Not A Whole Lot Shaking At The Pyramid

So, after four years of supposed serious interest in opening a megastore in The Pyramid, Bass Pro Shop discovers that Memphis sits on a fault zone.

Due diligence sure must mean something different in Springfield, Missouri.

That said, it was curious to us that using this sudden seismic concern as justification for why Bass Pro Shop won’t sign a binding letter of intent wasn’t made by Bass Pro Shop officials themselves.

Witness For The Defense

Instead, it was advanced by City Hall officials who appear to be clinging to any defense for why Bass Pro Shop has delivered so little for so long.

Of course, the store has played the same game in Buffalo, New York – six years and counting as our New York fellow sufferer waits for Bass Pro Shop to match its rhetoric with a binding agreement. And Buffalo doesn’t even have the New Madrid Fault as an excuse.

We don’t mean to insinuate that we know what the sporting goods retailer is thinking. So far, they have been as inscrutable as Buddha.

Deafening

Their continued silence – in the face of a blizzard of questions about their commitment to the project in the old downtown arena – seems to be the loudest statement that they could make about their seriousness in Memphis.

There’s little in the store’s behavior that indicates that it’s working as a partner in this project. To some, its lack of comment feels an awful lot like stonewalling.

We’re not sure of that, but it sure doesn’t feel like we’re expecting too much when we look for an official statement of continued commitment to the project, or even a “feel good” statement generated by the chain’s public relations department.

Whole Lot Of Shaking

Can they at least throw a line to their Memphis advocates who seem to be fighting tirelessly the store’s battles?

It’s disconcerting to see our city officials doing all the heavy lifting to salvage such a major project with such an absence of help from its chief beneficiary. It just speaks to how strange this project has been from the beginning, and why it finds such lack of enthusiasm by much of Memphis.

As for The Pyramid itself, it is not a “seismic building.” It was intended to be, but as part of the cost-cutting that seemed to be such a part of the building’s history, seismic protection was cut out of the budget early on.

Cold Comfort

In particular, former City Council member Barbara Sonnenburg emotionally pleaded with her colleagues to require that the building have seismic protection. She had recently visited Reelfoot Lake where she looked over the earthquake-created landscape and had a premonition of what could happen to The Pyramid.

However, at the time, engineers on the project said: “If there is an earthquake, the building will crack, but it will stand. It will not be destroyed.”

That’s probably cold comfort to anybody looking to invest tens of millions of dollars in the building (although it’s not dissuaded theme park developer Greg Ericson), but engineers pointed out that about 1,600 pilings were being driven at various depths to keep the arena in place in lieu of a complete seismic design.

Downstream

Or as one member of the Pyramid Building authority, in the midst of a discussion about the arena collapsing into the Mississippi River, joked: “At least we know we’re not building an arena for New Orleans.”

Of course, when that Richter Scale-busting day comes, the condition of The Pyramid will be the least of our worries.