- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund And by viewers like you, thank you.

- Collierville town administrator, James Lewellen, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] - I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by James Lewellen, the Collierville Town Administrator, retiring after 27 years.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me, Eric, appreciate it.

- Absolutely.

Along with Abigail Warren from The Daily Memphian who covers Germantown and Collierville for us.

So we'll talk a lot about your career, but also Collierville.

I mean, 27 years of immense change.

When you think about that and the change from when you were, you started, to now, what stands out?

- Oh, that's a hard question.

It's just been my life for 27 years.

And I think a lot about, now, I think a lot about where I started, what it was like in 1995 and all that I've gone through and all that the town's gone through all those years.

And I'm really still struggling with how to try to put it all into perspective.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, in '95 was maybe in, '95 was about when I moved here, so Collierville was kind of, there were houses going up there, they were trying to build a hospital.

I mean, it was just this massive influx of growth.

At that time, did you think Collierville would grow as much as it ultimately has?

- Honestly, yeah, I did.

I saw what was happening out there.

I saw what was happening in the region.

I knew Collierville was gonna be a place that people were gonna wanna move to.

I knew that there were a lot of good things happening and I thought we were gonna be a rapidly growing community.

I pretty much expected what has happened.

- And do you think, I mean, will, 27 years from now, when someone else is doing this show, will the town administrator come on and say, oh my gosh, it has doubled in size or is Collierville and I don't mean this in a bad way, is it kind of maturing in a sense of that kind of rapid growth and change?

- Yes, I think it is.

I don't think that we can continue with that kind of rapid growth and that much development.

The whole world of development has changed since 1995.

And I think the pace of growth is slowing.

I think we're gonna continue on 2 to 300 new homes a year, some corporate office relocations, commercial, who knows what the future of commercial development's gonna be.

We're still gaining some quality products coming to Collierville on the commercial side, but it's hard to predict what retail is gonna do over the next several years.

Back in '95, I thought that there would be a lot more retail in Collierville by now.

I think maybe everybody did.

- Right.

Well, there was no Amazon.

[all laughing] - Or I don't think I'm showing my age, but let me bring in Abigail.

- Yeah.

In 1990, Collierville was less than 15,000.

By, and you came in '95, by 2000, it was about 33,000.

So it doubled in size in those 10 years.

And now you've got like 52,000, so it really has grown under the leadership of James.

Can you talk a little bit about when you, in '95, when you were interviewed for the job, you were an Assistant City Administrator in Germantown.

What was that like?

I've heard that you almost didn't take the job.

- I didn't take the job the first time they asked me and the second time they asked me.

So I get a call from Herman Wright Cox, the Mayor of Collierville at the time.

And he wants me to come out and talk to him about the Collierville job.

And I had only been an Assistant City Administrator with Patrick Lawton in Germantown for two years.

And I just told him, I said, Mayor, it's a great honor, but I'm just not ready.

I know what's happening in Collierville.

I know what you need and I don't think that I'm ready.

I don't think I could do what you need me to do.

He insisted on coming out and I went out and met him and Herman Wright's a great guy.

One of those people you would just love to be around because you know there's a wealth of information to learn from him.

And so I really wanted to work for a while with Herman Wright Cox, but still internally, it was like, you have no idea what you're getting into and there's no way I could, I'll go out there and look like an idiot.

And so Herman Wright basically offered me the job and I told him no.

And some time went by and he called me back and said, can we have another conversation?

And he said, you need to come out here and spend some time with us.

And so I did all of that.

And after talking with Herman Wright and meeting some of the other people, it was one of those deals where you want the job, but I felt certain that I was gonna fail.

And so Tom Cates, the City Attorney for Germantown at the time, and Tom and I were very close friends and I admired him so much and his wisdom.

And so I think it was a Saturday, it was on the weekend and the decision time was coming and I went to Tom's house and he came outside and we sat on Tom's front porch.

And I said, Tom, I'm looking at this great opportunity.

It would mean so much, but I don't think I can do it.

And I said, how am I supposed to decide something like that?

And Tom said, it's not your job to know the answers.

You're worried about having the answer to everything.

It's not your job to have the answers, it's your job to know what the questions are and you know what the questions are.

And so that was it, after that I took the job.

- The biggest question at that time was it sort of, hey, we've seen.

You'd been in Germantown, which was going through, was ahead of the curve in terms of its growth, was the biggest question when you got to Collierville, how do we manage this?

How do we do it right?

How do we not say yes to everything?

Were those the sort of questions?

- I think that's why Collierville called to start with, because I began as a city planner, I spent eight years and sorry, I had spent six years planning, in planning and development and managing growth.

I was in South Haven for two years.

South Haven was one of the fastest growing cities in the region, one of the fastest in Mississippi when I was there.

I saw what happened there.

I went to Germantown.

Germantown was one of the fastest growing cities in the state when I went to Germantown.

We managed and I learned everything from Germantown, in city planning.

And I think that's the reason Collierville was interested to start with, 'cause I think in those days it was all about managing growth.

When I came to Collierville, the big question is what's Collierville gonna be?

We were building 700, 800 homes a year and the community wanted to know, are we gonna be another Southaven, Olive Branch?

Are we gonna be another Germantown?

What is the face of Collierville?

And there was a lot of anxiety over that and a lot of contentious meetings because of concern about the future, no one wanted to lose the small town they had.

Everybody had an opinion about what the future of Collierville should be.

So that was really my job coming in.

- You talk about meetings, boards, you've worked with a lot of different boards.

It's not normal and Shelby County's kind of unique in that.

In Mr. Lewellen and Patrick Lawton, who was the City Administrator until recently in Germantown and Mark Brown out in Bartlett, who spent decades.

The average is six years because with a new mayor, new administration, sometimes there's turnover.

When you got the job, pretty soon after that, there was an election with significant turnover on the board, but you've worked with several boards in 27 years.

How do you manage those different personalities?

Because you work at the will of the board.

If the board says they don't like you anymore, you have to find a new job.

So how do you manage those personalities?

- I don't know that you manage the personalities here.

- Can you name some names?

- Yeah.

[all laughing] - That's been part of what has been so much fun in the job is I've been around a lot of personalities in Collierville and I've been around some great people, but I've really had to deal with a lot of the different personalities.

But what I did as a new board was elected, as new mayors were elected, I sat down with them individually and talked to them about where they wanted to go and what their vision was and how they wanted the relationship to work.

And while I've told everybody that came into office, except for maybe the last couple of years, I told the boards at that time that if you want me to leave, I serve at the will and pleasure of the entirety of the board, at the majority of the board, it takes four votes to fire me.

But if you want me to leave, just tell me and I'll leave.

So I've essentially gave each one of the board members the opportunity to tell me that they didn't wanna work with me.

And so I think that helped build some trust and it was about working with them and understanding what their fears were, what their concerns were, what they wanted to do going forward.

And then I learned early in part of the story about taking the job is after that conversation with Tom Cates, I went back and I sat down with Mayor Cox and I talked with Mayor Cox and I said, Mayor Cox, I said, if I take this job, you have to let me argue with you.

- That's interesting.

- I said, I have to come in here, we're gonna close the door and I have to tell you what I think.

And you have to let me argue with you.

But when I walk outta here, we do what you want me to do.

And I'm on board with what the board says and Herman Wright, in the way that he does, he put his hand on me, he says, honey, he said, if you don't tell me what you think, I will never forgive you.

- Yeah.

And was that true of all your relationships, with all the mayors, that you could close the door and say, hey, I disagree.

I don't like it, but you would walk out.

- Usually it's not so much me saying I disagree.

It's usually me saying, are you looking at it this way?

Are you thinking about this?

And are you okay with all the different ways to see how this might come out and all the ways it may fail?

Or are you considering everything?

And if they are, then I respect that.

And I say, okay, well I think you've asked all the right questions, I think that, but I think my job is to say, here's how many ways this could go wrong.

These are all the things you need to expect.

What are you expecting the outcome to be?

Because I'm the one that has to try to deliver that outcome.

And so my argument with them is, usually, you think that it's gonna come out like this, but I can't do that.

I can't guarantee you that outcome.

And so if they're making those decisions with full knowledge of all the ramifications, then I respect their decision and support it.

- I remember, I'm having a flashback that when I first moved to Memphis, which was about '95, I did some freelance work and I was doing, I can't remember.

It was a freelance article for The Flyer about, at the time, a proposal, I think Baptist had a proposal for a hospital.

And it was funny to me 'cause I'd been in New York, I hadn't been a reporter for a long time or done any freelance stuff, but I had been in small, my first job outta college, this, I'm coming back to you, was at very small towns in small town Connecticut.

And I'd go to the Board of Selectman meetings, towns of 3 and 4 and 5,000 and the fights and disagreements over these small things.

And I realize this is what really matters.

And I go to a board meeting there about, it was ostensibly about the hospital, but other things came up and I still remember someone who got up and talked about, look, with all these developments we're doing, were cutting down so many trees.

And there was a part of the room that kind of sighed and was like, "Really?

Trees?

We're worried about trees?"

There are tens of millions of dollars in development, in new homes and a future.

But also when you look back on decisions like that, all that little, seemingly little stuff, does say a lot about the character of a city.

I mean, I live in Midtown.

Midtown without trees would be an entirely different city.

And so all those sort of decisions about roads and sidewalks and trees and the kind of boring stuff, that does make a neighborhood, it makes a town, it makes a city.

- Absolutely.

And a large part of my work in those early days was trying to sell the elected officials and the community on the notion of quality.

To try to do the development in the right way, to have open spaces and proper setbacks.

So it was all about the community design.

Community design is extremely important and we were trying to sell the regulations and standards to get quality developments.

And it was so hard to talk with people about cutting down trees to build houses because the truth is when you lay out lots to build houses on, you condemn the trees.

You can save some trees, but when Midtown was built, they cut down all the trees.

- People think of those grand oaks and all that as having been there forever.

And that's really not the case.

- They grow back.

And so we emphasize tree planting and we emphasize reforestation and setting aside areas and open spaces and natural areas so that we get the trees back.

And I think as people began to realize that we did have an understanding of how to do it right and that we were making developers do the very best quality that we could expect, I think a lot of the contentiousness started to go away, but there was several years where you had to show the results of your decisions.

Part of what's so difficult in municipal government is that sometimes you can't see the results of your decisions for 4 years, 5 years, 20 years.

You're selling a vision.

It doesn't always look that way for a few years.

- Ten minutes left here, Abigail.

- Talk about a little bit.

There are several many amenities that have come, such as a hospital is something that was a huge get for Collierville when it came.

But also Collierville Schools is, in it's ninth year, started nine years ago.

Can you kind of talk about those two things, big things that really came during your time and you had a past with Baptist before they opened in Collierville, correct?

- Yeah.

Fun fact.

I've been involved in the construction of three Baptist hospitals.

I was involved in the construction, the city planning, the layout of Baptist DeSoto and then a major development and renovation in Germantown with Baptist hospital.

And then I had just taken the job in Collierville and I started in November, Baptist walks in a month later, and says we wanna build a hospital in Collierville.

I was like, okay, here we go again.

But it was a great gift.

It was our first community hospital in Collierville.

And then also in that first year, FedEx came and said, we're looking at a piece of property for a world technology center.

And when they laid out the numbers and the plans, my eyes just.

So those were all game changers.

When I said I expected the growth, I didn't expect those projects and I didn't expect those things to happen as fast as they happened, but they were game changers and they really have shaped the backbone of Collierville and what Collierville is today.

And the school system is still defining who we are and who we're gonna be.

But the whole process of going through the legislation, the process of establishing a school system and then going through the test of, can we run it?

Can we be better?

Can we run it on the funds that are available?

There were people who were telling us we couldn't.

And so yeah, the school system and the ability to take the school system where we wanna take it is going have impacts in Collierville for years to come.

- We talk about investments and talk about changing cities, Blue Oval, the big Ford plant that's going in at the Memphis mega site, whatever, I guess they're calling it Blue Oval City now, but it's about an hour drive from Collierville.

You all will probably get some growth.

I mean, it's just a huge, huge project.

Tens of thousands of employees in construction and follow on companies and so on, but the huge impact will be on towns, cities like Arlington, Lakeland, they're gonna see massive growth.

What would you recommend to them?

And I'm curious, have you talked to folks over there because I have heard that they are, I mean, it's great.

Growth is great, but not all growth is great and you have to manage it and they are in the spotlight of what could be just massive investment.

What would you recommend to them?

- Well, Arlington's in great shape.

They've got very talented people and they have people who understand how to manage it.

And I think Arlington is going to reap the rewards and do everything right.

Some of the other cities around, that have this mega potential to grow a city the way they want to grow it, to build and the vision that they want to have, they're the ones who are kinda starting from ground zero and the State's working with a lot of those cities.

And I haven't been asked and I haven't consulted, but I would say, establish a vision.

Be willing to say no, because for all the great things that have happened in Collierville, what you can't see is all the stuff we said no to.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And that has as big of an impact on the landscape and the future of the city as the things that you ultimately get.

And so be patient.

Say no to all the wrong stuff and do it the right way.

- I wanna ask you to, I mean, name the names, this thing you said no to the projects or whatever, but with those things, like a kind of housing or a kind of retail or a, was it that or a kind of industry that like, hey, that's millions of dollars, say yes, but actually we said no because X, Y, and Z?

- Well, the first plans for Carriage Crossing were an indoor mall.

- Yeah, that's right.

- And people forget, we turned down, we turned down the mall and it came back and was reshaped.

And it's an outdoor mall area, shopping center like it is now.

And then the rest of 'em, it's not big projects of that magnitude, but a lot of little stuff like a car wash that wanted to go in a prime retail area and you have to say, that's not the best use for that space.

We need to save that for something, a car wash can go a lot of other places, that prime corner is not the place for a lesser type of investment.

- Question about, you're talking about character and planning.

I mean talk about the importance of Collierville Town Square.

- It's our image.

People project that when they go to the Square and they see the Square, they project that this is what the entirety of the town is like.

That it's a small town.

You see people walking around, chatting and talking to each other on that great open space on the Square.

The visualization is priceless because you go and see people of all types meeting and talking to each other and it looks like this great happy place.

And so people project that that's what the town is like.

And it is just one of the great places.

It's a great place to just go and sit and read a book.

It's a great place to go have lunch and just hang out.

So it's hard to measure its impact.

It is who we are.

- Yeah.

Just a couple minutes left.

Abigail.

- Can you talk about, we should mention, you're not retiring quite yet, the board has not found your successor.

But can you kind of talk about the next town administrator, whoever he or she is, what are some of the challenges that you think they're gonna face when they walk in?

Whenever that is?

- Well, I've left everything in such great shape there's no challenges.

[all laughing] - I'm still trying to talk people.

- We are recording this, by the way.

- I'm still trying to talk people into taking the job, but.

Continuing to manage growth.

I think that we've evolved on some projects and it's time to maybe amend some of our standards.

And I think managing growth is a big, big deal, big challenge.

And again, acquiring and training and staffing, that's a big thing for everybody right now.

- And with growth, it's important to mention Collierville is different from cities like Germantown.

Germantown's landlocked, whereas Collierville has the annex reserve area in southeast Shelby County and really does have potential to grow, not only with residents, but with land.

And so there really is potential for Collierville to continue to grow in that area.

- When you look back, your biggest disappointment in 27 years?

I don't mean to focus on negative, but I mean there had to have been disappointments.

- I don't know if there's a biggest, and I'm never satisfied with anything.

I think every project that we do, I look at it and say, I really would've liked for that to have turned out a different way.

So there's not one big disappointment.

There's a lot of little things that didn't happen that I would've liked.

I can't put my finger on one.

- And all the influx of new people.

And again, I think about the communities around that, Blue Oval, that are about to see this huge influx of people, whether they're regional or just from all over the country.

All those new people in Collierville, did it change Collierville for the better?

- Well, I think it did.

I think Collierville's a great community.

And I think we do a lot of things in parks and recreation that it's Norman Rockwell Friday night, Norman Rockwell Saturday nights.

You go to a football game in Collierville, you go to the parks and watch what's happening with youth football, youth baseball and soccer.

And you see how families are interacting with each other and the athletics and things that are going on out there.

And you realize we did something right.

- Yeah.

- Do you think?

I think of Schilling Farms, when you think about headquarters, do you think that there will be businesses that help Blue Oval, that maybe supply Blue Oval that come to Collierville, maybe specifically, Schilling Farms, maybe elsewhere in Collierville?

Do you think Blue Oval has potential to impact businesses in Collierville?

- I absolutely do.

One of the foundations of my philosophy is that businesses are gonna go where talent wants to live.

And I think we built a city around the people.

We didn't build a city for commercial development, we built a place that people wanna live, because as long as people wanna live there, then businesses are gonna follow.

And I think a lot of headquarters are gonna wanna be in Collierville because that's where the talent is gonna wanna be.

And I expect that we'll get several businesses that are spinoffs or suppliers or supporters of Blue Oval in Collierville, because we've got a great school system.

We've got a great place to live.

Great place for your children to go to school.

- What's next for you?

Just a couple seconds left.

- Hopefully not much at all.

[all laughing] - I joked and I said, I'm gonna finish my third novel.

And they said you're writing a novel?

No, I'm just trying to read one.

[all laughing] - So nothing much, do a little travel.

- But you plan to stay in Collierville?

- Yes.

I'm not going anywhere.

- Oh, I thought that was that obvious.

That would've been a really bad note to end on.

Thank you, James.

And congratulations on your career.

Thanks very much.

Thank you, Abigail.

And thank you for joining us.

Join us again next week.

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