2018 Mojo Awards
1910 FRAMEWORKS GALLERY
The Weakes Family
How’s this for a business goal – create a company that will keep the kids close to home. That was Mary Anne Weakes’ idea in 1977 when she invested some of her inheritance to open a family frame shop. Her son Davey had opened the first 1910 Frameworks in Greensboro, North Carolina. But when his mother suggested “Why not do that here?” he returned to Memphis. “It worked out the way mom wanted it to,” says Glynn Weakes and the business did keep all the kids, including sisters Selinda “LinD” and Valli, and brother Davey, in Memphis. The name of the shop derived not from a Union Avenue address but was a reminder of a time when reputations were built on craftsmanship.
Glynn Weakes says that has always been their goal – to give more time and effort to the product, not to create a production line. “It’s worth it,” he says. Two other valued employees, Traumel Jenkins and Laura Scott, are very much part of that tradition. In forty-plus years the company has framed everything from treasured guns to wedding dresses to a surgical pin that held someone’s knee together. Today 1910 Frameworks does frames for some of their original customers as wells as framing family photos and keepsakes for those customers’ children and grandchildren. The family is pleased at the growth and stability of Midtown and optimistic about a future that includes a rejuvenated Overton Square and a re-invented Crosstown. But, sadly, 1910 Frameworks will not be part of that future. The company is closing its doors for good in April. But here’s one last framing job for them – a Mojo of Midtown Award, given for their commitment and their craftsmanship.
WARD ARCHER
Protect Our Aquifer
One expert called it “the sweetest water in the world,” – the clear, clean stuff that flows from faucets all over Memphis. We are famous for it. A resource like this, in today’s uncertain climate, needs protecting. We want to honor Ward Archer and Protect Our Aquifer with a Mojo of Midtown Award for doing just that. “In the middle of this city, when you turn on the faucet you are turning on water that’s over two thousand years old, long before there were pollutants and toxins,” says Ward Archer, who helped to start and drive Protect Our Aquifer. “We want to keep it that way.”
Ward, as many Memphians know, was a long-time advertising man who turned to another passion – music – as both an executive (he founded Music+Arts Studio and Archer Records) and producer and musician. Protect Our Aquifer was needed because of a plan by the Tennessee Valley Authority to drill into the Memphis Sand Aquifer (the primary source of our drinking water) for water to cool a new TVA power plant due to open in June. Pumping out six and a half million gallons a day would have pulled toxin-rich waste into the Aquifer. And the TVA tried to do all this without public hearings. Ward and Protect Our Aquifer lined up allies – citizens, political leaders, environmentally conscious groups (such as the Southern Environmental Law Center) – and insisted that TVA slow the process down and study the impact. Just weeks ago, Protect Our Aquifer and the people of Memphis won the fight. TVA has to find another source of cooling water. And there has been another upside to this, according to Ward Archer. “We have raised the consciousness about our water. We have lots of it and it’s good and we need to protect it.”
BURKE’S BOOK STORE
Corey and Cheryl Mesler
We honor Burke’s Books with a Mojo of Midtown Award for being Memphis’s “Book People” for more than a century. As one Memphis writer puts it – “the center of the Memphis literary universe”– a place not only where books are sold but also where writers meet readers and poets read out loud. Burke’s started on Main Street in 1875 and was a family business for three generations. A few owners and a few moves later Burke’s landed on Poplar, two doors down from Circuit Playhouse. That’s where Corey Mesler was working as a clerk when Cheryl Hodges walked in. The way Corey remembers that moment is fitting of a poet, which he is.
“She was wearing a short skirt and had legs like a supermodel. I elbowed the other male clerks out of the way so I could help her. She was buying the collected poems of Leonard Cohen. I kept looking at the book and at her and back at the book and back at her. Finally I said ‘Will you marry me?’.” Since that was, literally, the first time they met, Cheryl said no. But she laughed. They did get married later, after she was working at Burke’s too. In 2000 the Meslers bought Burke’s, then moved it to Cooper Young in 2007. “We struggled, like everybody did. We almost went out of business.” They saw the internet and Amazon turn the book business upside down. But, ironically, contractions and changes in the big book stores brought some customers back. Cheryl believes there is a place for the small book store, and the book, in the digital world. “The fact that e-books have plateaued (in sales) is proof. People want a book in their hands and on their shelves. And that’s part of the reason for the resurgence of small book stores.” “We are keeping the doors open, our employees paid. And we are buying new books,” says Corey. “It’s great. We expect to spend the rest of our lives here.”
MARGOT McNEELY
Project Green Fork
It’s the unsavory side of the business of food – an average restaurant meal leaves behind a pound and a half of waste. The restaurant industry, in Memphis and elsewhere, generates more waste than any other retail sector. We are pleased to present Margot McNeely and Project Green Fork with a Mojo of Midtown Award because they chose to do something about that problem. In 2008 Margot noticed that many of her favorite places to eat were still using styrofoam ‘clam shell’ boxes for take-out orders and many did not have recycling programs in place. She decided to come up with a local sustainability certification to guide restaurants to a greener future.
Working closely with the staff of Tsunami, the first PGF certified restaurant, she hammered out the six steps to sustainability. The Project Green Fork certification process encouraged re-cycling, composting, conserving and monitoring. PGF stickers, with the symbolic green fork, begin to pop up at food establishments in Midtown and out east. Since it began the program has grown to certify fifty-seven establishments. Because of that, almost four and a half million gallons of recycled plastic, glass and aluminum, more than three million pounds of cardboard and paper and more than a half million gallons of food waste have been diverted from local landfills. In 2015 Project Green Fork increased its reach by joining forces with Janet Boscarino, founder and Executive Director of Clean Memphis, another nonprofit championing sustainability with neighborhoods and schools. Audra Farmer is now the program manager of PGF under the Clean Memphis banner.
GORDON ALEXANDER
Midtown Action Coalition
Community Activism harnesses the power of people. Activists push our political leaders to do something about things we want and about the things we don’t. Community Activists are passionate, sometimes confrontational, always committed. The Midtown Memphis Development Corporation is pleased to honor Gordon Alexander with a Mojo of Midtown Award for his longtime activism and we also honor the group that is the product of his leadership – the Midtown Action Coalition. Gordon’s idea about activism is “something that gets people off the couch”, especially when it’s a cause that touches them emotionally. The threat to Overton Square touched him.
The Square had been a central part of Midtown for decades and, starting in the 70s, the center of the city’s nightlife until its eventual decline. In 2010, when developers came in with their eyes on destruction, he started “Save Overton Square”. Using Facebook he attracted more than six thousand-five hundred followers who made a lot of noise. In 2011 Gordon formed the Midtown Action Coalition. Together MAC has lobbied for the Shelby Farms Greenline, the Madison Avenue bike lanes, the resurrection of the Chisca Hotel and the Tennessee Brewery and they’ve also had a hand in the Wolf River Greenway, the revitalization of Broad Ave. and Binghampton and have fought for the preservation of the Overton Park Greensward and the 19th Century Club. Midtown is hot right now but Gordon warns that success is attracting the interest and money of others who don’t necessarily care about maintaining the real Midtown – the Mojo of Midtown. Keeping an eye on things is a network of volunteer activists that is “huge,” and growing – and cross-generational. “It’s breathtaking to see people get involved who never put up a banner or a sign. It’s amazing and we are getting results.”
CROSSTOWN CONCOURSE
Todd Richardson recalls feeling “equal parts awe and fear” the first time he looked inside the Sears Crosstown building in 2009. Awe because of the raw beauty of the place. Fear because what he had in mind for the building was, to some, impossible. We honor those who ignored “impossible” with a Mojo of Midtown Award. They turned what was already a landmark into what was recently called “the most spectacular, boldest and most unlikely project that’s yet been done in Memphis”. The Crosstown Concourse project went from dream stage to “go” in 2012, although the partners did run into a lot of pushback during the process. “It defined a lot of conversations. The biggest challenge was not the condition of the building, it was getting people to believe it was possible.”
Todd and McLean Wilson are Co-Directors of Crosstown Arts, one of the founding partners of the Crosstown Concourse (along with the Church Health Center, Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare, Memphis Teacher Residency, Crosstown High School, St. Jude, ALSAC and Christian Brothers University). What they created is a one million square foot vertical urban village anchored in the arts, education, health and wellness institutions along with retail and office space and a diverse range of residential living spaces. With a spectacular atrium! “I was looking at this building as bringing together a lot of different types of neighbors, not just a single big tenant. It was not just space to be filled,” Todd says. When it was built in 1927, Sears Crosstown was the city’s largest building and one of the most beautiful. With its Art Deco lines intact, it is again one of the most beautiful. And the re-invented Crosstown Concourse has others in Midtown and across Memphis thinking about what is really possible.