$75M Graceland expansion moves forward
After months of backroom negotiations and public arguments, Elvis Presley Enterprises, the City of Memphis and Memphis City Council have reached a compromise.
EPE, the owners of Graceland and the surrounding campus, removed problematic elements of its proposed expansion and is moving forward with a pared down, albeit $75 million, addition to Graceland. Part of that expansion cleared the Memphis City Council on Tuesday.
The expansion could include retail, 150 more rooms at the Guest House at Graceland, cabins, an airplane hangar, an RV park and expanded exhibit space. It does not include any more square feet of sound stages or any multi-use buildings that could house a concert or live music show, according to the resolution the Memphis City Council approved Tuesday evening.
James McLaren, EPE’s attorney, said the expansion would create about 220 new jobs.
The expansion has been delayed for months at the council while EPE and city officials and city councilors were at loggerheads over whether an expansion of soundstages at Graceland would violate the arena use agreement the city has with the Memphis Grizzlies. That agreement forbids use of public funds for another arena of 5,000 or more seats.
The resolution the council was set to vote on Tuesday doesn’t allow public funds to be used for “an arena, or live concert venue …” That vote has been delayed since mid-March.
City Council Attorney Allan Wade said the resolution, which doubles as an agreement, doesn’t effect the existing Graceland Soundstage. That sound stage hosts concerts as part of a deal with Live Nation Entertainment.
Wade said that if EPE was found to have violated its agreement with the city and used public funds for construction of any live entertainment venue, they would be required to pay the public bonds issued to pay for the expansion. He called that clawback provision a “tremendous incentive to stay on the straight and narrow.”
The council vote is a mechanical one — it amended the Graceland Tourism Development Zone Master Plan. That allows the city administration to ask the Tennessee State Building Commission to approve the changes to the Graceland TDZ, and then later to approve the issuing of public bonds for the expansion. Those bonds would be paid for with sales tax revenue from the site as well as a special 5% surcharge.
If that public funding clears all the necessary hurdles, it would join the tens of millions of public funding dollars that Graceland has received in the past decade.