Owner Of Historic Country Music Site Rejects Bid

BRISTOL, Tenn. – A $67,500 bid was not enough to persuade a local developer to sell Bristol’s most famous historic site at a Friday afternoon auction.

Starwood Properties President Tim Carter said he will hang on to the parking lot at the corner of State Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard that once housed the Taylor Hat Factory.

New York talent scout Ralph Peer recorded the music of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family at the factory during the 1927 Bristol Sessions, which produced the nation’s first commercially successful country-music recording.

Carter did sell an office building and a second parking lot at the corner of State and 5th streets. Hale, Lyle and Russell, the law firm that has rented space in the building since October 2005, bought both of the properties at the auction for $767,500 plus a 5 percent seller’s fee.

The law firm also offered the $67,500 bid for the factory site. But the bids were dependent upon the buyer’s confirmation, and Carter declined to sell the factory property.

“We will market it to the country-music industry,” Carter said. Although Hale, Lyle and Russell didn’t offer enough money for the property, Carter said he knew that “at some point there’s someone in country music who will.”

According to county property records, the office building and 5th Street lot were assessed at $473,200 in 2005. The factory site assessment for that year was $58,300.

The factory site’s history dates to the very founding of the city of Bristol. Joseph and Rhea Anderson built their home and office on the property in 1853, one year after they designed Downtown Bristol and the State Street corridor. According to a historical marker on the lot, the building served as the “community’s first store,
post office, bank, and realty office. The first election, town council meeting, court session, church service, wedding and birth took place there.”

After a fire destroyed the Taylor Hat Factory, the property housed Bunting’s Drug Store and a few other businesses. In the 1980s, the drug store was torn down and a Rite-Aid was built on the site.

Joe Lyle, an attorney with Hale, Lyle and Russell, said his firm bought the property from Rite-Aid and then sold it to Carter so Carter’s firm could develop it.

“It was an empty Rite-Aid building,” Starwood Vice President Malcom Wilson said prior to Friday’s auction. “We recognized the historical significance of the property and wanted to come up with something the city could be proud of.”

Starwood took a step toward that goal in February, Wilson said, when it hired an architect to design a possible Birthplace of Country Music Plaza the firm could build on the factory lot. The plaza would feature a fountain, a stage and a wall of fame featuring various country music artists. Wilson included plans and an artist’s rendering for the plaza in a packet he distributed to people attending Friday’s auction.

Starwood also tossed around plans to expand the office building across the back half of the factory lot, Wilson said, as a back-up plan for the property in case the Birthplace of Country Music Plaza idea never worked out. A billboard advertising opportunities to pre-lease the office space before Starwood’s expansion was built sits on a corner of the Taylor Hat Factory lot.

“That was before the economy took a nose dive,” Wilson said, adding that the recession forced his company to abandon those lofty goals. “We’re still hoping that someone will build that park.”

Carter said Starwood needed to liquidate some of its assets so his business could survive. He seemed to regret even trying to sell the Taylor Hat Factory site.

“I wish I could afford to donate it to the Birthplace of Country Music Alliance,” Carter said, referring to an organization committed to memorializing the Bristol Sessions. “But I’m just not in a situation where I can do that right now.”

About two dozen people stood outside Starwood’s office building Friday as auctioneers with Ron Ramsey and Associates conducted the sale.

Several people cast bids for the property – including County Commissioner Bart Long of Bristol and Tennessee Rep. Jon Lundberg, R-1 – but none of them outbid Lyle’s firm. The firm’s partners then held a brief news conference inside their conference room to discuss their purchase and plans for the property should the deal go through.

“[The Taylor Hat Factory site] has been described as hallowed ground for the music industry,” Lyle said during the news conference. When asked about the proposed Birthplace of Country Music Plaza, Lyle said “it’s really early right now but that’s something we would like to work with in the future.”

But the mood soon turned from celebration to tension, after bouts of yelling could be heard from an office lobby.

“The auction was subject to confirmation and [the Taylor Factory site] was not confirmed,” Lyle’s partner, Ken Hale, said, explaining the rancor.

Still, Hale said, his firm hopes to buy the property at a later date.

Carter’s description of the events was a bit more blunt.

“I did not sell them the corner lot,” he said. “They were p---ed, but business is business, right?”

gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518