Chris Herrington

chris.herrington@commercialappeal.com

Good morning in Memphis, where we’re entering the final week of the election and Indie Memphis is getting started, but first …

There’s an interesting battle brewing just off Overton Square, as Tom Bailey reported over the weekend:

A dairy plant has operated for 80 years tucked within Overton Square businesses and neighborhood of bungalows and apartments. But expansion plans have prompted a number of neighbors not only to organize opposition, but also to call for Prairie Farms Dairy and the noise of its trucks to just go away.

I live in Midtown and frequent that area, but I don’t live near the plant. I have an interest, but no real skin in the game.

That said, I’ve always loved that the dairy is there. I like reaching into the grocery store case to buy milk that I know was produced just down the road, and seeing the trucks making a morning delivery as I arrive at a coffee shop to finish this column.

As the story notes, the former Turner Dairy adds good-paying jobs to the core of the city. It also adds character, and a sense of industry, to the neighborhood. Not everything can be restaurants and shops. The plant brings its own kind of vibrancy to the neighborhood, grounds it.

But can there be too much industry for some neighborhoods?

On some level, noise and activity are part of the bargain you strike when you live in a city. Planes, trains and automobiles. The sound of rock bands drifting from club windows and people laughing in the street. I nodded when I read Prairie Farms general manager Jim Turner’s quote about the flight path over Midtown. A FedEx plane streaked across the sky during my kid’s soccer game at a nearby field on Saturday morning. I like that too.

Can milk plant, Midtown still co-exist?

That said, I’m not sure how I’d like it if delivery trucks were constantly idling and revving around my house and rumbling down my street.

I had lunch near the Dairy yesterday and walked around a bit. It’s a tight fit for delivery trucks on Morrison Street, with cars also parked along the curb or coming in and out of restaurant lots. And while I’d say that the dairy is an architectural plus facing Madison, adding verticality and variety, it’s not so attractive from the side and rear, the view afforded nearby residents.

It’s a good start that Turner says there are plans for wood fencing and additional landscaping to the dairy’s north and west.

"We've been talking about expansion quite a few years. We did let our fencing and parking lots get run down. We do feel a civic duty to make the place look better than it presently does.''

Here’s another idea, free of charge:

For years, I daydreamed of the old, abandoned Chicago Pizza Factory building down the street becoming an ice-cream parlor. Finally, it became a taco bar and now is waiting to be an oyster bar. Maybe Turner could engage — and encourage — foot traffic on Madison with more than its example? Is there room for a Madison-facing ice cream parlor in this expansion? Just a thought.

If Prairie Farms beautifies and makes other allowances to neighborhood concerns, will it be enough? Or have the dairy and the surrounding neighborhood, as activist Gordon Alexander suggests, simply outgrown each other?

Watching from afar, but not too far, here’s hoping there’s common ground to be found.

As a Midtown resident, I respect the concerns and complaints of others, especially those more directly impacted. But I also dread the day when the old Turner Dairy doesn’t make milk. When it’s a mixed use residential/retail development called The Dairy, glancing back in nostalgia at a time when it produced something. I’m glad we saved the Tennessee Brewery building. But I also wish it still made beer.

Speak On It:

“The guy will wear every hat I could possibly put on him this year. You root for Vince Carter because he’s just such a high-character guy. He’s the epitome of leadership in the locker room. I’m never surprised when he has success. He works hard at it and he’s done it over and over again.” — Grizzlies coach David Fizdale on Carter, now the oldest player in the NBA and a crucial part of the Grizzlies’ rotation early this season.

Indie Memphis Daily: One of Memphis’ most fully realized annual events and, by many counts one of the best smaller film festivals in the country, the Indie Memphis Film Festival starts tonight at the Halloran Centre. The opening night film is “The Invaders,” a documentary portrait of civil rights activists culled from Memphis’ own back pages:

John Beifuss tells the story of the long-gestating film, talking to director Prichard Smith, producer Craig Brewer and others:

“I really feel like these were young people in Memphis who want to make a real change for poor people, and I think that history has treated them unfairly,” said Memphis-based filmmaker Craig Brewer (in a phone interview from Chicago, where he was directing his third episode of the hit series "Empire"). “That’s the reason why I wanted to be a part of this movie.”

Tonight’s screening of “The Invaders” is sold out, but there are still tickets left for Saturday’s encore screening. The full Indie Memphis schedule is here. Tonight’s second screening is a series of shorts funded by Indie Memphis’ new Indie Grants program. John Beifuss has more on these here.

Pandering That Gets Our Approval: Elvis responded “everything” to a similar query, but this will do, Parsons. This will do:

Additional Reading:

Check Back for … my weekly Pick-and-Pop column on the Grizzlies and the NBA should be up some time this morning.

The Fadeout: In tribute to the Midtown dairy, however much longer it lasts, let’s get real, real gone: