Tag: Whitehaven

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Politics Politics Feature

Memphis Mayor’s Race: Light in August

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

There will be two more joint appearances by mayoral candidates this week. And, as if any more proof were needed that the mayoral race is a tight, tense affair, there was incumbent Mayor A C Wharton out there on Saturday, with the temperature in the 90s, going door to door and asking Whitehaven residents for permission to put his signs in their yards.

This was two weeks after the mayor’s opening of a Whitehaven headquarters on Elvis Presley Boulevard (followed a week later by his opening of a Poplar Avenue HQ).

To hear the mayor say it, Whitehaven has always been a proving ground for him in his various elections, especially when, as in 2011, when one of his opponents was a Ford — in that case, former City Councilman Edmund Ford Sr., a member of the prominent South Memphis-based political family.

Jackson Baker

The Mayor does DIY with yard signs in Whitehaven

“They’ve always said I’d have trouble with Whitehaven, but I always do okay,” said Wharton, as he trundled up Whitworth Road, waiting to rendezvous with an aide in a car, headed his way with more signs. “All you gotta do is look around here and see how many signs we’ve already put up.”

Whitehaven has the potential to be a problem area for Wharton this year, inasmuch as one of his opponents, City Councilman Harold Collins, represents the area on the council. That morning, even as Wharton was doing his door-to-door in Whitehaven, Collins was having a formal headquarters opening at Southbrook Mall, mere blocks away on Shelby Drive at Elvis Presley.

The mayor did not minimize the Collins threat, but, as he said, “Only a Ford is a Ford,” meaning, presumably, that in his view the councilman lacked the well-known political clan’s lingering mystique in the area.

And, as it happens, only days before, Edmund Ford Sr., Wharton’s former opponent, had released to the media a scathing letter accusing Collins of running a diversionary campaign designed not to win but to siphon African-American votes away from Wharton to help the mayoral candidacy of Councilman Jim Strickland.

And, meanwhile, Edmund Ford Jr., who succeeded his father on the city council and represents a part of Whitehaven adjoining Collins’ bailiwick, is one of the mayor’s major backers, speaking on his behalf at various rallies. That sort of help will surely prove useful to the mayor’s reelection campaign.

Although nobody, as of yet, is releasing poll results, those you hear about are said to confirm the fact that Wharton is indeed involved in a competitive race — with Strickland the major threat — and has to meet various percentage figures among both black and white voters in order to prevail.

Wharton and Strickland have enormous campaign treasuries and are in a position to spend anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000 on their campaigns between now and October 8th — much of that on print, radio, and TV advertising. Collins and a fourth candidate regarded as serious, Memphis Police Association director Mike Williams, don’t have resources on that scale, but both got positive exposure on last Monday night’s debate on WMC-TV and stand to claim an ever greater share of public attention, with several more mayoral forums yet to come.

Jackson Baker

Collins with daughters at Southbrook

Collins’ headquarters opening on Saturday took place in a former bank building in the parking lot of Southbrook, the down-at-the-heels shopping mall which has been the subject of an on-again/off-again renovation project that was shelved back in June by the mayor. Days later, Wharton proposed a commission to look into a more ambitious $50 to $70 million renovation of the entire area, though there were cynics who saw that move as purely hypothetical and designed only for its short-term P.R. value.

The mayor has been nothing if not candid about what he sees as the priorities of the city’s voters. Some weeks ago, speaking to women supporters at Waterford Plaza, he expressed regret at the benefit cuts imposed on city employees this year but said polling showed that voters overall were not exercised over the matter, whereas they expressed a great deal of anxiety about the city getting its financial house in order. Recalling the matter on Saturday, Wharton mused, “‘Getting our financial house in order’ got a 9.4 rating on a scale of 10.”

Both Southbrook and the benefits cuts are integral matters to Collins’ platform and got due mention on Saturday — the former with the councilman’s promise to come to the rescue of local entrepreneurs; the latter, when local Firefighters Union president Tommy Malone told the crowd that fire employees had “lost everything that we’ve gained for 30 years” during the Wharton administration.

By contrast, Collins had been the “only candidate who has consistently supported the firefighters,” Malone said. “We’ve got to work this man into office. Or we’ll get four more years of the same thing, and we can’t stand that in this city.”

Collins had been preceded to the mic by his two daughters, who told the crowd how they had been reluctant to return to Memphis after college elsewhere because of limited, low-pay job opportunities back home. The councilman elaborated on that, one of his basic themes, saying that Memphis’ young people “see no future in … pull-it, pick-it, and push-it jobs” at $9 or $10 an hour. He promised, as mayor, to bring in well-paying finance, engineering, and technology jobs.

Recalling last year’s youth mob attack on shoppers at the Poplar Plaza Kroger, Collins cited the specter of urban “terrorism” and said he would “work with the Juvenile Court system to deal with violence, making sure the perpetrators were detained and subjected to a judicial hearing within 24 hours. We will determine whether somebody is the head of some gang or if the valedictorian is at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Collins said.

After pledging, “We won’t have all these CEOs and COOs in our administration,” an obvious dig at the incumbent mayor, Collins ran a few stirring phrases up the flagpole and, in an oblique reference to the Edmund Ford Sr. letter, declared, “We’re in this race to win it. Nor in this race to do anything else, but win. But win. But win!”

While all this was going on, Strickland, like the Mayor, was going door to door, something he does on weekends with fair frequency. The simple yard signs saying “Strickland” are beginning to appear in quantity along such high-visibility thoroughfares as Poplar and Walnut Grove, as are those for Wharton. Collins, too, has a fair number of signs out.

With both Wharton and Strickland about to turn loose gobs of money (their first TV ads have already appeared) and Collins stepping up his fund-raising efforts, the campaign of Williams remains a true variable. He doesn’t yet have anything like the public presence of the others, but last week’s agile debate performance, which seemed to disprove that he’s a one-trick pony, has people watching.

Williams spent most of Saturday at the Agricenter attending a “Pet Expo.” He materialized late in the day at a location off White Station Road, where the Police Association was collecting donations for the family of slain MPD officer Sean Bolton.

Williams and the others were scheduled for a debate at the University of Memphis’ Rose Theater at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday and at Central High School for an Evergreen Historic Association forum on Thursday at 6 p.m. We’ll be watching.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Wharton Has Big Crowd for Opening of Second Headquarters on Poplar

CREDIT: JB

JB

The Mayor was feeling his oats on Saturfday.

What a difference a week makes!

Mayor A C Wharton’s opening of a campaign headquarters in Whitehaven last week was a presentable enough affair, and a necessary one, given that one of his two major opponents, Councilman Harold Collins, has an unmistakable presence there.

Btut the Mayor’s opening on Saturday of another headquarters on Poplar Avenue a week later was both quantitatively and qualitatively more ambitious and was beyond doubt a more resounding affair for the Mayor. For one thing, he was more forceful than he had been a week earlier, exuding a great deal of apparently unfeigned confidence.

Buoyed by crowd

This was important, given that the Mayor’s race might well be decided right there, in the Poplar Corridor, where Wharton’s other major opponent, well-funded Councilman Jim Strickland, has already demonstrated real strength.

Buoyed by a big, responsive crowd containing no few influential members, Wharton eschewed the kind of defensiveness that led him, at Whitehaven, to volunteer an unforced denial that his campaign was “ toxic’ to office-holders (thereby putting the idea in heads that may not have previously harbored it).

Too, the logistics on Saturday were far more favorable. As at Whitehaven, the Mayor’s rally was arranged outside, with rows of seating under a tent-roof for some, while others had to stand. But on Poplar there were more chairs, while spreading trees provided ample shade for those standing, and large fans on either side of the assembly kept a strong but gentle breeze circulating.

The rally area on Poplar, moreover, was reachable by just a step or two out the back door of an interior headquarters space that was multi-roomed and cavernous. So the large crowd had no trouble shifting back and forth, more or less compactly, and without discomfort.

How large was the crowd? In the hundreds, easily. The rally group outside numbered at least 200, pushing higher, and extrapolating from the fact that there had to be significant numbers who remained inside, a claim of between 300 and 400 could at least be entertained.

And Saturday’s crowd could fairly be described as racially diverse, much more so than the predominantly African-American one at Whitehaven had been (though Wharton described them both as if they had been veritable UN assemblies).

Different logistics

An article in this space regarding the Whitehaven rally originally estimated the crowd at that rally in and around the tent
[italics mine] to be between 50 and 75. To put it mildly, that figure was objected to, both immediately thereafter and on Saturday at the Poplar headquarters rally, where this reporter encountered an organized tag-team volley of complainants.

(High-ranking ones, too, including, on Saturday, the city’s First Lady, Ruby Wharton, from whom, however, I was actually able to extract a generous-sized smile. Fair trade, that.)

And, though I had indulged the good folks at Whartonville South by amending my account to include their own (carefully attributed) claim of 150-200, I continue to believe my original estimate was correct. (Look again at those italics overhead.)

There may have been a lot of coming and going at Whitehaven that was hard to encompass visually and difficult to enumerate, but the interior headquarters space there appeared to be about the size of a small studio apartment, and at no point did it contain what could be described as a throng.

And the distance from the front door of that modest office space in Whitehaven to the tented area where the rally itself was held was a bare asphalt area that, on HQ day, with temperatures approaching 100, came off as about as vast and unsheltered as Death Valley, California

It was hot on Saturday on Poplar Avenue, too, but not only were the logistics more inviting, so was the format of the rally. There was no elongated waiting-around period, as there had been at Whitehaven, and instead of the ten or so speakers preceding the Mayor’s advent at last week’s opening, there were only three or four on Saturday, most of them concise and well-spoken. (Among them was the ever-gracious co-chair Lois Stockton, inadvertently overlooked at a previous year’s Wharton opening, but a solid plus on Saturday.)

The number of elected officials lending support for the Mayor on Saturday was somewhat larger than it had been a week earlier, and as easy to list, inasmuch as, at one point or another, they were all acknowledged by emcee Bobby White (or “Roberto Blanco,” as he was re-dubbed for the occasion by Councilman Edmund Ford Jr, one of Saturday’s speakers.)

Hot rhetoric

Things got started on Saturday with something of a stem-winder by Mike Carpenter; County Commissioner Reginald Milton had a passably good speech, too, concluding, “We don’t need a new mayor. We got a mayor!”.

On hand were: Municipal Judge Tarik Sugarmon, Council members Wanda Halbert and Ford, state Representatives Barbara Cooper and G.A. Hardaway; County Commissioners Milton, Van Turner, and Willie Brooks; and Probate Judge Kathleen Gomes.

Especially considering that Mayor Wharton had just been through a somewhat devastating week, the key point of which was having to deal with the shooting death and funeral of MPD officer Sean Bolton, he summoned up a collection of exhortations that were no less spirited for being disjointed.

A sampling:

“I know it’s hot out there…[but]we are going to turn op the A C!,,,,[With] people just melting in the sweltering heat of joblessness and hopelessness, why would you turn off the A C?….I think that’s the time your turn it up, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do on October 8!”

The Mayor distinguished between his opponents as “thermomerter people, who tell you what the temperature is” and himself, a “thermostat” who knew how to calibrate things back into balance. The choice, he said, was between “those who crow about problems and talk about a future of doom” and a Mayor who had brought 10,000 new jobs and could “get off his butt” and go get seed money for the city without raising taxes.

“What’s wrong with going to Bloomberg and getting $5 million? What’s wrong with getting on a plane and bringing the money back here?…What’s wrong with saying, ‘Governor, you’ve got $6 million that you cannot spend’” and talking
Bill Haslam into funneling that much to Memphis?

Wharton boasted of recent pieces in The Huffington Post and the Chicago Tribune that called Memphis a “city of promise,” and he concluded with his patented rainbow note: “We can’t work as black folks, we can’t work as white folks, we can’t work as brown folks, we’ve got to work together” toward “the Destiny of One Memphis!”

To repeat: Disjointed but spirited. Somehow, it came off as a tour de force.

And more important than the words was the image of a man of passion and personality (which is what A C Wharton, at his best, is on the stump), determined to see both his campaign and his mayoralty through and, crowd-wise, able to match, if not beat, opponent Jim Strickland, who had pulled a large but more homogeneous crowd of his own at a headquarters opening on Poplar three weeks ago.

“You tell me somebody else who could turn out a crowd like this on a day like this!” Wharton had said in his remarks. And it was no idle boast.

The message on Saturday was clear: Whoever turns this man out will have to go some.

Monday night debate

• Meanwhile, push will come to shove for five mayoral candidates — Wharton, Strickland, Collins, Mike Williams, and Sharon Webb — on Monday night at 7 p,m. at the National Civil Rights Museum for the next in what will be a spate of mayoral debates between now and October 8.

This one is sponsored by WMC-TV, Action News 5; the NCRM; the League of Women Voters; and the Memphis association of Black Journalists..

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (December 25, 2014) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Joe Boone’s music feature, “Venerable Studio Changes Hands” …

What did they do with the hundreds of pictures of Sai Baba that were hanging everywhere?

Yeah Man

About Steve Steffans’ Viewpoint, “Southern Democrats: Down, Not Dead” …

I’m going to get this article tattooed to my forehead so I don’t have to keep saying this over and over again when I talk to any Tennessee Democrat who isn’t from Memphis.

Autoegocrat

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s letter from the editor, “Good Cop. Bad Cop” …

I’ve been an advocate of a constitutional ban on union representation for public employees for quite a while.

But I have to admit, if I were a police officer and had heard and read all of the idiots and their mindless followers blaming “economic inequality” as the root cause for the recent highly publicized police incidents, I’d probably want a good union steward, too.

Nightcrawler

Your call for police departments to “man up and acknowledge their bad apples” is one of the best positioned arguments on the issue I have read. Unfortunately, this posture of “protect your own no matter what” permeates so many organized labor organizations, to the detriment of the reputation of the organization overall. From teachers to bus drivers to NFL players, the representing labor organizations seem to go out of their way to protect even the most obviously unqualified or, at times, criminally inclined members at the expense of the reputation and good work of its majority.

There are bad people in every profession. If others in those professions would acknowledge that and help clean house, it would benefit everyone — fellow professionals and the customers of those professions alike.

rjb

I’m still wondering why no one is talking about the fact that Ohio has an Open Carry law. In fact, the city of Cleveland’s ban on open carry was overturned by the Republican legislature — something the NRA praised. And before you say, “Well, kids are not covered by open carry!” Remember that the officers after the shooting called in: “Shots fired. Male down. Black male, maybe 20.”

Charley Eppes

About Wendi C. Thomas’ column, “The Roots of Protest” …

It appears Obama and the Democrats are going to fix the black unemployment problem by opening the borders to millions more illegals and giving amnesty to those already here. I’ll admit I don’t understand how flooding the job market with an unending supply of cheap labor is going to help African Americans get jobs, but I’m sure all of the black Democratic politicians have it figured out because none of them are complaining.

GWCarver

Every Republican and Democratic administration in the past 30-plus years has refused to enforce the laws that would have fined employers of illegals thousands of dollars per hire. That simple upholding of their sworn duty would have saved those jobs that big business couldn’t export via the myriad of free-trade agreements. It ain’t a Democrat vs. Republican thing.

CL Mullins

The prospect of low-cost labor has been very appealing to both Republicans and Democrats alike. And the lack of any sort of sustained protest from the general public who enjoyed those lower priced goods produced by that cheap labor was also a factor. Call it the Walmart Factor. There are many who scream about what they consider Walmart’s “slave” wages, but they also enjoy the low prices, so they really don’t complain too much.

Arlington Pop

I can agree that public investment in Graceland is nonsense, but what other economic development plans are on the table for Whitehaven? Southbrook Mall? That is even more nonsensical by a large margin.

If it’s all going to boil down to race for everything that occurs, then the point that the money is being spent in Whitehaven rather than downtown or in East Memphis should amount to something. But it is conveniently forgotten in this column.

Brunetto Latini

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Opinion Viewpoint

Dividing by Zero

I’m all about creativity, but it seems our civic imagination has gone wild. The Fairgrounds and Graceland projects have fundamental flaws that would render them untenable as private investments, so why should the public invest?

Memphis Housing and Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb dazzles politicians with PowerPoints and distracts us with ghostly promises of private investment, jobs, and kids playing. He says all the public money is sales tax that otherwise would go to the state. While true, the effect is to get everyone so jazzed they forget the project’s premise is extremely risky.

The Fairgrounds Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) application justifies a $176 million public investment by claiming a private investment of $133 million. The application leaves unsaid that the investment consists of money already spent by Loeb Properties and others on privately financed development projects and anticipated dollars from a to-be-determined private developer.

The project relies on a major retailer swooping in to anchor a massive new retail and hotel development. But there is no lease. There isn’t even a named prospect. At the Fairgrounds, the best location is the corner of Central and East Parkway, which is currently occupied by a school and the Kroc Center. If Target or Walmart was interested, they’d tell us. We don’t need to build it and then see if we can entice them to open in a sub-par spot.

There’s probably rebuttal evidence and “proof” that youth sports is the future in the studies Lipscomb commissioned. Of course, the people who provide these studies are the same ones who are later paid to consult on the development, and their advice can be boiled down to something entrepreneur Richard Branson would say: “Screw it, let’s do it.” Of course, when he says that he’s talking about using his own money, not yours.

As for the Graceland project, there is certainly a public benefit to creating jobs in Whitehaven and improving a major tourist attraction. The Commercial Appeal reports that a public investment of $125 million in the Graceland Hotel project might yield 282 jobs. From a return on investment (ROI) perspective, this does not seem to shake out for taxpayers. From the developers’ perspective, it’s fine, but I can’t calculate their ROI because real numbers aren’t divisible by zero.

Investors use the phrase “skin in the game” to refer to putting something of yourself into the project — usually cash. It gives them comfort to know the risk they’re taking is reciprocated. Apparently, the Graceland Hotel developers are putting zero capital into this project. While they stand to earn all the profits from the venture, they risk nothing. Any investor would be nervous, so why aren’t we?

Public investment has its place. Without it we wouldn’t have the Grizzlies. I can even justify Bass Pro —  at least there’s an actual company with a plan, investing money of its own. The Fairgrounds and Graceland projects represent a $300 million public investment with virtually zero committed private money. Compare that with Crosstown and Overton Square, where public money represented less than 10 percent of the total investment. In these cases, taxpayer investment is secured not only by public oversight but by the natural inclination of private developers to protect their investments.

When Memphis plays developer without market checks and balances, the result is seldom good. The smart play here is to pause and take a breath. The Fairgrounds and Graceland are tremendous assets for our city. The right projects will surface when the time is right. It’s the government’s job to recognize that reality and get out of the way when it happens. Invest incrementally. Instead of huge, risky, public debt-financed projects, invest in many small, neighborhood-level private projects and iterate off what works.

Private money doesn’t flow to projects that don’t make sense, so why should public money be any different? No one I know supports these proposals in full, except the politicians. Of course, if these projects go through, millions of dollars will find their way to lawyers, contractors, bankers, and consultants — the very same people who line the campaign war chests of our local politicians. So, no, nothing’s likely to change here in the city famous for building an upside-down triangle arena inside a right-side-up triangle. Common sense ain’t so common around here.

Categories
Opinion

Weekend Report: Barbecue Makeover, Big East, Big Bluff

CREDIT: John Branston

DSCN0128.JPG

Best line of the week: “It was a bluff they hoped would be called,” by Jackson Baker, on the annexation moves and counter-moves by Sen. Mark Norris and the Memphis City Council.

A picture worth a thousand words: Memphis Tigers in Times Square, as noted by my colleague Frank Murtaugh, who got this comment from Big East associate commissioner John Paquette on how it happened: “This is a terrific benefit of a deal we have with American Eagle Outfitters. The sign is at their Times Square store. AEG is the presenting sponsor of our men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. They also sponsor our academic awards. We also are able to use it for acknowledging conference champions after we conduct one of our championships. We welcomed our other new members in a similar way.”

The Food Network is coming to Memphis next week to Pollards Bar-B-Q in Whitehaven. Robert Irvine, the muscular take-charge host of “Restaurant: Impossible” will bring in his crew to do a makeover of the restaurant at 4560 Elvis Presley Boulevard, about a mile south of Graceland. The gimmick is that the crew spends $10,000 on design and Irvine whips the staff into shape. I had lunch there Friday with Memphis City Councilman Harold Collins, who represents Whitehaven. “No worse than an 8” on a scale of 1 to 10, was our evaluation of the food and the premises. Our sandwiches were so so big we had to eat them with a fork, the meat was lean, the fries crisp, the beans not bad, the vinyl booths clean. There were only a couple of other customers, however, and the orange/mustard colored cinder block interior decor needs work, but this one looks like a lay down for Irvine and company. Tenesia Pollard, who was at the counter, said the show contacted her two days after she contacted them. Filming is next week, with the show scheduled to air in May.

It’s always something at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium. With the Big East news came the predictable cry for public funds to fix the turf, press box (cry me a river), big-screen, and they’ll think of something else. If there was ever a case for user fees, this is it. College football is a big-bucks goldmine, even for lower tier bowls, as I have reported. Let them pay to play. And put on a ticket surcharge. Attendance can’t get much worse than it has been for the last two or three years, so there is huge upside when Memphis joins the Big East and upgrades its schedule in 2013. As for the media, give ’em a Pollards barbecue sandwich and a free beer. Works for me.

The Racquet Club is installing the Hawk-Eye System for the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships February 17-26. The system lets players challenge calls and fans see how close the ball was to the line. Tournament Director Peter Lebedevs said it will be used on all main-draw matches on the Stadium Court.

Attorney Webb Brewer said the mortgage settlement between 49 states and big lenders does not put an end to the city of Memphis lawsuit against Wells Fargo. tn incl. “It is not identical to the issues in our lawsuit,” he said. “Ours had more to do with the making of the loans and discrimination targeting minorities for bad loans, which resulted in foreclosures.” The federal lawsuit, he said, survived a motion to dismiss and is in the discovery phase.

Categories
Opinion

Loeb Wants Decision on Overton Square in 2011

WebNewsCarOvertonSquareLoebRENDER.jpg

Robert Loeb says his company’s redevelopment of Overton Square can move forward with or without an underground storm water detention basin, but he needs to know by the end of this year what the city is going to do.

Loeb Properties has a contract to buy the property that expires December 31st. The company proposes to spend $19 million on Overton Square. The city is considering spending up to $19 million for a parking garage, underground detention basin, and street improvements. The proposed investment has to clear the City Council, which has two more meetings this year.

Loeb said he has no preference between an $8 million detention basin and a smaller, less expensive one, but believes the smaller one — less than one tenth the size of the bigger one — wouldn’t hold enough water to do much good.

“If the funds are in there it isn’t my decision,” he said. “But it works kind of hand in hand with the garage structure.”

Without a garage, Loeb said “we’ll have low-density, surface development” and shared surface parking with Playhouse on the Square and others instead of high-density development.

Overton Square and other Midtown developments with big parking lots such as the Home Depot at Poplar and Avalon contribute to the flooding problem during heavy rains. Detention basins (the soccer field at Christian Brothers University is one example) hold water temporarily, as opposed to retention basins that retain it. The city engineering department is considering several flood abatement options for Midtown, including the one at Overton Square and another one in the Snowden School playing field. A detention basin in Overton Park on the greensward was rejected because of public opposition.

“I’d like to be a good neighbor,” said Loeb, who presented his company’s plan earlier this year at Playhouse on the Square. It included restaurants, new and renovated retail spaces, and a new home for the Hatiloo Theater.

Flooding after heavy rains is a problem for residents in Midtown neighborhoods north and south of Overton Square. The total cost to protect them against a 25-year flood is estimated at $24.3 million.

Mary Wilder, cochairman of the Lick Creek Storm Water Coalition, has followed this issue for years and is also a Midtowner in the Vollentine-Evergreen Community Association (VECA). She sent me the article here. She makes a strong case for small-scale “green” measures that, if they catch on, can have a significant impact on flood abatement.

The coalition opposes detention basins in Overton Park and supports Loebs’ project “as long as detention is part of it.” She adds that even the largest detention basin under Overton Square “is not going to solve VECA’s flooding problem” because Lick Creek picks up more water between the square and the VECA neighborhood. Wilder is frustrated that city engineers “start talking engineering to you” and have not been clear on why the cost of the proposed Overton Square detention basin suddenly went up so much. There is suspicion that Overton Park will come back in play as an alternative.

I am a shameless homer on this one. I live in Midtown, although not near Overton Square, and like driving five minutes instead of 20 minutes for dinner and a movie. I was for the Loeb-Henry Turley fairgrounds redevelopment, Fair Ground, that was rejected by the previous administration and the City Council. But the football crowd won that one, and the result, for better (Tiger Lane, Southern Heritage Classic, AutoZone Liberty Bowl) and worse (about 2000 people at the last Memphis home football game, acres of empty parking lots, nine events a year, and nothing at the old Libertyland site) is plain to see.

Low density or high density, Loebs’ development would be a nice addition to a budding “theater district” hanging on to memories of better days in the Sixties and Seventies. I’d like to see an upscale grocery store in the mix and believe it could still happen. I question how much a relocated repertory theater company brings to the party and prime space on Cooper.

A $6 million parking garage? I don’t know about that. Can’t imagine it being free for long, if ever, and pay-to-park can be a deterrent when there are alternatives. If there are a few nights when the theaters are full and so are the bars and restaurants so parking is scarce, well, we should have more such problems.

As for the financing, I think the place in Memphis for a Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) is Graceland. That’s clearly other people’s money, and Whitehaven and Elvis Presley Boulevard, as Councilman Harold Collins says, are overdue for attention. In hindsight, Whitehaven should not have hitched its wagon to Robert Sillerman’s grandiose plans for Graceland.

The Fair Ground TDZ was tied to that specific project and it’s gone now. Getting another TDZ is easier said than done. It took Turley’s considerable reputation and political skill to get the first one.

Another funding alternative is a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district. That captures the incremental growth in sales taxes and pours it back into project financing, but the proposed boundaries are bigger than Overton Square. I don’t think higher tax revenue from a pizza joint on Union Avenue or small business on Central necessarily has anything to do with new investment in Overton Square. And TIFs strike me as very similar to special school districts.

Finally, or foremost depending on where you live, there is flooding. I would be going ballistic if I lived in one of the flooded areas in the big flood of 2010 or in a house where sewage came up through the basement drain and flooded my living room and the city was slow-walking flood abatement. There’s a case to be made for bundling flood abatement and development of Overton Square, but there’s a better case to be made for doing what’s best for flood-afflicted residents regardless and paying for it out of general funds. Much as I wish the money could be taken away from boondoggles such as Beale Street Landing, that isn’t going to happen. So we will see what the city council does in December, and Loeb will make its decision after that.