Tag: tax incentives

Categories
Opinion

International Paper + Shelby Forest = A Match

Hardwood_forest.jpg

What’s a big corporation worth to Memphis?

International Paper is the least known of the three Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Memphis.

This is partly because IP is a relative newcomer (1986) that was founded somewhere else (Manhattan) and partly because IP chooses to keep a relatively low profile. FedEx is FedEx Forum and founder Fred Smith, AutoZone is AutoZone Park and founder Pitt Hyde, IP is some nice office buildings on Poplar Avenue and CEO John Faraci.

IP is in the news this week for seeking tax breaks to expand its local headquarters and prevent it from moving to Mississippi — a doubtful proposition at a glance, but who knows? Let the threats, the outrage at corporate welfare, the economic impact studies, and the cost-benefit analysis begin.

One thing IP should do is “adopt” Meeman Shelby Forest State Park or Overton Park or both of them. This should have been done a long time ago but it’s not too late. By adopt, I don’t mean ask for naming rights or permission to clear cut or manage a swath of forest. I mean become a corporate angel, and associate its name and give-back with a good cause and a place that could use some funds. This would benefit the company and the community.

Earlier this year I interviewed Faraci for a story in one of our sister publications, MBQ magazine. He was quick to accept the invitation, accomodating, and candid with his answers. One thing I asked him was to name his and IP’s signature local cause. He said the National Civil Rights Museum. That puzzled me. I don’t know the extent of IP’s support, but IP, unlike Hyde and AutoZone, had nothing to do with the founding of the museum and is one of dozens of partners that include individuals, celebrities, corporations, Major League Baseball, and the NBA. I sometimes wonder who is helping whom. In any case, IP is lost in the crowd and brings no special expertise or story to the table.

What IP knows is trees and forest management. At the end of our interview, Faraci, who joined IP in 1974, gave me a nice coffee-table book called “A Permanent Island: The Conservation Legacy of International Paper.” It is full of lovely color pictures of 27 of the forest holdings IP sold to various conservators, including Cumberland Forest and Dry Branch in Tennessee.

I suggested to an IP spokesman that the company do something with Meeman Shelby Forest, and he in turn suggested I write a letter to Faraci, which I did. That was the end of that, which was fine. Access and straight answers pretty much cover a CEO’s obligations to the local media. But with IP in the news now, seeking a handout in the eyes of many people, I’ll float the idea again.

Public parks need private dollars, as Overton Park and Shelby Farms have shown. To my eye, Overton Park is in pretty good hands with the Overton Park Conservancy. I’m sure it would welcome more partners, but Meeman Shelby Forest seems to me a better match for IP. Named for Memphis newspaperman and conservationist Edward Meeman, the park’s 13,467 acres in northwest Shelby County include bottomland hardwood forests, two lakes, trails and roads, ball fields, a boat ramp, disc golf, cabins, and a swimming pool. Some of it is public hunting grounds. One winter, I could have survived on the ducks, deer, and squirrels my son killed up there. The park is also a favorite destination of cyclists and a future link to the Harahan Bridge bike and pedestrian crossing and potential Mississippi River bike trail.

Calling out corporations and wealthy individuals on their community involvement and philanthropy can be crass and it’s tricky. Frauds and egomaniacs like Allen Stanford can throw other people’s money around and make a big splash with sponsorships and donations that don’t last while anonymous benefactors give away millions. FedEx, the Smiths, AutoZone and the Hydes get the balance of corporate marketing and personal modesty right and set the bar high. So do others, but to try to name them would be to leave someone out or overstate someone’s influence.

IP, however, has now asked for greater scrutiny. It’s just business. Everything is part of the picture, from the reported 2,300 employees to the capital investments to the requested 30-year tax break on new construction, to as-yet unspecified competing offers in other states to Faraci’s $12,935,541 compensation. IP is not the company that moved its operations (but not its corporate headquarters) to Memphis 26 years ago when mayors Dick Hackett and Bill Morris courted IP and CEO (later U.S. Treasury Secretary) Paul O’Neill. It has sold forest holdings, acquired competitors, adjusted to businesses that don’t use as much paper, and on any given day is probably more interested in what goes on in the hinterlands of India and Russia than Memphis.

But let’s assume its corporate leadership is as community-spirited as the next person, that employees’ families have been raised in Greater Memphis, ties have been established, and that Tennessee with no personal state income tax offers some advantages over Mississippi, financial and otherwise. IP could improve its image and its community ties with a signature pet project. Meeman Shelby Forest would be a match.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Fair Questions

Developer Henry Turley gave an overview of the Fairgrounds project to the Memphis Rotary Club on Tuesday. Turley (a member of the board of the parent company of this newspaper) said of his development team, “We start with questions, not answers.”

Well, here are a few of ours — questions, that is:

From Beale Street Landing to Shelby Farms, everyone seems to be talking about building places for Memphians from different places and backgrounds to “come together.” Very well, but what is the foundation for this belief in togetherness (with the exception of the Memphis Zoo and football and basketball games) at a time when so many concerts, movies, television programs, publications, shopping malls, churches, and schools appeal to niches that are more different than alike?

At least three other Midtown sites are targeted for major renovation — Overton Square, the old Sears Crosstown building, and the southeast corner of Poplar and Cleveland. How is the Fairgrounds project different and why is it entitled to tax incentives?

How would a youth sports complex compete with high school facilities and suburban mega-centers for baseball and soccer in what appears to be a glutted market?

Where is the tourism element in the plan if state funds are targeted for “Tourism Development Zones”?

If the Kroc Center and developers both want the same location, who wins?

How will the development team keep the University of Memphis from grabbing the lion’s share of tax revenues for improvements to Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium? What happens to the Coliseum? When will a decision be made? What happens to Fairview Junior High School?

Those questions will do for starters.
Situation Normal …

All fouled up. Diversity in a community and on a governmental body is a good thing, and so is variety of opinion. But between last week’s election and the first special meeting this week of the Shelby County Commission, the cacophony of different opinions on the commission got wildly out of hand.

Faced with the necessity of revising the formula for defining five countywide officials, as Ordinance 360 was narrowly rejected by county voters last week, the 12 commissioners present found every way possible to avoid agreement.

Accord broke down over the term-limits issue. Some said the larger vote expected in November would approve either the three-term limit (for the five offices, mayor, and commissioners) rejected last week or no limits at all. Other said their constituents insisted on two terms. In the end, all the body could agree on was a referendum proposal for November saying that the offices — sheriff, trustee, assessor, county clerk, and register, all of which were former constitutional offices invalidated as such by the state Supreme Court — should be re-created under the county charter.

But even that restatement lost a vote between the time the commissioners voted as a committee of the whole and their reconvening as the commission per se.

Can Shelby County do without these offices? No. We go to press with a hope that a new commission meeting set for Wednesday morning could at least provide a referendum stating the obvious.

Categories
News The Fly-By

All the Town’s a Stage

An average day on the job for Martin Lane seems like anything but Hollywood glamour. He finds Porto-Johns, picks up trash, and figures out where an entire cast and crew of a movie are going to eat.

“It really sucks sometimes,” Lane says. “I’m the first person there and the last to leave. If they shoot for 12 hours, I’m there for 16.”

Lane is the location manager for Nothing But the Truth, the feature-length movie starring Kate Beckinsale, Alan Alda, and Matt Dillon that has been shooting in Memphis since early October.

As a location manager, Lane works with the Memphis and Shelby County Film and Television Commission, but Lane might not even have the job if it weren’t for the 2006 Tennessee Visual Content Act.

The legislation offers tax incentives to both in- and out-of-state groups to produce films in Tennessee, and Nothing But the Truth is the first film to take advantage of these incentives.

For other movies recently shot in Memphis, the film commission had to create local incentive packages. With 2004’s Walk the Line, “we had to pull together every incentive we could find on a local level,” says deputy film commissioner Sharon Fox O’Guin. “We got that movie by the skin of our teeth.”

Locally, the number of potential productions is up, and Nothing But the Truth executive producer James Spies opened an office in Nashville.

“All this shows that it makes economic sense [to film companies], not only creative sense,” O’Guin says.

On location, Lane sees what kind of difference a film can make to local businesses.

A film set requires dozens of trained and experienced artisans, and, according to Lane, 50 percent of the crew for Nothing But the Truth came from outside the city. Fortunately, one of the provisions in Tennessee’s new incentives is an on-the-job training program to expand the local crew base.

“Part of the incentives are based on how much local business the project uses: laborers, vendors, and rental services,” Lane explains.

With Memphis businesses adapting to the new industry, film shoots may become more than an occasional occurrence. And no doubt, Lane will still be cleaning up afterward.