by Mark Jordan
A year-and-a-half after Nashville-based Gibson Guitar Corp. announced plans to build an $8 to $12 million guitar plant behind Beale Street and six months after construction was to have begun, the lot remains barren.
According to Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, the planned 75,000-square-foot facility, which is going to produce the "Lucille" model of guitar made famous by B.B. King, has been held up by unexpected financial and government entanglements.
The structure of the company's deal with the project's financier, NationsBank, has required the architect and contactor to come up with precise plans and budgets, Juszkiewicz says. In addition, a government-mandated archaeological survey of the site has taken longer than expected. Juszkiewicz expects construction to begin by the end of the year.
But while the plant is still a go, another local Gibson project is dead in its tracks, at least for the time being. Plans to develop a Gibson record label have been put on hold indefinitely, Juszkiewicz says, admitting that Gibson's original vision of starting both projects simultaneously may have been too ambitious.
"In most cases, I've been overseeing these projects myself," Juszkiewicz says. "So it looks like we just took on too much too quickly. We have to scale back a bit and concentrate on getting the factory built. I still really want to do the label, but I'm just not going to be able to do it right now."
The proposed label division of Gibson, Gibson Entertainment, was to have released its first CD, a record by Grammy-winning Mississippi harp player James Cotton, early next year.
Ollie
Hoskins, better known as soul singer Ollie Nightingale, died Sunday afternoon
of heart failure brought about by complications from pneumonia. Hoskins,
61, had been a prominent member of the Memphis music scene since 1958, when
he helped form the gospel group the Dixie Nightingales. In 1968, the group
switched to singing soul music and recorded for Memphis-based Stax Records,
producing hits like "I've Got A Feeling" and "You're Leaving
Me." In 1970, Hoskins left the group for a solo career. In recent years,
he found new success on the festival circuit and was a favorite in regional
nightclubs until his death. He also continued his recording career, recently
releasing his third album for Ecko Records, Make It Sweet.
Hoskins' body will be on view Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. and Friday until 5 p.m. at M.J. Edwards Funeral Home. Services will be held at Magnolia First Baptist Church Friday at 7 p.m. with burial at the West Tennessee Veterans Cemetery Monday at 10 a.m.
Contributions to help pay funeral costs are being
accepted at Tri-State Bank or can be sent to Ecko Records, 5242 Helene Cove,
Memphis, TN 38117.
by Jacqueline Marino
Homeowners in Tennessee are more delinquent making their mortgage payments than homeowners in all but four other states and the District of Columbia, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America.
In Tennessee as of June 30th, 5.24 percent of home loan payments were more than 30 days late. Nationally, the delinquency rate was 4.16 percent.
Dr. John Gnuschke, director of the Bureau of Economic Research at the University of Memphis, says many Tennesseans can't make their mortgage payments for the same reason they declare bankruptcy: They rack up more debt than they can handle, especially when it comes to buying homes.
"People do get overextended on the purchase of new homes," he says. "That's been a continuous trend. It's all part of the suburbanization issue."
Some special assistance programs for low-income homebuyers could also be exacerbating the delinquency problem, says Charles Dempsey, program director for the Memphis Consumer Credit Association.
"I think we've been putting too many weak credits in there," Dempsey says. "It doesn't help to get people into a house on a shoestring."
The delinquency rate for Federal Housing Administration-backed loans is much higher than the 4.16 percent overall figure -- 7.8 percent nationally and 8.44 percent in Tennessee. Eleven states and the District of Columbia have higher FHA delinquency rates than Tennessee.
One $11 million program run by the city of Memphis has reportedly helped nearly 5,000 low- and moderate-income families buy homes. While the city doesn't keep delinquency rates for the recipients, Debra Brown, director of the Division of Housing and Community Development, suspects they are fairly low.
"We have a less than 1 percent foreclosure rate," Brown says. "In fact, the mayor set up a housing resource center to keep it from happening."
The center provides housing counseling, budgeting help, and other types of assistance.
by Jim Hanas
After decades of continuous broadcast, USWA professional wrestling has gone off the local airwaves in the wake of legal disputes surrounding the program's recent sale to a joint venture consisting of Cleveland, Ohio-based XL Sports and businessman Larry Burton.
Since Jerry Lawler's sale of the USWA in June, XL has filed a complaint that names both Lawler and Burton as defendants, alleging fraud surrounding the circumstances of the sale, according to local attorney Larry Parrish, who is representing XL in the matter. In response, Burton has filed a counter-claim against two individuals connected with XL Sports. Lawler is not a party in the counter-claim.
As a result of the legal entanglements, WMC-TV Channel 5 -- which is not a party in either suit, and presumably would like to keep it that way -- has decided to take the show off the air, effectively casting its future in doubt. WMC general manager Mason Granger did not return several requests for comment.
All concerned, however, seem optimistic about the matter being resolved and wrestling eventually returning to the air. "We're all hopeful [the matter will be settled]," says Parrish. "But so far it hasn't."
"There's nobody in television who doesn't realize the value of the Channel 5 wrestling show," says Lawler, whose name is virtually synonymous with the program. "There will always be a place for a wrestling show in the Memphis area, and I think it will just be a matter of a few weeks before they [the litigants] come to their senses and realize the courtroom is not the best way to settle this dispute for anybody."
by Tanuja Surpuriya
When renovations began on a Raleigh-Egypt High School home-economics classroom, school authorities did not count on taking a crash course in Memphis fire codes.
School officials were alarmed that their $38,455 budget nearly doubled to $74,315 after the Memphis Fire Department inspected the plans and required a fire-suppression system and stainless-steel vent-a-hoods for the stoves.
At last week's Board of Education meeting, Wilma Williams, instructional supervisor with Memphis City Schools' division of technology and careers, told board members this was the first time she could remember local fire authorities imposing requirements independent from the state.
School-board member Bill Todd says he understands Raleigh-Egypt's situation. As president of the Mid-South Fair, Todd says he learned about new fire-safety requirements by the MFD earlier this fall.
"We always used to go straight to the state fire marshals for inspections," he says, "but now it seems there may be a change in where the power [to enforce fire codes] is going to come from."
But MFD Chief Fire Marshal Jeff Pickett says there have been no recent changes in the codes or in the local approach to code enforcement.
"As far as I know, we've always inspected the schools," says Pickett. "And we've always worked with the state."
He says his department inspects every school at least once annually and reviews all renovation plans. He adds that there are no new fire codes in place other than the state's 1994 standard codes, which MFD adopted in March 1996.
"And we've always required the suppression systems for classes that do this commercial-type cooking," he says.
School-board members, who were concerned whether the district's other schools will need to update their fire-safety equipment, said they will look into the matter.
by Jacqueline Marino
When it comes to the much-debated bluff walk, the city of Memphis just can't win.
And neither, it seems, can anyone else.
The
city has now been taken to court by both sides in the battle for the bluff.
When Mayor Willie Herenton stalled construction of the $2.5 million public
walkway last year, bluff-walk supporters successfully sued the city, forcing
it to proceed with a 1995 city-council approved plan.
Then, on Monday afternoon, residents of three blufftop developments sued the city for doing just that. They say construction of a walkway 10 feet below their homes would hasten erosion and destabilize the bluff, threatening the very foundation on which their houses sit. The lawsuit calls for a permanent injunction prohibiting the walk's construction and charges the city with both trespassing and constituting a nuisance.
William Henson, president of the South Bluffs development, says the lawsuit "serves the true intent of conservancy as well as the interest of homeowners and the taxpaying public."
"It is very unwise to introduce a manmade structure that is subject to malfunction or defect in its movement of massive amounts of water during storms onto a bluff with a noted history of instability," he says.
Interim city attorney Ken McCown declined comment Tuesday morning, saying he had not seen the lawsuit.
The Chickasaw Bluffs Conservancy, the citizens' group whose members have actively pursued the walk since the late 1980s, was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit. However, Pat Merrill, the group's president, says the conservancy will support the city in the matter.
"They have gone over this so many times," she says. "We would not have pushed forward if we were not assured it would be safe."
The 1.1-mile walk would stretch from Union Avenue to Georgia Avenue. Portions of it would be notched into the bluff beneath the three housing developments.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit have also asked that the city be held liable for any property damage attributable to the bluffwalk construction. Plaintiffs include the Riverbluff Cooperative, Inc., Chickasaw Bluff Cooperative, Inc. and members of the South Bluffs development, including Orpheum president Pat Halloran and Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau president and CEO Kevin Kane.