Turmoil on Memphis' Signature Street

No one said the blues was easy. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

Just as conflict has inspired some of America's best music, so has it lingered over one of the focal points of the blues, Memphis' Beale Street. For years, the street had been abandoned, until the city bought up many properties and invited new blues-themed businesses to set up shop. Even admid that revival, property owners and managers squabbled about and sued each other over how to manage, market, and expand the few blocks that make up the city's signature tourist attraction.

Now, the city finally has the chance to make the most of its signature street and make it appealing to daytime visitors and not just the thousands who descend on its bars and music clubs at night. The challenge is that of maintaining Beale Street's brand, possibly expanding into a broader entertainment district, while encouraging new development and new businesses that will enhance it rather than over-commercialize it. 

"'The turmoil that existed on the street for years, arising out of the litigations — plural — between the various parties with interests on Beale Street, was very distracting from the business of Beale Street,'” said Paul Morris, the president of the Downtown Memphis Commission, which last year, in the wake of a bankruptcy settlement involving the street’s longtime developer, became the interim manager for the city-owned district, collecting rents, maintaining the area and promoting it. 'You go through a war, and now you have reconstruction.'"

"If some of the sparring has ebbed, the challenges and decisions that could shape Memphis’s downtown for decades are still being sorted out. The city, for instance, is weighing whether to stretch Beale Street’s blocks of bars, restaurants and shops toward the Mississippi River, and it is searching for a real estate company to take control of the street and its day-to-day management."

"'Getting someone to come in and operate the street is no small feat,' said Archie Willis III, the chairman of the city’s new Beale Street Tourism Development Authority. 'It’s going to be a challenge finding someone that can figure out how to make some money now — what potential opportunities there may be for them to be a part of the expansion and make money on that — and then addressing the concerns you have to address with existing merchants.'”