The Historic Daisy Theater on Beale Street would become an interpretive center to tell the history of Beale Street under a proposed settlement of the long-running lawsuit between the city and the director of the nonprofit development corporation that operates the theater and has its offices in the same building.

“I am really excited to be able to bring this to resolution,” Memphis Mayor Paul Young told Memphis City Council members Tuesday, July 8, as he announced the settlement in an executive session discussion. “We will ensure we are preserving the history of Beale Street on Beale Street.”

Fire damages historic theater on Beale

Beale Street Development Corporation director Lucille Catron agrees to drop her lawsuit, and the BSDC gets a 50-year lease from the city for the theater. In return, the BSDC gives up its claim to control the master lease for the entire three-block entertainment district between Ida B. Wells Street to the east and Second Street to the west.

The council is scheduled to vote on the settlement agreement at its July 22 meeting.

“Over the course of the last several decades, there has been a lot of dispute, a lot of litigation, a lot of angst,” City Chief Legal Officer Tannera Gibson told the council Tuesday in calling the settlement “a momentous occasion.”

Catron specifically contested a 2015 settlement with the city that the administration of Mayor A C Wharton claimed her husband, Randle Catron, signed on behalf of the BSDC just before he died.

The settlement came as John Elkington exited his role as the developer and day-to-day manager of the entertainment district, as selected by the BSDC in the late 1970s.

New venue aims to bring locals back to Beale

Wharton’s administration had already put a new tourism authority in place to control the master lease in place of the BSDC. By the disputed agreement, the BSDC was to operate the Historic Daisy Theater as a cultural and historic interpretive center for the city.

The agreement also forbade the BSDC from renting out the theater for private events and required it to conduct guided tours of the entertainment district.

Gibson indicated the agreement is a first step toward pursuing at least the activation of a prime location in the eastern-most block of the district that, on many weekends in the spring and summer, is defined by an outdoor bar across the entrance to the theater.

“I think it’s important to memorialize this,” Gibson said of the agreement. “We have some other things in the works with BSDC.”

Catron contested for the last decade that the Wharton administration settlement took the master lease for the district out of the hands of the BSDC right up to just a few weeks ago when she began talking with Young and Gibson.

Beale Street Live music series kicks off

Young’s entire tenure as head of the Downtown Memphis Commission — before his election as mayor in 2023 — included the DMC running the Beale Street district for the city, during which Young said he and Catron had many discussions.

Young said first steps toward revitalizing the theater could include building out a kitchen that it currently lacks. The Old Daisy is also repairing damage from an electrical fire last month.

Funding for that, as well as an upgrade of bathrooms in the building, would come from within the existing city budget, Young said Tuesday.

“This has been a long journey,” Catron told Council members.

“I’ve been through five mayors, including him,” Catron said of Young and past legal disputes with the city dating back to the reopening of the district in 1983. “You are talking about plus 40 years. Out of all the mayors, we were able to put this to rest.”