Labor Day weekend is officially over and with it we’ve got summer in the rearview mirror and pumpkin spice season ahead of us. While this week’s Mane Street Memphis is a little short on pumpkin and fall flavor, I do have some spicy tidbits of news I think y’all might fancy.

First things first, let’s talk about a little piece of Commercial Appeal history.

Changes to the former Commercial Appeal building

The owners of the former Commercial Appeal headquarters at 495 Union Ave. are potentially planning to subdivide the property.

Last month a subdivision permit was filed with the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development that would effectively split the property into two separate portions. The proposed division would make the former five-story office building and the property’s warehouse and production facility two independent properties.

With the subdivision the respective lots can be marketed and sold separately. According to the permit application filed, the 2.95-acre office building lot will be 128,773 square feet and the 4.12-acre warehouse lot will be 179,612 square feet.

Connecticut-based Twenty Lake Holdings Inc. bought the 6.48-acre property in 2018 along with the surrounding parking lot, located at 597 Beale St., for a total of $3.9 million.

Twenty Lake is a subsidiary of New York-based hedge Fund Alden Global Capital. Alden is well known for its ownership in dozens of local newspapers nationwide via its media subsidiary: MediaNews Group. Alden, then known as Digital First Media, made an attempt to purchase Gannett, The Commercial Appeal’s parent company, in 2019. Twenty Lake is the real estate arm of the hedge fund.

Gannett purchased The Commercial Appeal in 2016. To date, Gannett and Alden’s MediaNews Group are the two largest newspaper companies in the nation.

Locally, the 495 Union Ave. property has had a storied history. The Commercial Appeal, then the Memphis Publishing Co., bought the former Ford assembly plant in 1932. The publishing company built a new production plant on the site in the mid-'70s and renovated its office building in 1977. Print operations included press runs for the Memphis Press-Scimitar before the newspaper closed in 1983. The paper’s last print run on site was in 2017.

The Commercial Appeal moved out of the Union Avenue offices in 2019 and is now located at 120 S. Front St. in the Peabody Place office building.

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Dream Hotel moves along

Tom Intrator’s Dream Hotel project filed a construction permit on Aug. 22 with the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development. The permit was filed by Jonathan Smith of LRK. Memphis-based LRK is the architect on the project.

According to the permit filed, the 176,883-square-foot project will include a hotel, restaurant and apartments with an estimated $75 million price tag. The Dream Hotel site is located at 122 S. Main St.

In July, the Design Review Board, an affiliate board of the Downtown Memphis Commission approved new design plans for the project which would include a 14-story tower and its new mixed-use. The new design will pay homage to the black and white store front, which dates back to 1947. The site was previously the Royal Furniture Co. building.

Dream Hotel site plans

• 1,577-square-foot cocktail bar on first floor

• 4,323-square-foot restaurant on first floor

• 3,251-square-foot ballroom on third floor

• Rooftop pool and lounge area on fourth floor (top of current Royal Furniture Co. building)

• Floors 5 through 11 will be hotel guest rooms

• Floors 12 through 14 will be apartments ranging from 706 square feet to 1,355 square feet.

In November 2022, Hyatt Hotel Corp. acquired the Dream Hotel brand in a $300 million merger.

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Texas-based SIMFLO plans to open new Southaven facility

On Aug. 28, SIMFLO announced it will begin work on a new 40,500-square-foot facility at 8500 Aaron Lane in Southaven. The 3.5-acre facility is expected to open in early 2024, according to a news release.

SIMFLO is a private manufacturing company specializing in pumps for manufacturing, industrial or municipal use.

“Our new presence in Southaven is an integral piece of a bigger vision for SIMFLO as we continue to evolve to best-serve the modern marketplace and continue our industry-leading position as the nation’s #1 manufacturer of best-in-class pump products and technologies for major industrial users,” SIMFLO CEO Troy Pickering said in a statement.

The Southaven facility is the company’s third U.S. location and will add 15 new employees.

The company is headquartered in Lubbock, Texas, and was founded in 1951.

Mane Street Memphis is a bi-weekly commercial real estate and economic development roundup.

Neil Strebig is a journalist with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at neil.strebig@commercialappeal.com, 901-426-0679 or via X/Twitter, @neilStrebig. 

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis development: The latest updates on Dream Hotel, former CA site