Biz Buzz

The Downtown Tupelo Main Street Association wants to use some of the $75,000-plus profit from the 2008 Elvis Presley Festival to spruce up downtown. You can read the full story in today’s paper. The ideas for how to spend the money are plentiful and varied. Suggestions include:

• Hanging flower baskets from Elizabeth Street to Green Street
• Adding green spaces or sprucing up current ones
• Hanging more signs to mark downtown Tupelo
• Renovating the facade of the DTMSA office on Broadway
• Adding lights to the planters
• Installing benches and trash cans
• Cleaning up the alleys

Cast your vote here.

Have a better idea? Let us know.

The rooftop at Park Heights is finally open and it was worth the wait. I checked it out for the first time at the Elvis Presley re-festival gala Thursday (the picture below is from today’s paper) and loved the furniture and the view. Right now, the floor is carpeted, but Park Heights owner Blair Hughes wants to redo it with teak.

Weather permitting, the rooftop is open to the public on Thursdays and Saturdays from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. And, the new eating area has its own menu with a raw bar feel (oysters, shrimp, scallops, crab, etc.). Prices range from $9 to $12. For more information, call 842-5665.

From the Tupelo CVB:

Elvis Presley Festival organizers are calling for entries into the 2008 Elvis Presley Festival parade. This year, the parade will step-off at 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 7 from Robins Field winding its way through Church Street and Main Street and ending in the historic Fairpark District where Elvis performed for his hometown in 1956 and 1957.

The parade will kick-off Saturday’s festivities with the second round of the Ultimate Elvis Tribute Artist Competition following at noon. The parade is free of charge and many of the tribute artists will participate in this year’s parade line-up. Other anticipated entries include drummers, classic cars, dance classes, fan clubs and other Elvis fan groups. Groups are welcome to participate and pay tribute to Tupelo and Elvis Presley.

To participate in the parade, contact John Hurt at the Tupelo Convention and Visitors Bureau at (800) 533-0611. Entries into the parade should be confirmed by May 30. There are no entry fees associated with the parade.

Highlights from today’s e-newsletter sent out by the Downtown Tupelo Main Street Association:

• Stanford Financial Group is hosting a business after-hours Tuesday from 4 to 6:30 p.m. The Fairpark business is at 110 East Main Street, Suite A. It’s the first building in Fairpark as you cross the tracks going toward east Tupelo.

• Tupelo Community Theatre presents Gypsy on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

• The farmers market opens Saturday. Items for sale include: Fresh baked cakes, pies and breads,
eggs, honey, plants, flowers, smoked meats and early season vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, peas, potatoes, lettuce and radishes.

• The Gum Tree Festival is Friday through Sunday.

• S.A.F.E. Emergency Family Shelter will have a fundraiser Saturday by way of a silent auction for designer handbags.

• The next Networking@Noon event is May 20 at the BancorpSouth Conference Center. Sylvester Croom, head football coach at Mississippi State University, is the speaker.

• 2007 Elvis Festival t-shirts just hit the clearance racks. DTMSA is selling one for $8 or 2 for $10.

• The Elvis Presley Fest is next month (June 6-8).

Downtown Tupelo Main Street Association today announced that Jo Dee Messina will headline this year’s Elvis Presley Festival to be held June 6-8.

For the complete line up, check out DJ’s Scene Now blog.

From Where to Retire Magazine:

HOUSTON, (April 10, 200 – Where to Retire magazine, the only magazine in America geared to helping people with retirement relocation decisions, has selected Tupelo, MS, to profile as a top retirement town in the May/June issue, which mails to subscribers nationwide on April 10, 2008.

According to Where to Retire editor, Mary Lu Abbott, Tupelo has many of the qualities that are important to today’s retirees. “The birthplace of Elvis Presley, Tupelo is a strong supporter of the arts with a local symphony orchestra, ballet, art museums and galleries and even an automobile museum featuring The King’s 1976 Lincoln Mark IV. It’s a regional hub offering programs that encourage retirees and other residents to start new businesses by providing classes, consultations and even small business boot camps. The nationally recognized North Mississippi Medical Center provides world-class health care, and the interconnected neighborhoods and retail spaces of the developing Fairpark District are changing the face of Tupelo’s downtown district,” Abbott said.

Each year, 700,000 Americans move to new towns to retire. Generally healthier, better educated and more affluent than retirees who stay put, relocating retirees bring significant economic benefits to their new states and hometowns. Nationally, two dozen states and hundreds of towns seek to attract retirees as a source of economic development.

The Tupelo Convention & Visitors Bureau had its monthly board today. Here are the highlights:

• The construction of the building is on schedule. It’s supposed to be done in October. Until then, the CVB staff is in a temporary building on Commerce Street.

• The CVB had total revenues of $263,058 for March. To date, the CVB has total assets of $2,343,646.

• Compared with last year, sales tax revenues were down 1.9 percent in January, the most recent reporting period. Tupelo’s chief financial officer Daphne Holcombe, who does the CVB’s financial reports, attributed the fall to the rescheduling of the Tupelo Furniture Market. In 2007, the market was held in January, but it was held in February this year.

• Pat Rasberry said the 110 films entered for the 5th Annual Tupelo Film Festival have been narrowed down to 39 films to screen. While the actual festival is May 15 - 17, Rasberry said events will be held May 13 and 14, as well.

• Several conventions have booked meetings in Tupelo this fall, including the Mississippi Toastmasters, the Mississippi Region of Narcotics Anonymous, Phi Beta Lambda and Mississippi Natural Gas Association.

• Visits to Tupelo’s tourist attractions were generally up in March. The birthplace had 3,577 visitors and the auto museum had 2,052. However, visitors at the buffalo park were down to 2,670 compared to the 3,630 visitors last year.

The Elvis Presley Birthplace got a little bigger today. The attraction now includes the church that Elvis went to as a kid.

Officials at the birthplace made the announcement today after alerting the media that there was a surprise event and we all needed to be there. Of course, once you hold us in suspense, we are all going to show up. Right after Dick Guyton made the announcement, the moving of the building started. It’s now sitting behind the chapel and should open to the public in August. Read more about it in tomorrow’s paper.

And, did I mention that it is COLD outside? We were told the event was in the chapel so we didn’t think there was any need for heavy winter gear. However, everything was outside and it took about two hours to move the building. Add intermittent sleet and frigid wind, and we were a bunch of happy campers. But, hey, it’s all in the name of getting the story, right?

After weeks of speculation, Gov. Barbour announced today that Toyota Auto Body will build its first U.S. manufacturing facility at the Harry A. Martin North Lee Industrial Complex in Baldwyn.

The plant will be called Auto Parts Manufacturing Mississippi and will provide stamped parts, body weld parts and plastic parts to the Toyota plant near Blue Springs that will begin mass producing Highlander SUVs in late 2009. The TAB facility will hire 400 workers and will begin production about the same time as the main Toyota plant.

You can read tomorrow’s paper for all the details. Until then, here what you missed if you weren’t at the announcement and you won’t read about in the paper …

• The announcement - held in the BancorpSouth Conference Center - started with an opening video that provided some insight into what Toyota Auto Body is and what the land looks like where the company will be building. At the end of the video, the Toyota execs and state officials made quite an entrance, walking into the room with music playing, people standing and clapping and the entire thing being shown on the two screens at the front of the room. It had quite a Hollywood feel to it.

• The initial standing ovation was one of 11 during the 55-minute ceremony.

• Jack Reed Jr. has been brushing up on his Japanese. In the capacity of Community Development Foundation chairman, he started his speech by welcoming Toyota Auto Body to Lee County and thanking them for coming to our fine area – and he said it all in Japanese. He then presented TAB President Toshio Mizushima, Gov. Barbour and TAB Special Counsel Dennis Cuneo each with a glass globe-like gift (which sort of looked like a golf tee from a distance).

• The visiting Japanese execs and their entourage on the front row liked the Baldwyn Middle School Chorus, especially when the students began playing air guitar to Elvis’ “Jailhouse Rock.” The execs were using their tiny cameras/camcorders to take pictures of all the presenters, but when the kids started singing and dancing, the cameras didn’t miss a note.

August brought busloads of tourists to Tupelo. The Convention and Visitors Bureau cited the 30th anniversary of Elvis’ death and the escape of Oliver the Capuchin monkey as key factors in the number spike.

The following visitor counts were reported at today’s CVB board meeting. As a comparison, the July numbers are in italics.

• Elvis Presley Birthplace: 8,651 visitors from 50 states and 34 countries. Top countries: England, Canada, France, Scotland and Germany. We also got quite a few tourists from Australia, Belgium, Spain, Japan and Norway. July visitors: 3,388

• Tupelo Buffalo Park & Zoo: 1,878 visitors. July visitors: 3,172

• Tupelo Auto Museum: 1,761 visitors. July visitors: 1,321

• Local restaurants: 1,040 visitors traveling via motorcoach. July visitors: 100

• Local hotels: 1,332 visitors traveling via motorcoach. July visitors: 241

• Mall at Barnes Crossing: 872 visitors traveling via motorcoach. July visitors: 123