Club could have chosen restoration of mansion

I am an equity partner in the group that made the offer to restore the Nineteenth Century Club building.

I would like to set the record straight concerning the details of my equity group’s offer. Concerning our offer, your June 30 article on the sale of the building and the Nineteenth Century Club’s gift to The Children’s Museum of Memphis (“CMOM given gift of $500K”) states: “But those bidders later acknowledged that on auction day they could not pay cash and asked the club to take payments.”

We didn’t “later acknowledge” anything. Our offer on auction day was for a down payment and owner financing. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with buying real estate with a mortgage — ask any homeowner.

As to our offer, our down payment would not have been significantly less than the club’s initial contribution of $50,000 to the children’s museum. The total of our payments each year would have been essentially identical to the club’s promised $50,000 annual contribution to the children’s museum for the same period of 10 years. So, the club’s contribution to the children’s museum would not have been diminished by the acceptance of our offer.

The major difference between the two offers before the club on auction day was that our offer promised restoration of their historic mansion; the other offer promised demolition. The ladies of the Nineteenth Century club chose demolition.

The other equity partner in our offer, Dianne Dixon, is also my business partner of 26 years in our architecture firm, Clark/Dixon Architects. Early in my career, I spent 10 years working on the restoration of several building on Beale Street and Dianne worked on the restoration of the Graceland mansion before its opening as a museum.

Our firm has recently completed a renovation of the Mallory-Neely House prior to its grand re-opening and the restoration of the historic Library Building for the National Ornamental Metal Museum, which received design awards from AIA Tennessee and AIA Memphis. We know what is needed to restore a building like the Nineteenth Century Club, and we know how to do it.

The other partner in our offer was Nita Black, owner of Primacy Solutions, who would have been the administrator of the women’s programs we had planned for the revitalized club building.