Thursday, January 31, 2008

Reeled In

It looks like Bass Pro Shop is coming to The Pyramid.

We just wish we could be excited.

7 comments:

Joe said...

I think we should adopt a new slogan for the city:

Memphis: Blues, Bar-B-Que and Bait

Anonymous said...

Thanks for deleting that anonymous guy who has to leave the playground every once in awhile to throw his silly insults. Just ignore him. The rest of us do.

Aaron said...

Anonyn: That's pretty low. Do feel better now that you've said that? Wow that was an ugly cowardly thing to say.

Anonymous said...

As I've pointed out before as a regular reader, this blog is different from the others I read, because this one is a blog that represents a corporate mindset. It's not a personal blog per se. It's a blog of a number of people who work together and whose thinking it represents. As we once debated on a post about the virtues of signed versus unsigned posts, that's why they are never signed here. It's a corporate blog and as a result, it represents the positions and thinking and writing of the number of people who make it up.

Smart City Consulting said...

Thanks, Aaron. Also, anonymous 6:24, we appreciate your explaining this so well. You did once before, and you've always been able to explain it better than we can. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

John Branston over at the Flyer wrote a sobering article on the current state of the amusement park and fishing retail industry. At least someone is doing their homework.

Is Branston alone?

With all the enthusiasm over at City hall about these prospective proposals, it makes me wonder if any of them have checked into long-term health of these industries. Another great reason to have a seasoned businessman at the helm...like Denver has in it's current Mayor. Then again does it really matter if either project succeeds long-term as long as it "pays the bills"?

However, of the two projects the BPS may just last a few more years then the Ericson facade. We'll see...
Hopefully the BPS will pleasantly surprise us all!

Smart City Consulting said...

Anonymous 8:08: John has written a provocative article and we actually meant to include a link to it:

http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Content?oid=oid%3A38595.

Bass Pro or a theme park - both feel once again like Memphis is chasing yesterday's big idea. When you get in on the tail end of a trend, well, you are on the tail end.

What if we actually concentrated on inventing our own next big idea?

Part of our problem with all of this is that we began with the wrong question. It's shouldn't have been: how do we fill up The Pyramid with a tenant, but what should we do with the building and/or the site that makes the most sense for a city that desperately needs more vibrancy, more ambition, more talent, more innovation and more entrepreneurship.

When you ask the wrong question, you inevitably come up with the wrong answer. And that's what Bass Pro Shop feels like to us.