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You can't call it the Great American Pyramid anymore. Now it's just The Pyramid.
Memphis has a steel blue, 32-story sports arena beside the Mississippi River which is shaped like a colossal Pharaoh's tomb, but when it opened for business in December of 1991, even its original name lay shrouded in controversy.
"It's been the focal point of this city for years now," Pyramid marketing manager Larry Enis said as he recalled the communal euphoria - and letdown - that accompanied construction of the 6-acre, 20,000-seat pleasure-tetrahedron.
Peering down at Mr. Enis as he spoke was an authentically noseless replica statue of Ramses II adorning The Pyramid's entry ramp. "It's had its ups and downs," Mr. Enis said of the $65 million Pyramid. "But now it's up."
The Pyramid thus has become another fixture in the Egyptian theme that has beguiled this city since 1819, when it was named in memory of an ancient Egyptian city on the River Nile and cast itself as the jewel of the "American Nile."
There are hieroglyph motifs at the zoo and an ancient mummy at Memphis State University. So in the mid-1980s, when MSU needed a new basketball arena, a recurrent Memphis dream was revived: Why not build a great pyramid?
Initial jubilation
As 15,000 people poured in for The Pyramid's grand opening to hear the country music group the Judds, and then five days later when MSU won a game beneath the high-tech, million-dollar scoreboard as another large crowd looked on, there was jubilation and muted fatigue. At one time, The Pyramid was going to be much more than the brushed-steel shell that finally emerged.
In September 1989, more than 100,000 cheering Memphis residents had lined the bluffs as fireworks illuminated a helicopter that dropped a 600-pound shovel for The Pyramid's groundbreaking.
This was to have been the birth not just of a new megalith but of a new Memphis, according to The Pyramid's promoter and manager, Sidney Shlenker, who then owned the Denver Nuggets basketball team.
Formerly chief executive officer of the Houston Astrodome, Mr. Shlenker promised to add other attractions to the Great American Pyramid. There was talk of "an Egyptian boat ride through the underworld of the dead," a rock music museum, a college football hall of fame and a Hard Rock Cafe.
The goal was to increase tourism in this city-county area of more than 800,000, best known as the "Home of the Blues" and as the site of Graceland, the estate of Elvis Presley.
Hard times
Instead, Mr. Shlenker ran into financial problems - his defenders blamed bad economic times, his critics said expectations had been unrealistic - and filed for bankruptcy. Shelby County Attorney Brian Kuhn said creditors were seeking $15 million in unpaid debts from Mr. Shlenker, who left town, taking the name "Great American Pyramid" with him, citing his copyright. Mortified city fathers took over the project, renaming it The Pyramid.
The Pyramid has not brought Memphis the magic solution to its many economic problems, but it does give the city something it really wanted: a new recreational arena, a place for musicians to rock 'n' roll and for round ballers to give-and-go under the watchful eye of Ramses.
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