SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
But first,
A 30 year old guy offered to buy the Mall.
If you’ve been with me for awhile, you know I talk about the small town I grew up in called Pine Bluff.
It is dying.
Still.
Despite best efforts by the Mayor and a Private/Public coalition, it is still top 5 on most lists.
Worst place to live.
Highest murder rate per capita.
Lowest income.
Bad health.
And you’ve seen the stories just like PB play out across the country.
Potholes.
No streetlights.
No cops.
No money.
Even as taxes go up, and the rich men north of Richmond do more to separate you from whatever wage you make.
But I try to focus on solutions.
Like the guy buying the Mall.
He was/is a “motivational speaker” who made his money in cryptocurrency.
And he tapped into an emotion that the citizens hold in their hearts.
Memories.
He talked about resurrecting the Mall and returning it to it’s not quite glory days, but building something new.
And people got excited.
Which got him excited.
So he held a press conference at the abandoned and dilapidated facility combined with a festival/carnival of sorts.
And people got even more excited.
Maybe he was going to pull it off.
Maybe his energy was just what the town needed.
Sure, there were skeptics.
There are always skeptics.
And armchair detectives telling the world it wouldn’t work.
The proof was two projects he couldn’t pull off in Tennessee and some other small town.
But I wanted to believe.
I had hope.
Because of Wilson AR.
A couple moved from Memphis back to her old one block Delta town and bought a row of buildings downtown.
The only row.
They built a 5 Star Michelin rated Café in one of the buildings, and the hook was farm fresh food.
Literally the food was grown and harvested at their family farm behind the building.
They brought in a 5 star Chef from Memphis and got to work building an experience.
The food, according to everyone, is amazing.
The experience almost as good as the food.
They used the café as an anchor, and built an AirBNB in one of the buildings and built a cabin on the Farm for another.
They grew.
Are growing.
Good press helped.
Better product helped more.
So I thought maybe a city like PB could do something like that.
Build an anchor.
The casino was supposed to be part of an anchor when it was built.
BUT…
Casinos do not make small southern towns grow, as evidenced by the string of disappointments along the old Blues Highway in Mississippi.
Biloxi might be an exception, but driving down the Highway through depressed town after depressed town will tell you a story.
A story about how the only good a casino really does for a community is making the owners rich and putting taxes into the State coffers.
Which as mentioned above, somehow does not get put back into schools, potholes, streetlights or cops.
The smooth talking motivational speaker might have turned the Mall into an Anchor.
I thought he might.
I hoped he might.
Open up opportunities for kids to work/people to work, a place to gather for food court conversations and even a movie theater.
PB doesn’t have a movie theater.
Not anymore.
Dying town, remember.
The guy who wanted to buy the Mall kept quiet past the Buy-By Date.
He kept quiet right up until he said that he lost his earnest money because the owner didn’t disclose a tax bill and liens.
Even though both of those pieces of info were easy to find.
No big festival or press conference to announce the Deal was dead.
Just a thank you.
To his couple thousand new followers on Facebook, which allowed him to monetize his account.
It made me think of missed opportunities.
Not for the town, but for any business venture.
I told a friend of mine that we should do the same for his business.
Announce a huge grand venture.
Get the hype rolling to grab attention.
And then ramp it up even more when the deal doesn’t go through.
A news cycle only runs so long, and there are always bigger headlines to replace it.
I feel sorry for the city.
Or my memory of the city, because it is not the same place I knew from growing up.
And it never will be.
But…
What if someone took an old building downtown where they once worked and put a tiny little brew/pub in it.
Kept operating costs lean, focused on PR and making a place people could feel safe.
Or…
Took an old row of buildings downtown and converted them into retirement lofts.
The boomer population is aging into homes, and that sector is poised to grow exponentially over the next two decades.
Or…
What if someone just had a bunch of ideas for all those things, and made a few announcements about it to drum up interest?
Hype…
It would probably be another case of a boy crying wolf.
And the people of a dying city just left crying.
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