Graceland growth could aid neighbors

Whitehaven hopes overhaul proves to be economic engine

It remains to be seen how much of an economic development catalyst the Graceland expansion will be for Whitehaven, but it certainly increases the potential for good things to happen, especially along the Elvis Presley Boulevard retail-commercial corridor.

Graceland officials Thursday formally opened a new entertainment complex dedicated to the King of Rock and Roll Elvis Presley. Public ceremonies marked the start of a four-day grand opening celebration for “Elvis Presley’s Memphis,” a 200,000-square-foot, $45 million project across from Presley’s Whitehaven mansion.

The latest expansion will include new exhibits, museums and performance space behind Graceland Plaza, the longtime hub of mansion tours. It is part of a $137 million, master-planned overhaul of the Graceland campus, starting with October’s opening of the 450-room resort hotel The Guest House at Graceland.

Graceland is one of the city’s major tourist attractions, drawing some 600,000 tourists a year. But it sits in middle of a commercial-retail artery that has declined over the past decades.

In fact the city’s first enclosed mall, Southland, opened at Shelby Drive and Elvis Presley Boulevard in 1966.

Whitehaven was once a predominantly white suburb of Memphis. However, school desegregation and annexation by Memphis in the late 1960s and early 1970s sparked the community’s transition to a predominantly African-American community.

The area lost many of its first-tier retail and commercial entities along Elvis Presley Boulevard and Shelby Drive as that transition progressed.

Today, the 38116 ZIP code, which comprises the traditional boundaries for Whitehaven, has a population of some 41,000 residents and is about 90 percent African-American, according to CityData.com..

It remains a mostly middle-class area, where homeownership is high, which has left Whitehaven boosters puzzling over why it has been so difficult to attract first-tier retail and commercial establishments, especially with Graceland attracting so many tourists and similar demographics in adjacent ZIP codes.

For Whitehaven residents, Graceland’s huge investment, combined with the city’s planned $40 million-plus improvements to Elvis Presley Boulevard, are harbingers that the economic investment needle is about to swing to right.

Hints of that happening already are in evidence. A new Holiday Inn is under construction and two new strip shopping centers are seeking tenants.

Those are the kinds of investments that create jobs. Eighty-percent of the employees hired for The Guest House at Graceland live in the 38116 ZIP code, for example, exceeding Graceland’s goal of 70 percent.

Whitehaven has been on a retail-commercial roller coaster in recent years.

Kroger, for example, invested heavily in expanding its store on Shelby Drive just of east of Elvis Presley, and Southwest Tennessee Community College spent nearly $5 million to renovate Kroger’s old location at Elvis Presley and Finley into the school’s new Whitehaven campus.

Methodist Hospital-South has remained committed to the area, along with longtime commercial staples Piccadilly Cafeteria, Piano’s Flowers & Gifts, Marlowe’s Ribs & Restaurant and the China Inn Buffet.

But, amid those pluses, Macy’s closed its store that anchored the east side of Southland Mall.

Graceland officials have made it clear that they want their investment to not only enhance Graceland’s appeal, but to also become a springboard for a Whitehaven economic renaissance.

Whitehaven residents sure hope so.