Weekly Update

Friends,

Since 2016, we’ve put a lot of time and effort into making changes so you have a government that works for you and that includes a government that works at the speed of business.

Why is this important?

Well, if you’re a new business coming to town or a developer with a project, there are several different organizations that you have to work with to move things along. We’re helping businesses navigate that process which in turn allows for more growth, more companies moving here, and more jobs created.

As you saw earlier this week, the One Beale project broke ground, and in his remarks, Chance Carlisle, COO of Carlisle Corp. recognized three City employees for their efforts in making this project a reality —Manny Belen, Jack Stevenson, and Kyle Veazey. This is just one of many examples of how our changes are working, and just wanted to take a moment to publicly thank our team.

Flying high: Earlier this week, Memphis International Airport (MEM) announced five consecutive years of passenger growth. Last fiscal year, more than 4.5 million travelers came through MEM which is up a little over 5% from the previous year. The big-ticket item, though—over the last five years, our airport has seen a 20.7% increase in passengers.

Movin’ on up: Nearly four years ago, when you called 911, it took us an average time of 59.7 seconds to answer that call. That was unacceptable. We immediately dug into the issue, and now, we’ve reduced that time to an average of just under seven seconds.

To help continue this trend and in partnership with the Shelby County 911 Board, this past Wednesday we unveiled a new Memphis Fire Communications center. For the first time, Memphis Fire and Memphis Police dispatchers will be on the same floor and in the same room taking your calls. With this new space, our dispatchers will have a state-of-the-art facility allowing them to better serve the community and in turn save more lives.

Speaking of improvements: In last week’s email, I mentioned new features you’ll notice this season at the Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium. To dig a little deeper, we’ve added new video displays to south end zone, a north end zone auxiliary display, and two ribbon boards located on the Stadium’s west concourse at Café on the 50.

In addition to the displays, the City of Memphis and Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium are also completing the replacement of the main entrance towers damaged during a storm on the ticket towers on the end of Tiger Lane.

We’ve also made concessions upgrades inside the stadium concourse. New at gate three will be a Tex-Mex concession option (Tiger Taco) and a new “Grab and Go” stand (Tiger Express) allowing fans to grab items for purchase from set displays rather than counters with lines.

Tiger Taco—here I come!!

Yours,