Saturday night, WMC-TV reported that the recently-closed Pat O’Brien’s location on Beale Street might come back to live as a hotel/restaurant owned by Joe Cooper and Jerry “The King” Lawler. Well, today the Memphis Business Journal reports that the hotel is a “pipe dream,” according to John Elkington of Performa, the company that manages Beale Street.
According to Elkington, there are many reasons why the hotel will never happen. For one, the business is in bankruptcy, and anyone wanting to work on the property would therefore have to deal with Pat O’s creditors. Also, Cooper and Lawler would need to control the parking lot behind the building in order to create enough space, and Performa does not plan to give up control of that lot. Finally, the state’s historic preservation department would have to approve changes to the building, and there would be a fight against a building taller than the current height (Cooper and Lawler want a 5-story hotel).
So, it looks like the future of the old Pat O’s building is still up in the air.