VOL. 131 | NO. 47 | Monday, March 7, 2016
Last Word
Bill Dries
Last Word: Weekend on the Greensward, Huey's Graffiti Wall and Look Out Lynchburg
By Bill Dries
The first weekend since the Memphis City Council vote on the Overton Park Greensward was an eventful one on the greensward.
Here is our dispatch from Saturday.
The overflow zoo parking took up more of the greensward on Sunday afternoon.
As we reported, there were some sporadic attempts at sit-ins but no arrests. The cars were directed to park around the protesters in those cases.
The effort to get zoo visitors to park on street in the neighborhood west of the zoo picked up some steam over the weekend as well.
A note here about the practice of Memphis Police officers working for the zoo and remaining in uniform while they do so.
This is not a new practice. The Police Department began allowing the practice after the 1997 murder of police officer Don Williams who was fatally shot while working security at a comedy club at Hollywood and James Road in Frayser. At the time of the incident, Williams was not wearing his MPD uniform.
That brings us to the cover story in The Memphis News which is a backgrounder on how the greensward situation got to the weekend. It’s a look at the city council’s decision and vote on the greensward.
First the Greensward, now Huey’s.
The Midtown landmark is closing temporarily for renovations March 7-11.
And as part of the renovations, Huey’s east graffiti wall will become just a memory. The restaurant that now has eight locations in the Memphis area will be putting in some windows on the east wall to overlook its small patio.
The wall has had a plaster covering for going on four decades that customers first started writing on furtively - witty sayings and observations that sometimes ventured into the crude but clever category. And the graffiti as well as the toothpicks in the ceiling (as well as a crutch) eventually became part of the business’s character. The old graffiti on the wall would periodically be painted over to make way for new sentiments in new times.
Look out Lynchburg.
Old Dominick has named its head distiller for its brand of Tennessee whiskey and bourbon to be made on Front Street.
She has a chemical engineering degree and she supervised the distilling process at the new Wild Turkey distillery before coming to Memphis.
Madeline Faber has more on Seritage, the company developing the Poplar Commons shopping center to be built on what has been the East Memphis Sears Store since 1958. This isn’t a new process for Seritage which has done this in other cities. The Nordstrom Rack store that is the anchor tenant and so far the only confirmed tenant will be joined by three more retailers in the new center.
Andy Meek looks at the new Downtown Regions Bank branch opening later this month which promises to change the look and the way we use bank branches. Regions West Tennessee president is comparing the new branch to the Apple store in its approach to customers.
The Tigers' season finale on the road is a victory, 83-53 over East Carolina Sunday.
The Shelby County Commission is considering a referendum question on whether to drop the county’s term limits just as they are set to apply to five countywide offices. The referendum would be the fourth on the question in 22 years, the third in eight years.
It’s up for the first of three readings Monday at the commission session. The meeting begins at 3 p.m. We will have live Twitter coverage @tdnpols.
The Library and Archives department of the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office has a collection of maps of counties across the state as part of the Tennessee Virtual Archives.
They are all accessible on the Internet and offer a detailed look not only at metes and bounds – a legal term that’s achieved new prominence with the Greensward controversy and its attendant legalese – the old maps include geographic features of the time, areas where roads once turned that they don’t anymore and the location of structures long gone.
They even include an extra county – Bell County – a west Tennessee county proposed that never came to be despite an 1870 proposal in the Tennessee legislature.
The Memphis News Almanac: Tiger Note, the Sterick Building opens its bronze doors, and apartments at Poplar and Tucker.