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" Beale Street's CEO reflects on his 14-year odyssey to revitalize the once-sagging historic district. "
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By Norm Shaw
"This is not my life's work," claims Beale Street's CEO John Elkington. He says this while sitting at the head of his wooden conference table turned desk, surrounded by years of Beale Street memorabilia, including dozens of photographs, both of the street he's made famous and of the blues musicians and assorted celebrity heavyweights who've come to see it. The framed photographs sit as silent testaments of his success. "Originally, this (Beale Street) was a community project for me," he continues. "This was not going to be a large part of my life. A friend of mine, Avron Fogelman, had just taken over Mud Island, and he said to me, 'Hey, why don't you go and do Beale Street?' "You know, I told him, 'That's a good idea. I think I'll go and do that.' I was 33 years old at the time, and I had never failed as far as business at that point." Since then, he's come awfully close. But today, as chief executive of Performa Entertainment Real Estate Inc., the company that manages historic Beale Street, Elkington, 48, presides over a thriving urban entertainment district. Seven hundred people work on Beale and, last year, the district produced $18 million in sales, according to Performa. While the street prospers, however, significant problems still nag Elkington. The crime - real or perceived. The critics. And the ever-discussed battle to revive Downtown. ***Road less traveled In 1983, Elkington took a big gulp and signed a 52-year lease on the boarded-up, sagging Beale Street Historic District. Efforts to revive the street had begun 10 years earlier, with the formation of Beale Street Development Corp. But the street's outlook remained dismal despite the group's attempt to lease existing space and find new tenants. Elkington took over fresh from his success of converting the former Lenox School in Midtown into condominiums. "I didn't take the road traveled. I like the road less traveled," Elkington says. "That's the way I am. I'd rather do hard things than easy things. But this was a lot harder than I thought it'd be." Soon after leasing Beale Street, Elkington's financial partner decided to quit the real estate business, forcing Elkington to quickly reorganize and re-evaluate the company, while still trying to keep a languishing Beale Street alive. "I had to be like the plate spinner on the 'Ed Sullivan Show,'" he says. "This (Beale Street) represents so much of the culture and history and fiber and soul of this city. It was a very trying time. Looking back, I'm not sure if it wouldn't have been better to develop out on Poplar and I-240 (referring to the economic corridor along Poplar that has long been sought-after space for developers)." Initial construction on Beale Street cost $14.2 million, with $8 million from the federal government and the rest from the city, county and state. It didn't see a profit from revenue until 1991, the year B.B. King and his associates opened a club at the southeast corner of Beale and Second. This year, Elkington said Beale should bear more than $22 million in revenues. And, with the Hard Rock Cafe, Elvis Presley's Memphis, Pat O'Brien's and Buddy Guy's Legends coming to Beale within the next year, he predicts sales will top $30 million next year. The district has paid back more than $30 million in tax revenue during the past 15 years to the city, county and state, Elkington says, and with 1.9 million visitors predicted last year alone, it will contribute more than its share of revenue in the future. And while Beale Street finally was removed from the endangered status list by the National Park Service last year, many hurdles still must be jumped. When a site is put on the list, it's "big trouble," Cecil MiKithan, chief of the National Register Programs Division in Atlanta, said last June in an article in The Commercial Appeal. The designation means that whatever made that site "historic" is deteriorating to the point where it could be damaged irreversibly and lost forever. Crime remains a problem in the district, even though a police sub-station sits in the middle of Beale Street and surveillance cameras continuously monitor adjacent parking lots. Then there are the critics. The ones who say Beale Street could have been redeveloped quicker, better, differently. The ones who say that a lot of things have been promised, but never delivered. "I don't care what people think. I don't care about that. The critics are not the ones who count. It's the people who are down there trying to make things work. I know what it is and I know what it took," Elkington says. "I've been beat-up so bad, I've got so much scar tissue, it makes no difference anymore," he continues. "I mean our big controversy this week is that some employee accused the executive director (Rickey Peete) of (the Beale Street Merchant's Association) of sexual harassment. Well, you know, it's just another day at work. It's unfortunate, so we've got to face the problem." (A formal harassment complaint against Peete was filed by an employee of a Beale Street establishment in early June.) What about the critics who say that revitalizing Downtown is and always will be a pesky problem? The growth Downtown in the past five years has been great, particularly in the Pinch District and around Peabody Place. The number of people living Downtown has increased dramatically as well. But many developers will continue to look westward. A handful say Downtown's day is near. Elkington stands among them. ***Rising from the river Downtown, Elkington contends, started going downhill in 1965. Memphians were still reeling from the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas two years earlier. Then, in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., who was in Memphis on behalf of striking sanitation workers, was assassinated right at the city's doorstep. All that stood for goodness and prosperity during that era evaporated, including once-thriving Downtown commerce. "It's an enormous job (revitalizing Downtown). There's always so much hype about it," Elkington says. "Look, here's the reality about Downtown," he adds. "There's 3 million square feet of vacant space. That's not a healthy situation. "Only one or two developers have really dedicated themselves to Downtown - Jack Belz and Henry Turley. Both have taken great risk. But people don't applaud developers. They just think, 'Oh man, he's making money.'" Elkington talks passionately about revitalizing Downtown - what it will take and how close it is - and views Beale Street as a cog in the wheel that finally will get Downtown moving forward. Memphis is a relatively poor city, in terms of private development dollars, and city, county and state allocations, Elkington says. Despite these odds, he adds, "We have probably put in $1 billion in and around this community in public money. That is very rare. You don't see that kind of money put in most cities. But we've made a real public commitment through four mayors to rebuild Downtown. "And now, as we go into the millennium, it is starting to work." Young people are flocking Downtown. Plans for a baseball stadium at Union and Third are in the planning stages. The Gibson Guitar Factory, which will be located south of Beale, between Third and Fourth, is moving in. Then, too, there's the Breckenridge Brewery. Peabody Place. The Pinch District. The list keeps growing. "I think the rising tide lifts boats," Elkington says. "I'm here to help people. I don't get jealous if Jack Belz gets the Breckenridge Brewery. I want to do anything I can to get people to locate downtown." Elkington, at last, feels secure that Beale Street has grown enough to sustain itself. Now, he feels it's time to step aside and let the second generation take over. Keeping the vision Last October, Elkington announced he was "stepping back" from his role as Performa's CEO. Somewhat indicative of his nature, however, he never mentioned a specific "stepping back" date, saying instead that he wanted to first complete several projects. Until that time comes, he keeps a tattered sheet of yellow paper in his planning book. They're like the scrolls to Elkington, as they contain the list of everything he wants to accomplish. "I've had this for four or five years. We wanted Pat O'Brien's, Hard Rock. We want a sports bar here. We want a hotel in the area. We wanted to get Buddy Guy. A lot of them we've finished. Those are the things that are kind of at the end." Elkington says he'll step down as chief executive by the end of the year and hand over day-to-day operations to a new management team. They'll be less entrepreneurial and more management-minded. "I'm not divorcing myself. It (Beale Street) is like a child - you don't leave your child. My role will be to keep the vision, and that's to have big commerce, no (racial) barriers and the best music on Beale Street." He'll remain on the board of directors and undoubtedly will continue to be a tireless advocate for Beale Street. He also wants to start an artists' commission project, a sort of musicians' mentor program for budding blues artists. After all, he says, that's the way the street unofficially operated during its heyday when musicians had regular nighttime "9-5" gigs. Today, many artists are working two or three jobs to support their music but are barely making ends meet. Elkington and his Performa crew also plan to take the Beale Street show on the road to other cities like Columbus, Ga., and Jackson, Miss., that hope to redevelop their Downtown areas into similar urban entertainment districts. "There's not a week that goes by where we don't get someone from San Francisco or Kansas City or Chicago who wants to see how this happened because this is a very tough neighborhood here and it makes it kind of difficult to really do things," Elkington says. "We had to invent an industry here. No one would have created this, or knew how to, 15 years ago. We're right at the cutting-edge." Clearly, Elkington is proud of Beale Street. There's still work to be done, but he views change as a sure sign that things are headed in the right direction. When he looks back upon his 14 years with Beale Street he admits the path was sometimes a bit bumpy. "I've been through the fire. It cost me a lot of money. It cost me a lot of opportunities. It cost me a lot of difficult things because anytime your name, reputation and your money is on something like this, there is a drawback, there is a potential danger in that." Sometimes, however, taking the road less traveled leads to a destination far greater than what old, familiar territory offers. As he heads into his 15th year with Beale Street, Elkington indeed has found a prosperous new road and proved the critics wrong.
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