Every year, 600,000 people pay as much as US$74 to tour Elvis Presley’s Memphis mansion, gaping at animal skulls and stained-glass peacocks, lime-green shag carpet on the Jungle Room’s floor and lime-green shag carpet on its ceiling.
Now a development authority plans to sell as much as US$125 million in bonds next month to finance improvements at Graceland. They are counting on the curious to keep streaming to the privately owned estate for decades, generating sales, property and special tourism taxes to pay the debt over as long as 30 years.
A 450-room hotel and conference center, restaurants, a theater and as much as 2.8 hectares of retail and exhibit space are envisioned. The improvements will “preserve the incomparable legacy of Elvis Presley, The Icon and The Man,” documents detailing the plan say.
Photo: EPA
“We want to solidify the Elvis brand, give it a new sheen and polish,” said Reid Dulberger, chief executive of the Economic Development Growth Engine for Memphis and Shelby County, which will issue the bonds in a private placement.
The facilities “were old and tired,” he said. “Our concern was that we wouldn’t continue to see the kind of return visits that we see year after year from the faithful.”
Memphis, on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, has a population of 653,450, of whom 63 percent are black and 27 percent live below the poverty line. It has lost 35,700 jobs since the recession, according a report from the Greater Memphis Chamber. An improved Graceland would have a US$1 billion impact on Memphis’ economy over the next 15 years, according to documents distributed by backers.
Success depends on the staying power of a legend. Presley bought Graceland in 1957 and decorated it with gaudy verve.
The Jungle Room includes monkey statues, a stone wall with ivy and a mammoth coffee table of petrified wood. The pleated fabric ceiling of the billiards room drapes above the game table like an upside-down sofa pillow. Television screens line the media room.
His daughter, Lisa Marie, owns the estate and more than 1 million artifacts, including costumes, guitars, Cadillacs and a 41-carat ruby and diamond ring. The mansion opened to the public in 1982, becoming the city’s biggest attraction.
Graceland is the third-most-visited home in the US, after the White House and the Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina, according to Elvis Presley Enterprises, which manages the attraction.
Twenty-two percent of visitors are from other countries, with Canada and the UK in the lead.
The Elvis Week waiting list at Graceland’s 128-room Heartbreak Hotel is 100 years long.
Paying off the new project’s debt will require sustained interest in Presley, said Tom McBride, a professor at Beloit College in Wisconsin who co-authors the Mindset List, an enumeration of cultural phenomena familiar to the young.
A 15-year-old in 1956, when Heartbreak Hotel went to No. 1, would be 73 today.
“The boomers remember what it meant to have Elvis come on the scene, the revolutionary effect that it had,” McBride said.
The young “have a vague sense of him as a rock ’n’ roll icon. They might go to Graceland ironically, or maybe out of a sense of curiosity,” he said.
Expansion plans, including a conference-capable hotel, have been discussed for years, Elvis Presley Enterprises chief executive Jack Soden said.
The idea got traction last year after a partnership led by Joel Weinshanker, founder of National Entertainment Collectibles Association of Hillside, New Jersey, acquired the company.
“Elvis is a huge growth area,” Weinshanker told Bloomberg Television in August.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number