by Phil Campbell
Swept up by the inevitability of the moment, even Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout is going along with the idea of putting a new baseball stadium downtown instead of in the eastern part of the county. Dean Jernigan, the sole person behind the drive for a new baseball franchise in Memphis, "has a vision," Rout says.
And, as Jernigan has already made clear, that vision is for downtown, not Germantown or East Memphis.
"I personally feel that you probably would get more attendance in a suburban ball field," Rout says. Most of Rout's political support is "out east," and many of those folks would like to see a stadium where they don't have to drive too far to reach it.
"Now on the other hand, we've got to keep in mind that we've got a guy in the form of Dean Jernigan, who brought to the table something no one else brought, a Triple-A franchise, and come to the table with a creative idea that no one else had in the nation [making the new Chicks team a nonprofit]," Rout says. "And he said that he's got most of the funding."
The issue went back and forth recently on the talk-radio shows, with hosts such as WREC's Dave Woloshin and WHBQ's George Lapides noting a strong backing from many callers for a stadium downtown. "I've been absolutely amazed at the support for downtown," says Woloshin, who devoted at least three shows to the subject last week. "I've gone on the air saying it's the biggest mistake they could make."
Rout predicted that getting the funding through the city council and the county commission who have been asked to give $4.25 million a piece is highly likely. "I think it'll be debated somewhat in the commission, but I think there will be approval," he says.
"I'm going to be supportive of Dean," Rout repeated. "But my personal feeling is that we could get better attendance in the suburbs."
by Phil Campbell
MEMPHIS MAYOR W.W. HERENTON'S spokeswoman, Carey Hoffman, sought to minimize some of the rhetoric from the demands the mayor placed on the Memphis Police Department Friday.
Herenton ordered department officials to come up with a plan that would reduce crime throughout the city and make the department more efficient. He gave the department seven days to propose a new direction for fighting crime.
With such a short deadline and strong words from the mayor, more than a few people were left to wonder, who's going to get canned over this?
The media flocked to Lt. Steve Brown, president of the Memphis Police Association, for his thoughts. "If [Herenton's talk] was an ultimatum, then some heads are going to roll," Brown said Monday. "Because you're not going to do this in seven days, seven weeks, or even seven months."
Hoffman, though, is trying to dispel fears. "He's looking at a restructuring of resources and personnel, rather than firing," she says, "all in an effort to get more police officers on the streets."
Hoffman says Herenton's demands on the police came about unexpectedly. It was basically a stereotypical cops-in-the-doughnut-shop scene that angered the mayor into wanting a thorough law-enforcement reorganization. "The mayor saw seven police officers at a restaurant and was concerned that they were there at one time rather than taking shifts," Hoffman says.
This Friday, Herenton and the police department will meet to discuss how to merge their various ideas, Hoffman says.
Those plans may be completely different, considering the diverse attitudes both parties seem to have about lowering the crime rate. Herenton now seems to be pushing for "zero tolerance," in which police officers crack down on smaller crimes while they increase their visibility. The department has for the past few years focused on community policing methods, which tend to bring officers out of the squad car and into closer contact with individual citizens.
Police officials were unavailable for comment Monday, said spokesman Lt. Richard True. They were busy responding to the mayor's demands.
by Jacqueline Marino
THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS WERE TAKEN from letters written by mental-health patients in Shelby County to various state officials. Members of the mental-health advocacy group People Before Profit distributed the letters Saturday to officials who were meeting downtown at the state office building. The group hopes to draw attention to shortcomings of the TennCare Partners Program, the state's attempt to privatize mental-health care.
People Before Profit's members include mental-health patients, their family members, and former employees of Spectra Behavioral Healthcare Systems, which had been the county's largest provider of outpatient mental-health services. Spectra closed last month because of financial difficulties. Its 2,600 clients had to be placed elsewhere.
Spelling and grammatical errors have not been corrected.
by Jacqueline Marino
THE SMYTHE FAMILY SAYS LITTLE will change when it sells historic Memorial Park Funeral Homes and Cemeteries to the second-largest "death-care" company in North America, the Canada-based Loewen Group. But with only one white family-owned funeral home remaining inside the city limits, industry watchers fear rising funeral costs and reduced service quality in that market.
"The big corporations come in and buy up every funeral home they can," says Al Tacker, president and owner of Family Heritage Casket Gallery, Inc., which also provides funeral services. "They're like Pac-Men going around gobbling up every funeral home they can find, trying to control the market."
Consolidating small, family-owned funeral homes and cemeteries is a growing trend in the industry. Loewen and the world's largest consolidator, Houston-based Service Corporation International (SCI), own or have ties to all but one white family funeral home in Memphis, Canale Funeral Directors. Most black-owned funeral homes in Memphis are still independently owned.
For a traditional funeral, including burial costs, consumers can expect to pay $6,000 to $8,000, says Jack Redden, president of Cemetery Mortuary Consultants, Inc. Reduced competition could mean higher prices, especially in a market where consumers prefer not to shop around.
"You're going to shop milk, but you're not going to shop funeral homes," says Redden, a former Memorial Park CEO. "Consolidating is basically good, but in order for it to stay good, the public is going to have to get a little interested in the cost of funerals and stomp their foot. ... They're [the consolidators] good people, but their effect on the Memphis market is not going to be to lower prices."
E.C. Daves, president of SCI-owned Memphis Funeral Home, says consolidation doesn't always mean higher prices. Sometimes, large companies can afford to lower prices because they buy many more products, such as caskets and hearses, than independent funeral homes do.
While large companies have been known to pressure smaller, independently owned funeral homes, those who can hold out, like Canale Funeral Directors, profit from the current situation.
"The acquisitions are in our favor," says president Warren Canale, who has been approached by several interested companies. "The big companies are more concerned with the bottom line than the families involved."
A Memphis landmark since 1924, Memorial Park will stay linked to the Smythe family. Katherine Hinds Smythe, the granddaughter of founder E. Clovis Hinds, will remain chairman. Her son Clay will become president.
The arrangement isn't unusual for Memorial Park's new owner. However, a December 9, 1996, feature story in Time magazine accuses Loewen of appearing to respect longstanding business traditions by keeping former owners in the storefronts while calling the shots from its corporate office. The "bottom-up" management style has garnered Loewen 956 funeral homes so far, as well as many critics.
"In practice, new members of the Loewen family are likely to find they don't have quite as much leeway as bottom-up management might suggest," says Time writer Erik Larson in the story. "The company immediately begins a process that [founder and CEO] Ray Loewen calls `normalization' or bringing newly acquired homes up to financial expectations. All the comfy perks of a family business extra cars and dry cleaning suddenly disappear. And prices rise."
Laundy refutes many of the article's accusations, including the assertion that local managers have little influence over the funeral homes.
"Our style is to let local management have a lot to say in how the funeral home operates," he says. "We don't come in with a heavy head office and say you have to do it our way."
Last year a lawsuit damaged the company's reputation considerably when a Jackson, Mississippi, jury ordered Loewen to pay former Biloxi mayor Jerry O'Keefe $500 million for breach of contract. The company eventually settled by paying O'Keefe $175 million in cash, stock, and a promissory note.
As a result, Loewen's stock prices dropped and SCI threatened a hostile takeover bid, which they withdrew three weeks ago. Strangely, while fighting the takeover and the lawsuit, Loewen completed a record number of acquisitions last year. Laundy says the company has completely recovered from the lawsuit settlement.
The Smythes seem to think so too.
"The lawsuit did have a negative impact at the time," says Dennis Hamilton, vice president of funeral operations for Memorial Park. "But I believe in the financial strength of Loewen. I feel very good about this."
Loewen has ties to Forest Hill Funeral Homes and Cemeteries through its owner, Prime Succession, a joint venture between Loewen and a New York firm. SCI is the parent company to Memphis Funeral Home and Family Funeral Care. Wilson Financial Group owns M.J. Funeral Home and Southern Funeral Home.
On Monday, Loewen's closing stock price in the New York Stock Exchange was $36 per share, down 12.5 cents.