Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Memphis Business Group Sells Memphis in NYC
Memphis chamber courts New Yorkers at Griz game
When the Memphis Grizzlies take to the court tonight in New York, a special contingent will be on hand touting Memphis.
The Greater Memphis Chamber has rented a double suite in Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, to wine and dine New York business executives.
The contingent, led by chamber chief executive officer Phil Trenary, reflects a chamber initiative to recruit office jobs to the Memphis area.
About 65 people are expected to be in the suite for the game including a large group of commercial real estate brokers and site relocation executives based in the New York area, chamber spokeswoman Christina Meek said.
Scheduled to join Trenary at the game are a group of Memphians that include real estate executives Kevin Adams, chief executive of CBRE Memphis; Darrell Cobbins, chief executive of Universal Commercial; Larry Jensen, chief executive of Cushman & Wakefield / Commercial Advisors; and Brad Murchison, vice president of Colliers International.
Last year, the chamber hosted a similar meeting in Los Angeles at a Grizzlies game.
“We’re going to be out recruiting in those high-cost markets,’’ Mark Herbison, the chamber’s senior vice president of economic development, said in a recent interview. “We’re doing a lot more external recruiting around the country.”
The chamber has pointed out land costs, office leases, utility rates and wages and salaries are significantly lower in the Memphis area, which attracted the Connecticut headquarters of International Paper Co. in 2006.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Universal Commercial President Helps Leads Push for Greater Inclusion & Participation
Push for Broader Minority Business Participation Grows
By Bill Dries
A larger share of business for minority- and women-owned local businesses should begin with an inventory that matches existing businesses with existing opportunities.
100 Black Men of Memphis Chairman Ron Redwing, Latino Memphis Director Mauricio Calvo and Darrell Cobbins, CEO of Universal Commercial Real Estate, discussed minority contracts and business on "Behind the Headlines" Friday, Aug. 29.
And three leaders of the recently revived effort to build that share of business say from there the local Memphis economy overall can grow.
“We are talking about opportunities for the majority of this community at the end of the day,” said Ron Redwing, president of the group 100 Black Men on the WKNO-TV program “Behind The Headlines.” “This is not just business for business sake. We’re talking about issues of drugs and violence, particularly youth violence. What we are looking at is a systemic problem with young folk with no hope, who are in despair and don’t believe that things can get better for them.”
The program, hosted by Eric Barnes, publisher of The Daily News, can be seen on The Daily News Video page, video.memphisdailynews.com.
Redwing and Universal Commercial Real Estate CEO Darrell Cobbinsbegan talking about a more aggressive and active push for minority-owned businesses to have a share of public and private contracts earlier this year.
Some of it was a reaction to comments Shelby County Commissioner Henri Brooks made chastising a Hispanic business leader for comparing the hardships facing Latinos in Memphis to those faced by African-Americans.
Mauricio Calvo, director of Latino Memphis Inc., was among those who reacted to the criticism by attempting to shift back to the issue of minority business.
“While that was a really awkward moment, I think the good things out of that is that people are talking about it. I’m not saying she created this,” Calvo said. “But it did create a sense of let’s regroup and talk about this issue. I think it was an invitation to go back to the table.”
Cobbins noted that a 1994 disparity study – the last comprehensive study done on the disparity in how much business goes to minority-owned businesses – put gross receipts for businesses owned by minorities and women at approximately 1 percent for the Memphis metropolitan area. U.S. Census data in 2007 put it at .08 percent – about a year before the onset of the national recession.
“I think we can probably assume that number is even worse,” Cobbins said of the impact of the recession. “The impetus for this recent push was that we need to examine as a community that issue as a priority.”
The urgency is in local poverty rates for African-Americans in Memphis that is 32 percent higher than the national rate and 72 percent higher for Latinos than the national rate.
The effort includes private business efforts outside of government contracts for which the Shelby County Commission earlier this year commissioned another disparity study as another part of the fallout from the comments by Brooks.
Redwing initially was concerned the disparity study would mask or obscure more immediate efforts to address the problem directly and more rapidly.
“These numbers can’t be reached through government alone,” he said. “It has to be a partnership with the private sector. … We’re not talking about reinventing the wheel. The one thing we know is there has to be a change for Memphis to become the city of choice and to make the kind of differences that we are talking about.”
Calvo said a push to use more local businesses gets at the disparity faced by minority-owned businesses because those minorities are the majority in Memphis.
“I go back to a push for local businesses to have an important share,” he said. “If you make a push for local businesses, you are automatically sharing that wealth with the people here who are minorities and otherwise.”
Cobbins also called for different priorities in education.
“When we are educating our young people, we are educating them not to be laborers and workers. But we should be educating and empowering them to be entrepreneurs and innovators,” he said. “The Memphis that we are looking to create should be one of innovation and entrepreneurship. … Where I went to school – Memphis University School – they’re not talking to them about being workers. They are talking to them about being leaders.”
Cobbins, who is on the board of Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division, touts the utility as a model of how diversity in contracting can work with a local bidding preference with a goal of making sure dollars spent by the utility circulate in the local economy.
That doesn’t make the utility immune from discussion about its commitment.
The Memphis City Council, in August, voted down an $8.8 million contract the utility board approved with a Lexington, Ky., construction company for three years’ worth of construction to meet federal standards for utility reliability. The council’s decision was based on concerns that the work wasn’t going to a local firm or to workers employed already at the utility.
Universal Commercial Represents BlueCross Blue Shield of TN in Establishing First Customer Information Center
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee has leased corner storefront space at 100 Oaks Mall for its first Nashville-area brick-and-mortar consumer information center.
Six licensed insurance advisers who speak Spanish and English will staff the center. They will help educate consumers about health insurance in general and BlueCross’ own health plans.
The space at 719 Thompson Lane — most recently occupied by health care uniform retailer Life Uniform — is being renovated with a grand opening set for Nov. 1. Open enrollment starts Nov. 15 for the federal online marketplace, where consumers can buy insurance using federal subsidies.
Mary Danielson, a spokeswoman for Chattanooga-based BlueCross BlueShield, said the state’s largest health insurer considers the location a pilot site. “Depending on how the public responds to the center (it will) help us make a decision whether to expand the concept statewide or not,” she added.
The consumer information center will include a community room where workshops and other educational sessions will be held on health and wellness topics and feature community groups and BlueCross’ network providers including doctors.
Alex Tolbert, founder of Bernard Health, which has an insurance retail store at 720 Thompson Lane near BlueCross’ planned center, called the insurer’s consumer information center a smart move. “A lot of people can reach a far better outcome in planning for their health care when working with someone face to face,” he said.
Reach Getahn Ward at 615-726-5968 and on Twitter @Getahn.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Minority Business Owners Push for Access, Opportunity, and Accountability
Coalition Vows Push for Minority Business Gains
By Bill Dries
For decades, goals and percentages have been set for minority business participation in city and county governments.
Both governments have compliance offices. Elected officials look at percentages and ask questions about participation on particular projects.
A coalition of business leaders have announced they will push for more minority business participation in not only local government contracts but private business contracts.
(Daily News/Andrew J. Breig)
But a new coalition of business leaders announced Tuesday, June 10, that they plan to make the issue more of a political priority.
“We come in peace,” said Darrell Cobbins, president and CEO of Universal Commercial LLC. “But we also come in purpose.”
Cobbins and a group of 100 business and political leaders gathered in the lobby of the National Civil Rights Museum to say they intend to push beyond studies and systems to monitor progress to grow minority business participation in city and county government contracts and in private-sector contracts as well.
“We’re at a breaking point. … We’re not coming here with our hands out. We’re not asking for handouts,” said Ron Redwing, president of 100 Black Men of Memphis. “The people who’ve joined in this are people who are doing well. We’re saying as we move forward, the gap is way too large. We cannot and will not accept mediocrity or non-action as we move forward.”
Cobbins said such economic development is about building a larger middle class in Memphis.
“I think it’s more than reasonable to participate in the economic activity and prosperity of this community,” Cobbins said. “This group intentionally has no name. It has no tagline. It has not catchphrase because we are Memphians. … We believe in Memphis and all of its ideals and aspirations.”
The coalition is part of an ongoing reaction to the issue of minority contracts with Shelby County government that the Shelby County Commission debated in May.
The debate included Commissioner Henri Brooks berating a Hispanic businessman for comparing his status in Memphis as a minority to that of African-Americans.
The exchange between Brooks and Pablo Pereyra got most of the attention. But within a week, Mauricio Calvo, the director of Latino Memphis, and Keith Norman, the president of the Memphis branch NAACP, said the larger issue is the share of county contracts that minority business owners as a whole are getting.
That, in turn, prompted Cobbins to begin working toward the coalition via a Facebook-fueled discussion. Cobbins and others in the effort want to develop a plan of action that rises above the technical aspects of monitoring minority business to get at political will – in the business sector as well as the political arena.
“The next step is to understand the issue,” Cobbins said. “Our next step is to begin to sit down with the leaders who can impact the issue across the community … and beginning the process of really digging beneath the surface of the disparity studies to really understand what are the logjams.”
Redwing said the goal is to “spotlight these disparities in a way that brings about swift and significant change.”
“Twenty years later, we are still having this conversation,” Redwing said.
The 1994 disparity study that documented a disparity in contracts with minority-owned businesses was a necessary step for local governments to maintain goals for minority business in the wake of a landmark 1989 U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving the use of minority set-asides by the city of Richmond, Va., in awarding government contracts.
The court ruled the preference for minority-owned businesses was unconstitutional and that Richmond leaders did not identify the need for remedial action.
The disparity study was a way of identifying the need by confirming a disparity.
And Redwing was adamant that more studies documenting the disparity are not what the coalition has in mind.
“This is not about programs. This is not about studies. This is about having the will,” he said. “We don’t need any studies. There are no studies needed or wanted here. We’ve been bogged down for too long in the practice of paying consultants a heckuva lot of money to tell us what we already know.”
Universal Represents Gestalt Community Schools in Major Facility Lease
Gestalt Schools Signs Lease in Hickory Hill
By Amos Maki
A charter school operator has inked a lease for space on Winchester Road in Hickory Hill.
Gestalt Community Schools has leased 57,000 square feet of space at 5360 Winchester Road inside the Mendenhall Square shopping center.
Shelby County Schools previously leased the space for a school and some administrative offices. The expiring lease presented a perfect opportunity for Gestalt.
“It’s a space that had previously been occupied by Shelby County Schools and as they sought to reduce their footprint that lease was expiring and fortunately we became aware of that and we were able to put a deal together in a short period of time,” said Darrell Cobbins of Universal Commercial Real Estate, who represented Gestalt. “As they grow, their needs become vast and there aren’t a lot of spaces ready for their needs. It was fortuitous for all parties.”
Gestalt opened the Power Center Academy charter school in Hickory Hill in 2008. Gestalt also operates Humes Preparatory Academy and Klondike Preparatory Academy in North Memphis as part of the state-run Achievement School District and is planning to open a school as part of the Sears Crosstown redevelopment project.
Stan Myers and Morris Thomas represented landlord Belz Enterprises.
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