Hi, everybody, and a special shout-out this morning to all the female athletes. Today is Wednesday, Feb. 2, and it’s National Girls and Women in Sports Day. (It’s also Groundhog Day, but I’m going to try not to read too much into that.) So, first things first, the University of Memphis women’s basketball team will be playing the Cincinnati Bearcats here at home.

The NAACP is hosting a virtual town hall called AD/After Dolph with Young Dolph’s life partner Mia Jaye to discuss hope and healing, moving the city forward and strategies to combat gun violence. Downtown’s Design Review Board will take up a neon carrot for the new South Point Grocery. And the Shelby County Commission will hold committee meetings where the selection of a lobbyist could — indeed, already has — prove controversial. 

THE NEED TO KNOW

Union Station is a mixed-use development planned for this frontage along Union Avenue, where the MPD Traffic Bureau property was once housed. (Mark Weber/Daily Memphian file)

A more perfect Union Station? To make sure the future, mixed-used Union Station project doesn’t end up as just a hotel, the Memphis City Council says the development will need a building permit for its residential or retail components before an occupancy permit will be issued for the hotel. Yesterday the council approved a special use permit for the project, which will be situated on 3.5 acres of land once owned by the city and formerly used by the Memphis Police Department’s traffic division, but not everyone is completely sold. The council also took several other actions: approving a $5 million payment for a redesign to Tom Lee Park, renaming the city’s parks and neighborhoods division “Memphis Parks” and approving The Peabody hotel for Tourism Development Zone dollars for future renovations.

Casting a light: Let’s say that a federally owned electric company is in danger of losing its largest customer. And let’s say that, in response to the possibility, that utility hires — in a brand new position — a prominent local businessman whose wife is business partners with someone on the customer’s board. Does it pass the smell test? That’s the question that the Institute for Public Service Reporting’s Marc Perrusquia poses this morning as he reveals that the wife of TVA vice president Mark Yates is business partners with Memphis Light, Gas and Water board member Carlee McCullough in Mahogany Memphis restaurant. As part of his investigation, he also found that board members’ financial disclosure forms, which were supposed to be available online, haven’t been posted on the Internet for years, if there ever were. 

Corky’s BBQ on Poplar Avenue was damaged in an early-morning fire Tuesday. (Daily Memphian files)

Burnt but not the end: The Corky’s BBQ restaurant on Poplar Avenue is closed indefinitely after an early-morning fire yesterday. The fire seems to have started with equipment in the offices upstairs, but the automatic sprinklers also caused extensive water damage to the dining room. “If you look at the front of the building, you wouldn’t even know we had a fire,” said owner Jimmy Stovall. “But upstairs, it’s just incredible what it did.” While the East Memphis Corky’s is closed, the employees will be reassigned to the restaurant’s other locations.

Students walk on the University of Memphis campus last spring. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian file)

U of M investment: When Tenn. Gov. Bill Lee revealed his budget priorities earlier this week, they included nearly $2 billion for higher education in the state. As part of that money, the University of Memphis is expected to get a one-time allocation of $50 million to create an endowment fund to sustain the school’s new Carnegie R1 status. The U of M plans to match that allocation and already has $14 million committed so far.

Coming down the mountain: If a current trend holds, it seems we’re on the backside of our most recent COVID-19 peak. The Shelby County Health Department reported 474 new coronavirus cases yesterday; the last time the area’s new cases were fewer than 500 was in late December.

QUOTED

Britney Thornton, founder of JUICE Orange Mound, spoke during a January 2020 meeting of the Orange Mound Initiative Task Force. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian file)

“We’re learning in real time, and we’re also failing in real time. But that’s neither here nor there. We’ll take ownership of that. At the end of the day, 17 people were displaced in the middle of the winter.”

— Juice Orange Mound director Britney Thornton
The Park Avenue warming center and shelter operated by Juice Orange Mound since February 2021 was recently shut down by city officials for not being up to code, including no working smoke detector and no sprinkler system.

THE NICE TO KNOW 

A two-day-old baby born in 2019. If you had to pick between an image of a hospital exterior or a cute baby photo, surely, we’re always going to go baby, right? (Brandon Dill/Special To The Daily Memphian file)

Out of the baby business: As part of an effort to offer more specialized services at its various locations, Saint Francis Healthcare is taking one off the table at Saint Francis Hospital-Bartlett. The hospital’s labor and delivery department will be closed, and that unit will instead be consolidated into Saint Francis Hospital-Memphis.

New Midtown grocery store now? Though we don’t quite know where it will be yet, a new grocery store is in the works for Vollintine-Evergreen. The store is part of a larger resource center project “right on the edge of VECA” that could include a pharmacy, financial institution and health care services.

The South Memphis Renewal Community Development Corp. is planning to build a 42-lot subdivision at the site of the defunct Graceland Elementary School. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian)

From school to subdivision: A new subdivision called The Palms at Graceland could soon build more than 40 one- or two-story single-family homes on the former Graceland Elementary School site. Nearby residents are concerned the project will mean an increase in traffic in Whitehaven, out-of-town owners leasing to renters and a decrease in home values. But developer Jeffrey T. Higgs recently reassured neighbors, saying all the homes will be market-rate and that local families have already claimed 32 of the houses in the development.

On the trail: The Stax Museum of American Soul Music is now, officially, part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail. The state Department of Tourist Development and Travel South announced the designation yesterday, and Stax joins Clayborn Temple, Mason Temple Church of God in Christ and the National Civil Rights Museum as the local sites on the trail.

WE’RE TALKING ABOUT 

This seems pretty cool, regardless of what the stock market is doing right now. 

Thanks for reading and getting all the way to the end on this super-sized news day. Hope to see you tomorrow! 

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