The Memphis City Council voted down plans Tuesday, Aug. 18, for a manufacturing facility and vocational school at the old Graves Elementary School site in Whitehaven.

The council vote was unanimous, all 13 voting against, and came after the council heard lots of opposition from homeowners living in the residential area as well as a few homeowners who favored the development.

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The manufacturing plant was to make souvenirs and other memorabilia with 3-D printers for Elvis Presley Enterprises as well as other businesses. It was a next phase of Graceland’s recent expansion in Whitehaven that has included the Guest House at Graceland hotel-resort and an entertainment complex across from Graceland mansion.

Wanda Logan Faulkner, a homeowner, was among a majority of those speaking on the issue at the council session who were opposed to it. She said it violated the Memphis 3.0 guidelines for land uses and development that the council approved recently. The 3.0 plan was a factor in the Office of Planning and Development recommending the council reject the planned development.

“Clearly, this proposal before you is not consistent with the plan,” Logan-Faulkner said. “This project at its best, it would have to come up from the bottom. … We simply ask that you follow policy, policy that you enacted only a few months ago.”

Council member Martavius Jones, like several other council members, said it was a difficult choice between the blighted school building and light industrial in a residential middle class neighborhood.

“Which would you think would have a more negative impact on your neighborhood -- on property values?” he asked. “We have two extremes. One saying this is the optimistic view of it. One saying this is the pessimistic view of it. And the reality may be somewhere in between.”

The vote followed a verbal attack on Graceland managing partner Joel Weinshanker by council member Edmund Ford Sr., who lives next to the entertainment complex. Ford described Weinshanker as “one of the 'lyingest’ people I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Weinshanker said his goal was to eliminate blight, provide jobs for Whitehaven residents and that he has done what he said he would do in the expansion of Graceland’s campus.

“Time after time, we are being delayed in city government to bring these jobs,” he said. “This is trying to do something for the community.”

“I can get a much better deal in many other cities,” Weinshanker said before the council decision. “But I tried to do this for Whitehaven because I’ve decided to stake a substantial amount of the money I’ve made in my life in Whitehaven.”

Most of the campus would have been a vocational school with no more than 100 jobs at the actual manufacturing facility and instructors from Southwest Tennessee Community College working with students.

The problem with the development, according to some council members, was the homes around the school site and a belief that the light manufacturing uses would drop property values of homeowners and probably represent a foothold for future industrial or warehouse development in the enclave.

Several council members urged Graceland to seek an alternative site within industrial areas off Brooks Road. Weinshanker and attorneys for the enterprise said it was the only site that would qualify as a federal Opportunity Zone in the area.