.7 million, according to a Memphis Housing Authority document.

The city’s plan calls for replacing the aging project with a mixed-income housing development like Legends Park, Cleaborne Pointe, University Place, and others. 

The Vance Avenue Collaborative unveiled their alternative plan (called the Vance Avenue Community Transformation Plan) to renovate the Foote Homes complex during a meeting last week at the St. Patrick Center. They believe their plan to save the complex will cost less than the city’s estimates for demolition and building new homes. 

The plan would remove the large fence surrounding Foote Homes to increase pedestrian access to the site and diminish its reputation as a “ghetto,” collaborative members said. New sidewalks would be installed around the campus, which would be rich with new green spaces, according to the plan. 

Rain gardens would catch storm water and hold it to feed community gardens. Residents could eat or sell the produce grown in the gardens, the plan said. More trees would improve the “micro-climate” at Foote Homes. All of this would reduce litter because “the more beautiful the place is, the more we’ll take care of it,” said a voiceover in a 15-minute video describing the plan last week.

Backyards would be made semi-private. Each residential unit would get its own front porch, and they would be made larger than the existing shared porches. Walls would be painted. Mold would be scraped. Windows and screens and doors would be replaced. And it all comes with a price tag of $63 million. 

“Our plan starts with the assumption that Foote Homes is not a problem to be eliminated but an incredible asset that could be even more positive and more uplifting with a little bit of work,” said Kenneth Reardon, a collaborative member and University of Memphis planning professor who has been working on the alternative project for years.

Should the city’s plan move forward, current Foote Homes residents would be forced to move before demolition begins. And they won’t be invited back to the development once it reopens. Instead, current residents will be given a Housing Choice Voucher (formerly known as a Section 8 voucher) for housing assistance, which will allow them to move into mixed-income or private housing located all over the city. 

“If [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.] were alive today, with all the displacement we’re seeing from the other housing projects, especially given that he was assassinated in Memphis, how would he feel about that?” asked collaborative member Gil Carter III.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Let it Be

Sometimes the do-nothing option isn’t bad. And that’s so with the Fairgrounds.

Ten or 15 years ago, doing nothing was not a good option. The Fairgrounds was blighted. It was basically an entertainment junkyard that included the abandoned remains of Liberty Land amusement park, Tim McCarver baseball stadium, and the stables and agricultural buildings that were part of the Mid-South Fair. The main entrances to Liberty Bowl Stadium were ugly and congested.

Today, the Fairgrounds looks a lot better from end to end, especially from the west side along East Parkway. The city greened and cleaned it. The stadium is beautifully lit, the faux entrance looks great, and Tiger Lane is an inviting, landscaped tailgating area for the Tigers, the Southern Heritage Classic, and the AutoZone Liberty Bowl. The blight is gone, except for the Mid-South Coliseum, a big space-eater that doesn’t look so bad.

The Children’s Museum is expanding, the Kroc Center is open, and there are two soccer fields, a high-school football stadium, and a track. Fairview school is renovated. The old Liberty Land is a disc golf course; there are worse things. There are lighted baseball and softball fields, a rugby field, and a skate park just north of the Fairgrounds at Tobey Park. A lot of this is free, if not first class.

A Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) for a youth sportsplex is proposed now by the city and was previously proposed (and approved in Nashville and Memphis) by developers Henry Turley and Robert Loeb. The financing is complicated, but the big part isn’t. The “T” in TDZ stands for tourism. Mayor A C Wharton says a Fairgrounds TDZ would be nice for local youth. Maybe so, but that’s not tourism. Tourism is getting somebody else to come to Memphis and stay here and spend some money.

A youth sportsplex was a great idea — in 1995. After that, lots of cities, big and small, figured it out. Let’s look at the competition within 250 miles.

Bowling is supposedly the “fastest growing high school sport.” The state meet is held in Smyrna, outside of Nashville. The venue has 52 lanes, so let’s say the ante is 50 lanes.

The state swim meet is held in Knoxville or in Nashville at the Tracy Caulkins Aquatics Center. If you want to compete, you don’t build a pool, you build an aquatics center. The pool must be 50 meters long and eight lanes wide, with a second rec pool and a diving area. That’s the ante.

Soccer’s premier venue in the Mid-South is the Mike Rose Fields in Shelby County, with 16 fields, a stadium, and 15 hotels within 10 miles. Oxford’s FNC Park has five lit-and-sprinkled soccer fields plus eight baseball fields and a BMX course. Who’s going to drive past those to get to Memphis?

Tennis? The state meet is played in Murfreesboro at a facility that is adding eight new courts in February. Nashville’s Centennial Park has 13 resurfaced outdoor courts and four indoor courts. Little Rock’s Burns Park has 24 terraced outdoor courts and six indoor courts. Memphis has multiple courts at Rhodes College, Leftwich Tennis Center, the Racquet Club, and Memphis University School. Trust me on this — I’ve been a hacker for 55 years — tennis players are picky.

Baseball and softball complexes virtually surround Memphis. Snowden Grove in DeSoto County has 17 fields. Joe Mack Park in Jonesboro, Arkansas, has 12 fields, all sponsored by local businesses. Jackson, Tennessee, has 17 fields you have probably seen at mile 86 on Interstate 40. The Game Day First Tennessee complex in Shelby County has 10 lighted fields. Let’s call the ante 10 lighted fields.

So it goes. Hockey? Nashville and DeSoto County have pro teams that help support rinks. Volleyball? The state meet is in Murfreesboro. Same for football and track. A central location beats Memphis, if you live east of Jackson.

Basketball Town USA? Maybe. Memphis often has the best high school and national AAU teams year after year. We’ve also got the Grizzlies. But our teams have to go to Murfreesboro to claim their state trophies every year because we’re stuck in the corner.

Location matters. Ordinary doesn’t cut it. Great beats good. Want to play? Ante up.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

In Sync with the Season

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The Shelby County Commission conducted its last meeting of the year on Monday and, in the process, put off until mid-January any decisions relating to two vexing matters — that of Robert Lipscomb’s proposed Tourist Development Zone (TDZ) project for the Fairgrounds and the supposedly dormant but still-simmering issue of rules changes.

The shelving of the TDZ plan was according to plan. Behind the scenes, key members of the commission, Democrats and Republicans, are working on a compromise version that can be presented to the state building commission.

Jackson Baker

Lipscomb meets the press as Cooper-Young consultant David Upton looks on

A successful agreement could be presented as proof not only that the commission supports the TDZ, which is a city project that must be okayed by the state, but that Republican conservatives on the commission, whose counterparts dominate in the General Assembly, are among the plan’s chief supporters.

And things were moving swiftly toward such an agreement, with the GOP’s Heidi Shafer and the Democrats’ Reginald Milton taking leading roles in establishing a commission consensus that, in city planning czar Lipscomb’s words (echoing a title by thriller author Tom Clancy) would resolve “the sum of all our fears.”

Those fears, over the course of several public sessions and private negotiations, had involved three main points:

1) A concern by several commissioners, as well as county Mayor Mark Luttrell, that school funding be insulated from the flow of incremental sales tax revenue to the TDZ’s developmental fund. What is emerging is the concept of a voluntary “set-aside” of what would constitute the schools’ normal portion of incremental sales tax revenue generated within the TDZ.

That amount has been estimated to be as high as $1 million to $2 million annually by Republican Commissioner Steve Basar, who has long been a skeptic regarding the Fairgrounds TDZ (and Lipscomb projects in general) but whose resistance may be softening.

2) An insistence by GOP Commissioner (and former school board member) David Reaves and others that the city of Memphis, as the price of commission support, finally come across with monies long owed the county — notably the court-ordered “maintenance-of-effort” amount stemming from the city council’s decision in 2008 to withhold some $57 million in its customary annual payment to the Memphis school system.

That debt, which is now owed, post-school merger, to Shelby County Schools (SCS), has been the subject of negotiation between the city and SCS, and word is that the wangling principals are within a million dollars or so of a settlement in the general area of $40 million.

3) Guarantees against financial cannibalization by the TDZ — which envisions a combination of athletic facilities and retail enterprises at the Fairgrounds — of other prime commercial and sports areas.

Cases in point are the Cooper-Young and Overton Square shopping/entertainment areas, both of which are in the enlarged TDZ, and such existing athletic operations as Gameday Baseball and the burgeoning sports complex overseen by former University of Memphis basketballer Anfernee Hardaway.

Agreement in all these problem areas by a bipartisan commission majority encompassing both urban and suburban areas is near. It is still far enough away, however, as to ensure slam-dunk passage of a motion to defer action until the January 15th commission meeting. The motion was made formally by Democratic Commissioner Eddie Jones, whose District 11 is directly affected by the proposed TDZ.

On hand Monday to audit proceedings was Lipscomb, who chatted with reporters after the commission’s deferral vote, pointing out that, while commission action on the TDZ was not, strictly speaking, necessary, it would enhance the proposal’s prospects for approval by the state building commission.

Lipscomb welcomed the month-long delay by the commission, saying, “It’s worth taking the time to do things right.”

• The other matter deferred by the commission until January 15th came after a surprise motion by Democrat Walter Bailey to revisit the issue of a rules change for the commission that would basically establish a majority-vote rule for all pending matters, including several that currently require a two-thirds majority vote.

Bailey’s motion was something of a surprise because the commission appeared to have decided on remanding the rules-change issue to an ad hoc committee as one aspect of an agreement to dismiss a lawsuit on the matter brought against Chairman Justin Ford by seven commission members.

The suit had been prompted by Ford’s persistence in rejecting an agenda proposal for the aforementioned rules change from Commissioner Basar. The context of that had been the newly elected commission’s reorganization vote in September, in which Basar, last year’s vice chair, had been denied the chairmanship by a majority vote on behalf of Ford. Though nominally a Democrat, Ford has often joined ranks with the commission’s Republican minority and enjoyed GOP support for the chairmanship.

The bad feeling that persisted from that occasion resulted in a seven-member coalition, comprised of Basar and six Democrats, that challenged Ford’s prerogatives as chairman and, in the judgment of Ford’s Republican supporters, may have also contemplated deposing Ford as chairman.

The objecting members sued Ford in Chancery Court for violation of commission rules in his handling of agenda matters, but Chancellor Jim Kyle ruled that the new commission had not formally adopted rules and needed to do so. In the wash of all that came a compromise agreement in which Ford’s tenure was guaranteed and the rules-change matter was referred to the aforesaid ad hoc committee, which has not yet been activated.

Bailey noted that fact in making his motion to reprise the rules-change matter, but the long and the short of it all was that action was deferred on the matter when Democrat Van Turner, who with Bailey had been co-counsel in the seven commissioners’ lawsuit, called for adherence to the ad hoc committee solution as a matter of good faith.

“We’re all friends here,” said the GOP’s Terry Roland, who, with Shafer, had spoken against Bailey’s motion.

Turner himself will apparently serve as chairman of the ad hoc committee, which presumably will meet and report by the January 15th date.

• Among the other matters dealt with by the commission on Monday was a $14.5 million TIF (tax increment financing plan) to finance the creation of a hotel in the Graceland area. Bailey challenged the plan as “a bad investment [that] could go south,” and one that should have been handled under private auspices.

Bailey asked “who, besides the taxpayers” would be responsible for retiring the bonds on the project if expected proceeds fell short.

James McLaren, attorney for Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), assured that EPE would be responsible for any shortfall, and the commission gave its approval to the plan by a 9-1 vote.

(This week’s Flyer “Viewpoint,” by businessman Taylor Berger, p. 17, provides a less than favorable view of both the Graceland proposal and the Fairgrounds TDZ.)

• The local political component of the Christmas season got under way with holiday parties sponsored by the Democratic and Republican parties of Shelby County. Whatever the ratio of political support claimed by the two parties, they managed to provide equally festive occasions.

The Shelby County Democrats’ official party took place last Thursday night, simultaneously with two candidate events related to the forthcoming 2015 city election season.

Councilman Edmund Ford Jr., a candidate for reelection, was the beneficiary of a well-attended fund-raiser at the river-bluff residence of Karl and Gail Schledwitz. Architect Chooch Pickard, who is considering a run for the council, held a preliminary meet-and-greet at the Jay Etkin gallery on Cooper.

Pickard, who espoused a preservationist platform, said he was meditating on a candidacy for the District 5 seat now held by Jim Strickland, if Strickland should run for mayor. Crowd-wise, he undoubtedly benefited from the fact that his event was held just prior to, and next door to, the Democrats’ party at Alchemy.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Will This Time Be the Charm for Lipscomb’s Fairgrounds TDZ?

CREDIT: JB

JB

Lipscomb, Marshall, and Kane watch the PowerPoint do its magic.

What a difference a year makes — or a new County Commission. When Robert Lipscomb first floated his vision of a City of Memphis-backed Tourist Development Zone (TDZ) project for the Fairgrounds in 2013, the Shelby County Commission, invited to convey its support of the project to state officials, basically turned up its nose.

Anchored by such doubting Thomases as Commissioners Mike Ritz and Steve Basar, the Commission raised numerous doubts in discussion, focusing on two matters: (1) a concern that the proposed TDZ would compete with the Overton Square and Cooper-Young commercial areas, both included in the Fairgrounds TDZ zone, as well as “cannibalize” future sales tax proceeds from both; and (2) that the future local-option sales tax proceeds due the public schools of Shelby County would also be compromised.

Neither of those issues was fully put to rest in a presentation to the Commission’ economic development committee on Wednesday by Lipscomb, the director of Housing and Community Development for the City of Memphis, who was backed up at the Commission’s witness table by Kevin Kane of the Convention and Visitors’ Bureau and Tom Marshall, architectural overseer for the project.

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. All except for Commission holdover Basar, chair of the Commission’s economic development committee, who, at the close of an almost rhapsodic session, announced that he still had reservations about the project, which he would subsequently document and communicate to his colleagues.

There was no formal vote, inasmuch as Lipscomb had said on the front end that he was not seeking a vote of endorsement just yet by the Commission, which is not a formal party to the TDZ proposal. Should it come to pass, the county would be affected economically by it, for better or for worse, however; so Commission approval, if and when it came, would have an effect on the state Building Commission, which has had the proposal for a year now and still has to rule on the proposal. Ditto would a rejection count for something.

County CAO Harvey Kennedy said for the record that “we do not object to this proposal,” though he was not ready to confer the county administration’s blessings, either, not so long as there was uncertainty over the fate of the schools’ portion of incremental sales tax proceeds during what was destined to be a 30-year fiscal run for the project.

Basar notwithstanding, most of the other Commission members seemed almost giddy about the TDZ’s proffered blessings — which, as Lipscomb described them, via words and PowerPoint, would include a revamped Liberty Bowl, a new multi-purpose facility in place of the current moribund Coliseum, a new
Fairgrounds stadium, a new gym for adjoining Fairview Middle School, and oodles of other benefits, including, on the north end of the current Fairgrounds, gleaming new retail enterprises that would be carefully recruited so as not to conflict with commercial activities elsewhere in the TDZ — namely, Cooper-Young and Overton Square.

There was a feasibility study demonstrating just how all this would jell, said Lipscomb, who promised to make it available to the Commissioners at some point later on.

Did the project seem over-ambitious, especially since it would tap an unusually large geographic area (the same area which, in theory, would reap measurably more tax revenue as a direct of the TDZ)? Lipscomb put up a slide showing that all kinds of other cities — including Nashville, ever a yardstick — had managed TDZs over even larger areas.

Meanwhile, the City’s veteran Svengali of urban planning laid it on thick. As he checked off the features of the plan on PowerPoint, he described each future-tense marvel as “world class,” and each was to be merely a part of a whole, “a world class city.” Not only would there rise “a great new city right before our very eyes,” the successes of the TDZ would simultaneously, by yanking on the bootstraps of the entire community —black and white, Democrat and Republican, urban and county— be “fighting crime and reducing taxes.”

Give it to Lipscomb. He didn’t become the guiding force of city planning in two straight mayoralties merely by dint of his intelligence or his behind-the-scenes skills or even his planning acumen. He’s the Music Man, the Pied Piper, the ice cream man; he stirs the imagination and makes his audience want what he’s got to sell.

“Congratulations,” said Van Turner when Lipscomb had finished his first run-through. “It makes all the sense in the world…a no-brainer….” In fact, a “world-class deal,” said Terry Roland. “Totally in support,” said Reginald Milton. “Fully support,” chimed in George Chism. And Willie Brooks. And Justin Ford. On and on it went like that. The Commission’s newbies, especially, seemed thrilled, even covetous.

When it came his turn to speak, Basar, who as chairman of the general government committee had presided over the meeting with admirable fairness, was the soul of politeness, too, in acknowledging that he was still a skeptic. Walter Bailey, the Commission’s senior eminence, dutifully put in a request to see the aforementioned feasibility study. “Happy to,” said Lipscomb. And, as Kennedy reminded everybody, there was that matter of future school funding that wouldn’t go away.

The state legislation that governs TDZ financing is so far unrelenting; The bond issue that would pay for the public share of the project — a projected $176 million, before the inevitable overrun —would be repaid by drawing upon all the incremental gains in local sales-tax revenues (assuming there are same). As things now stand, there is no provision for setting aside that portion of it that would otherwise go into the school coffers.

By Basar’s estimate, that fact, unless amended, could deprive the schools of anywhere from $1 to $2 million annually over the 30-year period of the project.

Lipscomb was concessive. Even though the law did not mandate it, maybe the plan could be reconfigured to put some payback in for the schools. He indicated, indeed, that such was the idea. Maybe the law could be changed. Maybe, Kennedy suggested, there could be a “side agreement” with the City to make up the difference.

Right. Memories of the several cooperative ventures on which city government had been slow-pay or no-pay with its county-government partner were still fresh. Basar could not resist rubbing it in. He might be able to support the deal, he said, if the City should make a “pre-payment” of the $57 million it has owed the schools for years now in a court-ordered judgment.

The Commission was cautious enough to postpone putting itself on record with a vote. Still, the session on Wednesday had generated a significant amount of optimism — certainly on the part of Robert Lipscomb.

Meeting with reporters afterward, Lipscomb said he hoped to present the state Building Commission with a “26-and-oh” endorsement from local government — 13-0 from the City Council and 13-0 from the County Commission.

“We’ve got a little work to do, but you saw the support,” he said. “Let’s answer questions, and not be contentious. The way other cities get ahead of us in Tennessee is that they’re not contentious….I think it’s real important that we all say the same thing, and we all give support….We’ve got to govern together and not be always this-versus-that and be divided by income disparity, race, gender…everything. We’ve got to figure out a way to work together.”

As Lipscomb himself might say: To be continued.

Categories
Cover Feature News

25 Who Shaped Memphis: 1989-2014

Picking 25 people who had a major impact on the life and times of Memphis over the past 25 years is easy. In fact, you can easily pick 50. Narrowing the list down to 25 is the hard part. We made our final choices keeping in mind several areas of influence: politics, government, entertainment, sports, etc. We tried to pick folks whose contributions have stood the test of time or were responsible for a major shifts in attitude or direction.

It is by no means a perfect list, as these things are by necessity subjective. But it’s our list — and it’s a good one. — BV

Laura Adams

Laura Adams

Adams lives and breathes Shelby Farms Park. She was appointed as the conservancy head in 2010, but long before that, Adams advocated for increased use of the city’s largest urban park through Friends of Shelby Farms Park. Since she’s been in the lead role of the nonprofit conservancy, Adams has overseen the addition of the seven-mile Shelby Farms Greenline, a new foot bridge over the Wolf River, the state-of-the-art Woodland Discovery Playground, and new festivals and attractions, and soon, work will begin on expanding Patriot Lake.

Craig Brewer

Over the past 25 years, Hollywood has come to Memphis to shoot several high-profile movies, including The Firm, 21 Grams, and Walk the Line. But there’s only one local filmmaker who took Memphis to Hollywood: Craig Brewer.

On the strength of his first film, 2000’s The Poor & Hungry, Brewer got Hollywood backing for the movie that put Memphis Indie filmmaking on the map: 2005’s Hustle & Flow. The flick won Sundance, got a major theatrical release, and was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning one for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” by Three 6 Mafia and Frayser Boy.

Brewer followed it up with another Memphis-made film, Black Snake Moan, and then his biggest yet, a remake of Footloose. Nowadays, Brewer divides his time between Memphis and L.A., but make no mistake: There is no bigger or more powerful advocate for the Bluff City film community.

John Calipari

John Calipari

Let’s get one thing straight: Before John Calipari, there was great Memphis Tigers basketball. He did not make the program — but he did make it relevant again when college basketball was no longer essential for players to make it in the NBA. Calipari arrived in Memphis in 2000, licking his wounds after a failed stint in the professional league. He was greeted by some here as a savior (U of M basketball was on the ropes following the Tic Price scandal) and by some as a slick operator (Calipari’s previous college employer, UMass, had to vacate a Final Four because of NCAA violations while he was in charge). But when Calipari’s teams began winning big here, the coach went from someone Memphians hated to love to someone we loved to love. And, when he left for a job at the University of Kentucky — taking some big-time recruits with him — he turned instant villain, someone we loved to hate. Even now, five years after he’s gone, not many a day goes by where his name isn’t uttered on local sports talk.

Karen Carrier

Karen Carrier

Anybody with taste buds in this town should be grateful that Karen Carrier is the restless type. In 1991, she opened Automatic Slim’s Tonga Club on Second Street across from the Peabody. When not a lot was happening in that area, this restaurant’s cool décor and innovative fare inspired by “sun-drenched” locales offered a chic downtown oasis. In 1996, Carrier proved pioneer again when she converted her own home in Victorian Village to pretty, white-tableclothed Cielo. Later, she dumped that concept and made the space into the fashionable Mollie Fontaine Lounge, and then there’s the Beauty Shop, Do, and Bar DKDC. Basically, Carrier is the pied piper of happening restaurants and one of Memphis’ true culinary pioneers.

Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen

The congressman from Memphis’ 9th Congressional District since his first election in 2006, Cohen is still goin,’ running for a fifth term in 2014. Though his first win was via a plurality against a dozen-plus opponents in the predominantly African-American district, Cohen has since won one-on-one contests against name primary challengers with margins ranging from 4-to-1 to 8-to-1.

Cohen’s political durability, first evinced during a 26-year run as a Tennessee state senator, owes much to hard work and tenacity, both in office and on the campaign trail. His most important legacy as a state legislator was his sponsorship of a state lottery and the Hope Scholarship program, which it funds. He’s a vigorous supporter of women’s rights and programs benefiting health care and the arts. Among his contributions in Congress, where he serves on the House Judiciary Committee, are his successful sponsorship of a resolution formally apologizing for the country’s history of slavery.

Margaret Craddock

Margaret Craddock

When Margaret Craddock took the helm of the Metropolitan Inner-Faith Association (MIFA), she not only held the organization on course but also led it into new waters.

Craddock began working at MIFA part-time in 1982 and then full-time in 1988. Spurred by her experiences there, she earned degrees in urban anthropology and law from the University of Memphis. Craddock was entrenched at MIFA and continued to rise to prominence there. 

As associate director, she was instrumental in developing one of MIFA’s most noted programs. The agency decided to build five three-bedroom homes for emergency housing in 1989. Now, that program, implemented in MIFA’s Estival Place communities — gives homeless families a place to live for two years while they take life-skills classes. 

In 1997, Craddock became the first woman to hold MIFA’s top job. At one time, she oversaw an $11 million budget, 160 employees, and more than 4,000 volunteers, and she actively worked to forge outside community partnerships.

Craddock focused MIFA’s mission, built on the agency’s inner-faith heritage by including more clergy on its board of directors, developed more community partners, and improved and modernized MIFA’s inner workings. Craddock retired in 2011.

DJ Paul & Juicy J

DJ Paul and Juicy J

DJ Paul and Juicy J collectively helped globalize the Memphis rap scene when they formed the label Hypnotize Minds in the early 1990s. Under the duo’s leadership, local acts, including Three 6 Mafia, Project Pat, and a magnitude of other artists were introduced to the world. Several Gold and Platinum records have been won by the label, and the first Memphis-based rap movie, Choices, was filmed under their auspices.

In 2006, they became the first hip-hop artists to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” and were showcased on the MTV reality sitcom “Adventures In Hollyhood.”

Although they’ve taken a hiatus as a collective, both artists continue to prosper. Juicy J is enjoying the spoils of a fruitful solo career while DJ Paul has reestablished Three 6 Mafia as Da Mafia 6ix.

John Elkington

John Elkington

To understand the impact John Elkington has had on downtown Memphis, consider Beale Street before he began to manage it in 1983: blocks of abandoned and boarded-up buildings, trash littering otherwise empty streets.

As the developer and manager of modern Beale Street, Elkington transformed it into Memphis’ premier entertainment district and one of the top tourist destinations in the U.S.

The relationship between Elkington and city government ended in 2010. Following the announcement, Memphis mayor A C Wharton said, “Pioneers always get bloodied. [Elkington] went in when others did not go in, and this community owes him a debt of gratitude.” 

Despite the public break-up, Elkington will leave one very important fingerprint on the future of the street he helped create. A 2011 study of Beale Street said thanks to Elkington “the district’s uniqueness and special personality have been largely protected and maintained.”

Harold Ford Sr. / Harold Ford Jr.

Harold Ford Sr. /Harold Ford Jr.

This father/son combination held the Memphis congressional district (first designated Tennessee’s 8th, later the 9th) from 1974 until 2006, beginning when Democrat Ford Sr., then a state representative, won in an upset over the Republican incumbent, becoming the state’s first elected black Congress member.

A member of an upwardly mobile black family invested in the funeral home business, Harold Ford Sr. became the patriarch of an extended-family political dynasty, which has consistently held positions in state and local government ever since. Wielder of the “Ford ballot,” an endorsement list of candidates in each successive election, Ford Sr. became influential in Congress as well but was ensnared in a Reagan-era Department of Justice prosecution for alleged bank fraud that, after one mistrial, would end with Ford’s exoneration in a 1993 retrial.

In 1996, the senior Ford stepped aside, backing his son Harold Ford Jr., who won election that year and four more times. Uninterested in the kind of local political organization overseen by his father, and more conservative politically, Ford Jr. directed his ambitions toward national power instead and was widely considered a prospect to become the nation’s first African-American major-party nominee for president. Beaten to the U.S. Senate by Illinois’ Barack Obama in 2004, Democrat Ford made his own try for the Senate in 2006, narrowly losing to Republican Bob Corker. He subsequently married and moved to New York, where he works on Wall Street. He is still considered to be a political prospect, with a rumored Senate run in the Empire State.

Larry Godwin

Larry Godwin

The former Memphis Police Department (MPD) chief spent 37 years tenured with the MPD. Beginning as an undercover narcotics officer in 1973, Godwin later was a homicide investigator and commander of the crime response/bomb unit before being named police director in 2004.

Godwin helped restructure the department’s method of operation, adding new crime prevention programs, such as Blue CRUSH; established a $3.5 million technology hub, Real Time Crime Center; and increased the number of police on the streets. Under his leadership, the percentage of violent crimes dropped significantly, and numerous undercover investigations targeting narcotics sales were successfully executed.

Following his retirement in 2011, Godwin became the deputy commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

Pat Halloran

Pat Halloran

Halloran moved to the city in 1969 and was elected to the Memphis City Council within five years. With the Memphis Development Foundation (MDF), he saved the Orpheum from the wrecking ball. The theater reopened in 1984 and has set records for booking touring Broadway shows. Halloran has earned three Tony Awards, notably for the musical Memphis. In March 2014, the MDF began construction on the The Orpheum Centre for Performing Arts & Education, a 40,000-square-foot facility featuring theater space, classrooms, an audio-visuals arts lab, and event rental space. Without Halloran’s ongoing vision for the Orpheum through the years, Memphis would be an infinitely less interesting city.

Michael Heisley

Michael Heisley

For decades, Memphis had pursued an NFL team, but the city’s hopes were dashed in 1993, when the league opted against awarding Memphis a team. The NFL settled in Nashville, leaving a bitter taste in Memphians’ mouths. It seemed a pro sports team would never move here. That changed in 2001, when Michael Heisley, billionaire owner of the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies, decided to relocate his team to Memphis. It was a shocking move at the time and is still shocking in retrospect. Local power players were crucial in making the city attractive to Heisley, securing financing for FedExForum, but it was Heisley’s call. His decision radically affected downtown Memphis, the entertainment industry, sports business, sports talk, and even the city’s psyche.

The outspoken owner had his ups and downs in the public eye over the years, but he did right by Memphis. He eventually sold the team in 2012 and passed away earlier this year. Never forget: Before there was grit and grind, there was Michael Heisley.

Willie Herenton

Willie Herenton

Herenton was born to a single mother on Memphis’ south side. She lived to see her son become the city’s first African-American school superintendent and later witnessed his five separate inaugurations as Memphis’ mayor, after becoming the first black person ever elected to that position, in 1991.

A Booker T. Washington High School graduate, Herenton was an amateur boxing champion as a youth. Pursuing education as a career, he earned a Ph.D. and worked his way up rapidly in the Memphis City Schools system, becoming its superintendent in 1978. An educational innovator with magnet schools and other new options, he resigned reluctantly in the wake of negative publicity about a sexual liaison with a teacher and a modest administrative scandal.

He landed on his feet, becoming almost instantly a consensus black candidate for mayor in 1991. Considered a strong chief executive, he eventually lost interest in the job and resigned in 2009. He made an unsuccessful challenge to incumbent 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen in 2010 and has spent the time since attempting to develop a chain of local charter schools. He now runs a charter school program.

Benjamin L. Hooks

Rev. Benjamin L. Hooks

A native Memphian, Hooks was largely known as a seminal civil rights activist. A Baptist minister and attorney, he was the first African-American Criminal Court judge in the South since the Reconstruction Era, and the first African-American appointee for the Federal Communications Commission.

During the civil rights movement, Hooks helped orchestrate protests and sit-ins, and promoted the importance of education. He led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for 15 years.

Hooks was a strong advocate for racial, social, and economic justice. The civil rights icon died in 2010, but his legacy lives on through the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, and the Benjamin L. Hooks Job Corps Center.

Carissa Hussong

Carissa Hussong

That cool Greely Myatt piece you have on your wall, the one that looks like nails…that is art with a capital “A.” It does not match your couch. Other than family and friends, about half-a-million Memphians will never see that piece. But all of us can check out Myatt’s Quiltsurround, a metalwork quilt used to cover up City Hall’s air units. That work and nearly every piece of Memphis’ public art created in the past 17 years — from the murals in Soulsville and Binghampton to the menagerie of art at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library — traces its lineage to the UrbanArt Commission and its founding executive director, Carissa Hussong.

Hussong left the commission to become the executive director of the Metal Museum in 2008. Under her lead, the museum has introduced its “Tributaries” series, featuring the work of emerging metal artists.

J.R. “Pitt” Hyde

Hyde grew up watching his grandfather and father turn Malone & Hyde into one of the country’s largest food wholesalers.

“They took risks that many people considered unwise — and succeeded, despite the odds,” Hyde says. “I believe my exposure to this type of ‘pioneering’ mindset gave me the drive to try new, unproven ventures.”

Those ventures include being the founder of auto parts giant AutoZone, chair of biopharmaceutical startup GTx Inc., co-founder of the private equity firm MB Ventures, the impetus (along with his wife, Barbara) behind the $69 million Hyde Family Foundation, and scion of several other highly placed and deep-pocketed endeavors rooted in Memphis — most notably the National Civil Rights Museum and Ballet Memphis.

Hyde was instrumental in the founding of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, Memphis Tomorrow, and the National Civil Rights Museum. He is a minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies and helped bring the NBA team to Memphis.

Robert Lipscomb

Robert Lipscomb

For years, Lipscomb has been significantly involved in the restructuring of public housing in Memphis, as well as the redevelopment of its downtown and inner city communities. In 2009, he was appointed executive director of the Memphis Housing Authority and director of the city’s Division of Housing and Community Development.

Motivated by the desire to improve the city’s underprivileged living conditions, Lipscomb developed Memphis’ first strategic housing plan. Under his guidance, numerous run-down and crime-plagued housing projects have been replaced with modern developments.

Lipscomb is spearheading the $190 million project to redevelop The Pyramid into a Bass Pro Shops retail center. He’s also involved in the planned redevelopment of the Mid-South Fairgrounds.

A native Memphian, Lipscomb created the Down Payment Assistance Program, the Housing Trust Fund, the Housing Resource Center, and other housing initiatives.

Jackie Nichols

Jackie Nichols

Playhouse on the Square’s founding executive producer doesn’t just make theater. He makes community. And he makes sense. Loeb Properties may have ponied up the money to bring back Overton Square, but it was Jackie Nichols who literally set the stage for the area’s incredible turnaround. Nichols was still a teenage tap dancer when he realized that Memphis needed producers more than it needed performers.

In 1969, he launched Circuit Players. In 1975 he expanded, opening Playhouse on the Square on Madison Avenue. In 2010, Nichols, also instrumental in the founding of TheatreWorks, moved his operations from the old Memphian Theatre into a $12.5 million, custom-built performing arts facility at Cooper and Union. When Overton Square developer Robert Loeb asked Nichols what it would take to make Overton Square work as a theater district, Nichols answered, “More theaters,” paving the way for Ekundayo Bandele’s Hattiloo, which opens to the public in July.

The new Playhouse on the Square has allowed for collaborations with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and created a Midtown home for arts institutions like Ballet Memphis and Opera Memphis. But Nichols’ legacy is best represented by Memphis’ thriving independent theater scene, made possible by the space, equipment, and support he’s created. His greatest contribution to the city may be in showing us that the arts really can be a sound investment.

David Pickler

David Pickler

Once considered the “president-for-life” of the old county-only Shelby County Schools (SCS) board, to which he was first elected in 1998 and led until that version of the board ceased to be with the SCS-Memphis City Schools (MCS) merger of 2011-13, Pickler continued to represent Germantown/Collierville on the first post-merger SCS board, pending the creation of new suburban school districts.

Many blame the surrender of the MCS charter and subsequent forced merger on Pickler’s decades-long vow to seek special-school-district status for the original SCS system, which was publicly renewed when a Republican majority — presumed to be suburb-friendly — took over the legislature in 2010. Pickler contends that then-MCS Board Chairman Martavius Jones, a prime mover in the charter surrender, already harbored merger plans.

In any case, Pickler, a lawyer who also operates Pickler Wealth Advisers, an investment/estate-management firm, continues his involvement with education matters as president of the National School Boards Association and is thought to harbor political ambitions.

Beverly Robertson

Beverly Robertson

Robertson has headed up the Civil Rights Museum since 1997, but perhaps her greatest achievement has been overseeing the museum’s recent $27.5 million renovation. The old Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968, and the adjoining building have been remodeled with interactive touch-screen exhibits, a slave ship where visitors can crawl into the tiny space where slaves were held, and the recreated courtroom from Brown vs. Board of Education. Since Robertson took the helm, the museum has been identified as one of the nation’s top 10 attractions by National Geographic’s Young Explorers and as a “national treasure” by USA Today. Though she’s led the museum for 16 of its 22 years, Robertson has announced that she will retire next month.

Gayle Rose

Gayle S. Rose

We’ll bet that no other University of Northern Iowa (UNI) music student has ever been named by Business Tennessee magazine as one of our state’s “100 Most Powerful People.” But then, Gayle Rose isn’t like most people. After earning degrees in music and business from UNI, the accomplished clarinetist graduated from Harvard with a master’s in public administration. Rose spearheaded self-help guru Deepak Chopra’s international publishing and TV ventures.

She co-founded 10,000 Women for Herenton (later 10,000 Women for Change), co-founded the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis, founded the Rose Family Foundation, and earned the national “Changing the Face of Philanthropy Award.” She also formed Max’s Team, a volunteer organization that honors the memory of her late son.

Rose is the principal owner and CEO of Electronic Vaulting Services (EVS) Corporation, a data protection company, headquartered in Memphis. Prior to joining EVS, Rose served as managing director of Heritage Capital Advisors, LLC, a private equity, corporate advisory, and asset firm with offices in Atlanta and Memphis.

Rose is perhaps best-known for leading the NBA “Pursuit Team,” which eventually attracted the Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis in 2000.

Maxine Smith

Maxine Smith

In 1957, Memphis State University refused to admit Maxine Smith because she was black, and that inspired her to take on the South’s racist attitudes and fight for civil rights. Smith headed up the local NAACP and became one of few women leaders in the male-dominated local civil rights movement. She and her husband, Vasco Smith, protested segregation at the Memphis Zoo and the Memphis Public Library, and she fought to reorganize the city school board to allow black candidates a chance at winning city elections. Smith was elected to one of those school board seats in 1971, and afterward, she became a huge proponent for court-ordered busing, which she saw as a way to overcome city leaders’ attempts at only integrating a few schools for show. Smith sat on the board of the National Civil Rights Museum and received the museum’s National Freedom Award, along with former President Bill Clinton, in 2003.

Pat Kerr Tigrett

Pat Kerr Tigrett

This Memphis-based fashion designer got her start designing Vogue-worthy gowns for her paper dolls when she was just a kid living in Savannah, Tennessee. She later moved to Memphis for college, won Miss Tennessee Universe, and then bought the Tennessee Miss Universe franchise.

As a beauty queen, Kerr Tigrett got a taste of philanthropy with fashion charity shows. She went on to launch the Memphis Charitable Foundation, host of the annual Blues Ball, which, since 1994, has raised loads of money for Porter-Leath Children’s Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center, Madonna Learning Center, and other local nonprofits. Kerr Tigrett is the widow of entrepreneur John Tigrett.

Henry Turley

Henry Turley

Some developers leave behind a footprint on their community. Behind Henry Turley will be an entire Memphis landscape. Turley’s brilliance was in recognizing — and acting upon — what now seems obvious: The most valuable real estate in the world is next to water. With downtown Memphis perched alongside the mightiest stream in North America, a breathtaking neighborhood (or more) awaited birth.

With Jack Belz, Turley, developed the upscale Harbor Town residential and commercial center on Mud Island, the low-income and middle-income Uptown residential development north of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and South Bluffs, where he lives.

Stroll through Harbor Town or South Bluffs today, and you’d think the mighty homes and river views have been there a century when, in fact, most are barely 20 years old, the realization of Turley’s vision for making downtown more than a business center.

Turley is a board member of Contemporary Media, the parent company of Memphis magazine and the Memphis Flyer. A native of Memphis and graduate of the University of Tennessee, Turley is known for his plainspoken good humor, creativity, and unfailing belief in downtown and the restoration of public spaces in older neighborhoods.

AC Wharton

A C Wharton

A native of Middle Tennessee who grew up on country music and both graduated from and taught at the Ole Miss Law School, Wharton is the epitome of crossover and conciliation, and either of those “c” words could be his non-existent middle name. (“A” doesn’t stand for a name either.)

Wharton’s major contribution was to restore calm and a sense of unified purpose to the city after the contentious last years of his mayoral predecessor Willie Herenton’s lengthy tenure. Hard-working, eloquent, and good-natured, Wharton was Shelby County’s Public Defender for many years, then easily won two four-year terms as county mayor before winning a special election to succeed Herenton, who had resigned, in 2009. Reelected in 2011, he has had to grapple with dwindling revenue, a never-ending budget crisis, and attendant crises in public services.

Sherman Willmott

Sherman Willmott

The irascible Willmott has worked like a Tahiti-shirted puppet-master, shaping a lot of cool and important Memphis stuff over the past 25 years. In 1988, he and Eric Freidl opened Shangri-La Records on Madison Avenue, which became a center for the burgeoning alt-music scene. Soon they were mixed up in independent record distribution and releasing records by the Grifters that earned national accolades and a big record deal. Willmott kept the Stax flame lit during the dark ages and was instrumental in curating the Stax Museum. His work with master archivist Ron Hall formed the basis for the acclaimed wrestling movie, Memphis Heat, which is a great film and a better document of how hilariously weird Memphis really is.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

On the “Core City”

In what amounted to a part two of his earlier State of the City (SOTC) remarks, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton shed some additional light on the past, present, and future issues of governing the city in a luncheon address last

Wednesday to the Memphis Kiwanis Club.

Talking to the Kiwanians a few scant hours after making a very generalized SOTC address at the University of Memphis Law School, the mayor noted, as he had earlier, the need for taking care of Memphians’ mundane, everyday needs: “Unfortunately, we’ve become so tomorrow-minded that we forget about the immediacy of today,” he said.

But that aspect of governing the city — encompassed, as before, by the keyword “potholes” — yielded to detailed discourses on past history as well as the “tomorrow-minded” matter of the mayor’s proposed Tourist Development Zone (TDZ) to redevelop the fairgrounds.

The mayor pronounced himself done with the idea of curing the city’s financial problems by annexing further territory in Shelby County. In a variation on the “pothole” argument, he pointed out that, in dealing with existing areas of the city, “there is no need to provide new services; it’s there. My philosophy is to rebuild the core city, to maintain the core city. … I’m going to ride that horse ’til she drops.”

The mayor even related his pending proposal for a TDZ for developing the fairgrounds to that tenet. “If we redo the fairgrounds,” he told the Kiwanians, “it will do so much to stabilize those residences on Parkway.” Okay.

Not 10 minutes later, however, Wharton was reversing the terms of the argument. The TDZ would work, he said, because the fairgrounds area is “one of most stable locations” in the city. “Christian Brothers [University] is not going anwhere. Central Gardens is one of the most stable neighborhoods in this city. It’s not going anywhere,” he said.

Whatever. However mystifying (and somewhat contradictory) the mayor’s — and planning czar Robert Lipscomb’s — arguments for the TDZ are, one thing is clear: The Wharton administration, taking heed of an analysis by an ad hoc city “innovation team” that “re-examined the premise of whether we make money by annexation,” is reversing several decades of a long prevalent and finally discredited growth-by-expansion theory.

What the mayor and Lipscomb seem to be substituting in its place is a theory of growth-by-leverage, in which grants from federal and state sources might make up for a deficit of internal revenues. Hence the plethora of TDZ and TIF (tax-increment financing) proposals originating from within city hall. In this theory, the issues of the core city can become the source of regeneration — not only of themselves but of the city as a whole.

So far, so good. The problem — as we and others have consistently pointed out — is that the structure of these leveraged proposals needs to be made clear and transparent, depending less on close-to-the-vest sleight-of-hand than has been the case so often.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Home Improvement?

Sewage backed up into one homeowner’s bathtub for more than a month. The only shower in another home didn’t work for more than eight months.

These were problems that were eventually fixed through the Memphis Housing and Rehabilitation Program (HARP). But the federal government said delays in the resolutions put an undue and sometimes unsafe burden on homeowners, and that city officials who ran the now-shuttered program were to blame.

That’s all in a new report issued late last week from the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which criticized the city’s management of the program and called it “not effective.”

“Specifically, inspectors approved payments for home repairs that did not meet rehabilitation standards or were not properly repaired as contracted,” the report said. “These conditions occurred because the city did not properly write its rehabilitation specifications for contractors and perform inspections as required.”

As an example of the “poorly written” specifications, the report said rules for heating and cooling systems mandated only that HVAC units be “sized to efficiently heat and cool the structure.” But the federal investigators found 14 homes without correctly sized units, including one with a running air conditioner that cooled the home to only 95 degrees on a 100-degree day.

Robert Lipscomb is the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, and the HARP program fell under the umbrella of his office. He said federal funding for the program was reduced and so its staff and its abilities were reduced. Also, no new inspectors were hired after his decision to close the program. These factors led to the lag in inspections.

According to the report, a project at one home took 56 weeks to complete. It was supposed to be inspected 168 times, according to federal law, but was only inspected six times. Another project was never inspected though the law called for 54 inspections.

Federal investigators sampled 65 of 153 home rehabilitation projects managed by HARP in Memphis from 2010 to 2012. Of those 65 sampled, 61 “had instances of incomplete home repairs or poor workmanship,” the report said. The 65 projects cost $1.6 million in federal funds and had a total of 323 repair violations. The 153 projects cost taxpayers a total of $3.9 million.

The report includes pictures of shoddy work done by contractors and approved by HARP inspectors. Duct tape holds up the cover of a breaker box in one home. A living room doorframe was replaced by a termite-infested doorframe in another home.

But Lipscomb called everything in the report “old news” and said that his office found the problems in the HARP program in 2012, quickly suspended the program, and alerted HUD to the issues.

“I don’t know what more we could do,” Lipscomb said. “We found the problem. We reported the problem and then we moved on.”

He admitted “a breakdown in internal operations” led to the program’s severe mismanagement. Also to blame were several “unscrupulous” contractors. That’s why, Lipscomb said, he reprimanded and fired many staffers or let them resign and eliminated many contractors from the program.

City officials are now working with the national Enterprise Foundation, the Memphis-based Plough Foundation, and MLGW to find a non-profit organization to run the HARP program.

“So, out of this bad thing has come a good thing,” Lipscomb said, “because we’re working with other entities to come up with a better program.”