VOL. 132 | NO. 165 | Monday, August 21, 2017
Hello, Memphis! Are you ready for the (almost-)total eclipse that sweeps over the city Monday? Check out our master list of eclipse-viewing parties, plus more happenings you need to know about – like, say, a performance by Samurai Elvis – in The Week Ahead...
Only two of the six people arrested on misdemeanor charges Saturday, Aug. 19, during demonstrations at the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue in Health Sciences Park were charged with trying to wrap a banner around the monument and only one of the two was charged with “desecration of a venerated object.”
In the days following Memphis’ latest startup Demo Day event, after new startup funding announcements, after former U.S. chief technology officer Megan Smith even gave Memphis’ startup community a shoutout on Bloomberg TV, it might seem like the startup scene here is having a moment.
Tennessee Education Commissioner Candice McQueen and other educators say early childhood educators across the state don’t spend enough time with children on reading, vocabulary building, word comprehension and other basic literacy skills.
As an organizer of Saturday’s “Take Them Down” rally at Health Sciences Park walked toward Union Avenue where Memphis Police had taken one of the protesters arrested there, he looked at another organizer and said, “It’s time to make the call.” The call was bail money for the five, soon to be six people arrested. These were the first arrests of the last week of new momentum for an issue that has risen and subsided for decades now in our city.
REAL ESTATE RECAP
In this week’s Real Estate Recap, 266 Lofts in Downtown Memphis begins its second phase, Peak Capital closes on a massive Cordova apartment complex, and a Chattanooga-based rock climbing gym purchases land in East Memphis.
With the First Baptist Church – Broad choir singing “Amazing Grace,” the $200-million mixed-use Crosstown Concourse development opened Saturday, Aug. 19, 90 years to the month that the building opened as a Sears-Roebuck store and distribution center.
Despite unveiling a new look and layout for the proposed Lake District development at a special meeting late Thursday, developer Yehuda Netanel’s plans were put on ice by Lakeland’s Industrial Development Board. That is at least until the matter of a “surprise” foreclosure notice could be sorted out.
Nearly 2 million square feet of industrial space near Memphis International Airport has switched hands for a combined $25.9 million in a pair of recently closed deals.
THE MEMPHIS NEWS
The story of the Sears tower and Crosstown Concourse
As he was leading tours through Crosstown Concourse this month, Todd Richardson took a small group to a set of windows for a balcony view of an addition being constructed on the north side of the property.
EDITORIAL
Instead of changing the names of its Confederate-themed parks, Memphis should have been going directly after its Confederate monuments in 2013, before the Tennessee Legislature enacted procedures that seem designed to draw out the process for as long as possible.
THE MEMPHIS NEWS ALMANAC
1968: James Brown at the Mid-South Coliseum. Brown is touring the nation against a backdrop of two political assassinations – Martin Luther King Jr. in April and Robert Kennedy in June – racial and generational turmoil, and a heightened police response to gatherings like concerts where authorities believe the chance of violence is greater as a result.
LAST WEEK'S MOST POPULAR
If you turn your head and squint your eyes just right, you can almost believe that Davis-Kidd Booksellers is back.
In anticipation of the historic solar eclipse Aug. 21, Bartlett-based American Paper Optics (APO) is partnering with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to educate the public on safe solar eclipse viewing.
Despite unveiling a new look and layout for the proposed Lake District development at a special meeting late Thursday, developer Yehuda Netanel’s plans were put on ice by Lakeland’s Industrial Development Board. That is at least until the matter of a “surprise” foreclosure notice could be sorted out.
A team of scientists that includes researchers from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Mayo Clinic has made a breakthrough discovery about the causes of Lou Gehrig’s disease, paving the way for the development of treatments.
There’s no denying that the railroad underpass on G.E. Patterson Avenue has seen better days. However, a proposed partnership between the Downtown Memphis Commission and the South End Improvement Alliance hopes to change that.
STATEWIDE
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP) – Officials in one central Tennessee county working to treat an algae bloom affecting the area's water supply say it will take at least two weeks before the taste returns to normal.
REGIONAL NEWS
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) – A new program planned at the University of Mississippi will try to reduce the abuse of drugs and alcohol.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Mississippi's eight public universities thought they had a deal with lawmakers for predictable bond funding each year. But the Legislature didn't do any general borrowing earlier this year. Now, as the universities make their yearly bond request, they're emphasizing the importance of a yearly money infusion to campus operations.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration says it's received its first application for a medical marijuana dispensary license.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Jerry Lewis, the manic, rubber-faced showman who jumped and hollered to fame in a lucrative partnership with Dean Martin, settled down to become a self-conscious screen auteur and found an even greater following as the tireless, teary host of the annual muscular dystrophy telethons, has died. He was 91.
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Dick Gregory, the comedian and activist and who broke racial barriers in the 1960s and used his humor to spread messages of social justice and nutritional health, has died. He was 84.
NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
WASHINGTON (AP) – Steve Bannon, the blunt-spoken and divisive strategist who rose from Donald Trump's conservative campaign to a top White House post, was pushed out by the president Friday, capping a turbulent seven months marked by the departure of much of Trump's original senior staff.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who resigned Friday from an unpaid post as President Donald Trump's adviser on deregulation efforts, stepped down as The New Yorker was preparing to publish a lengthy article detailing Icahn's potential conflicts of interest and questioning the legality of his actions.