A Fortune 500 corporation, the Memphis-based company behind the Delta Fair, a Memphis real estate management firm with office experience, and a newly formed group of Memphians with experience in real estate, entertainment and restaurants as well as commercial development and financing. Those are the four companies that have applied to manage the Beale Street entertainment district.

The Beale Street Tourism Development Authority reviewed the proposals by the applicants Thursday, Jan. 14, tentatively setting two weeks before its February meeting to interview executives of the companies.

That could be followed by a vote on selecting one of the four at the Feb. 18 meeting of the authority. But the vote could also be delayed depending on the questions the authority members have in the next two weeks.

The applicants who responded to the request for proposal by the authority are:

Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc.
The global Fortune 500 corporation based in Charlotte, N.C. covers a lot of ground in real estate management including mixed-use entertainment projects.

JLL, as it is known, is best known in Tennessee as state government’s contractor on a controversial facilities management contract, which included the sale of several state office buildings including the Donnelly J. Hill Office Building in Memphis.

ML Professional Properties LLC
The ML in the company is Mark Lovell, the founder and owner of the annual Delta Fair and the Memphis Air Show. The company produces entertainment events and does marketing.

Capital Realty Services LLC
The Memphis-based firm was formed in 2000 by a group of JLL’s Memphis executives.

Capital Realty's presentation touts its past as leasing director of Clark Tower and leasing and managing the neighboring White Station Tower as well as the Primacy Building, which it still manages. One of the cofounders of Capital was leasing director of the Falls Building while working for JLL.

The company’s proposal emphasizes a systematic and formulaic approach to efficiency, according to Sanford.

21 Beale Street Inc.
21 Beale formed specifically for the Beale Street job in a coalition that includes Peyton Company Realtors of Memphis headed by veteran Memphis broker Reginald Peyton.

Peyton has teamed up with Dwain J. Kyles, a Chicago attorney and owner and manager of nightclubs and restaurants there as well as Kelvin Willis, a mortgage broker and developer with Willis and Associates of Memphis.

Willis is the cousin of former Beale Street Tourism Development Authority chairman Archie Willis, who resigned from the authority last month ahead of 21 Beale’s application.

The relationship is disclosed in the proposal.

Kyles is the son of Rev Samuel Billy Kyles, retired pastor of Monumental Baptist Church and an icon in the Memphis civil rights movement.

The younger Kyles was co-owner of E2, a Chicago nightclub where a 2003 stampede killed 21 people after security guards used pepper spray in the club to break up a fight.

He was sentenced to two years in prison following his conviction on a criminal contempt charge for code violations at the club including overcrowding. He was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter charges.

The sentence was thrown out on appeal and this past November, Kyles and codefendant and club co-owner Calvin Hollins Jr. were resentenced to two years probation and 500 hours of community service in a deal with Chicago city prosecutors.

The conviction is noted in the application but not the stampede.

The appeals court order rejecting the earlier two-year prison sentence said the trial court judge based it on the deaths in the stampede. The appeals court ruling concluded the prison sentence was improper because Kyles and Hollins were not “the legal proximate cause” of the stampede and deaths and injuries.