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Looking to the Past to Build for the Future
Once Upon a Time When Holiday Inns Came to Olive Branch
By Bill Cruthirds
In one of the museum cases at Olive Branch City Hall is a display of material from the dedication of Olive Branch Airport by Holiday Inns in the summer of 1973. That dedication, along with the associated development of Holiday Industrial Park east of the city, was a seminal moment in Olive Branch history, and is a story that should be preserved as part of our heritage. Having worked for Holiday Inns during that period of time, I can tell the story from that vantage point.
It is well known that Holiday Inns had a major presence in Olive Branch for many years, but not so well known is why Holiday Inns came to Olive Branch in the first place, forever changing the dynamics of this area and setting the stage for a small agrarian community of around 700 people to grow into the dynamic city that it is today. Not, it wasn’t the only reason, and it didn’t happen overnight, but the coming of Holiday Inns was the catalyst that set the stage for the phenomenal changes that were to take place in Olive Branch, and which are continuing to this day.
In the late sixties, Holiday Inns, based in Memphis, had become a national hotel chain of over a thousand hotels with three new ones opening every week. Holiday Inns’ management team of Kemmons Wilson, Wallace Johnson, Bill Walton, Clyde Dixon and others, were literally writing the book on operating a hotel chain as they went along, because nothing like Holiday Inns had ever existed before. Early on they realized that one of the keys to successful hotel operations was to have well-trained hotel managers, or “InnKeepers” as they called them. Since there were not many people around with that expertise, Holiday Inns decided they would develop and train them by sending them through a course in hotel management “the Holiday Inn way” at “InnKeeper School,” which was located in the basement of Holiday Inns’ executive offices at Holiday City on Lamar Avenue in Memphis. It wasn’t long, with more and more “InnKeepers” to train, before they completely outgrew the space and began to make plans for building a larger, more extensive training facility, a “Holiday University.” It would be easy to say their search for a location to build this “Holiday University” is what led them to Olive Branch, and while that is partially true, it is not the complete story. There was a bit more to it than that.
As more and more Holiday Inns were opening around the country, and as the chain began to go international, Holiday Inn Corporate found itself purchasing more and more equipment, furnishings, lamps, printed materials, carpet, and everything required to furnish and operate its hotels. A normal-size Holiday Inn could easily spend a half-million dollars on furnishings and equipment.
Holiday Inns Chairman, Kemmons Wilson, always the entrepreneur, saw this as an opportunity. Why not purchase (with Holiday Inns stock) those companies who were manufacturing and selling products to Holiday Inns, and have total control over everything needed to equip and furnish his hotels? He could then get what he needed at cost and sell the remaining production to other hotels.
In theory, it made perfect sense, and was a “can’t miss” proposition. Holiday Inns Management set up a Manufacturing and Products Division, under the direction of Clyde Dixon, one of Wilson’s most innovative and ablest lieutenants, and embarked on a “company purchasing spree,” eventually owning some thirty-odd companies, but let me slow down. I am getting ahead of myself.
At that time, in the late 60s, all of that was still in the planning stages, and to make it all work, Wilson needed several thousand acres of land to build his university and develop an industrial park where he could relocate those acquired companies. The parcel had to be large enough to accommodate an airport where Holiday Inns’ air operation, Hi-Air, and their fleet of aircraft could be based. It was said, although I never heard it from Wilson himself, that his ultimate goal was to build an airport capable of handling jet freighters, surround it with all of the acquired manufacturing companies, so that when Holiday Inns built a hotel anywhere in the world, he could fill containers with every product needed to furnish and equip the hotel from the factories in the Holiday Industrial Park, load them onto the air freighters, and fly them directly to wherever the hotel was being built. If you didn’t delve too deeply into the details, it seemed like a reasonable idea, and was not at all out of character for Kemmons Wilson, a man who thought he could do the impossible (and often did) and truly, one of the last great American Entrepreneurs.
In 1969, Holiday Inns was searching rural areas around Memphis for a site for their project. The Mayor of Olive Branch, M. C. Herrington, had heard rumors of what they were looking for. It seems, at that time, the City of Olive Branch had a commitment for a $90,000 matching federal grant to build an airport. Olive Branch did not have the $10,000 matching amount, so a group consisting of Herrington, Charles Riggan and Bill Kerr approached Kemmons Wilson to see if he was interested in putting up the $10,000 and coming to Olive Branch. Wilson was interested. Herrington’s group was told what Holiday Inns needed, and over the next month or so, they pulled together a “package” of 3000 acres of land owned by Ms. Aurelia Bowen and Mrs. T. H. Norvell, located east of Hacks Cross Road, between Goodman and Stateline Roads. Legend has it that Holiday Inns Executive Vice President Bill Walton was driving down a graveled Goodman Road, looking at the property when he passed a long driveway lined with giant pecan trees leading back to some chicken houses (the old Will McCargo Farm). He slammed on the brakes and exclaimed, “That is the entrance to Holiday University.” He was right. It did, indeed, become the site of the university.
The deal was done, and Holiday Inns started work on the university and the airport with both opening in October of 1972. Originally, the City of Olive Branch was supposed to own the airport, but that was somehow “lost in the shuffle,” and it was never conveyed to the City.
Jack McCauley of Muncie, Indiana, (later of the Olive Branch Chamber of Commerce) was hired as president of the Holiday Industrial Park, responsible for its development and operation.
While the original purchase and start of the development took place during M. C. Herrington’s term as Mayor of Olive Branch, the major part of the development happened during the administration of D. M. Nichols, Mayor from 1977 until 1997, and continues to this day into the term of present Mayor Sam Rikard, elected in 1997.
As Holiday Inns’ company acquisition program accelerated, the newly purchased companies, whenever possible, were relocated to the Holiday Industrial Park in Olive Branch. The first was Holiday Press (now Quebecor), followed by MasterKraft (now Tyler Refrigeration), Challenger Lamp Company, and soon others.
At one point Holiday Inns owned more than 30 such companies (not all in Olive Branch) before the reality of what was actually happening began to supplant the theory of what was supposed to happen. Many of the acquired manufacturing companies that had been innovative and profitable when they were competing for Holiday Inns’ business ceased to be either after they were purchased. Holiday Inns discovered they were much more proficient at operating hotels than they were at operating manufacturing companies, and by the mid 70s is had become evident that the concept was proving to be counterproductive.
Cracks were beginning to appear in the “once monolithic” corporate structure at Holiday Inns. After being one of the “darlings of Wall Street” for a number of years, and after seeing the stock split several times and reach a high of $60 per share, the stock was in free-fall, and would bottom out at around $5 and show little sign of rebounding.
Major shareholders, most of whom had become wealthy with Holiday Inns stock, were seeing their fortunes slip away and were up in arms and demanding changes. The “seat of the pants” management style of the original entrepreneurs began to evolve into something altogether different. Under pressure to “do something,” Holiday Inns Management began making changes, one of which was to adopt a policy that Holiday Inns’ efforts would be redirected to “doing what they did best; developing and operating hotels (and gaming casinos).” They decided to divest themselves of the marginal-income-producing ventures, and that included acquiring manufacturing companies. They concluded that hotels and casinos were more profitable than chair factories; and they were right. Everything became secondary to the bottom line.
Within a short period of time all of the acquired companies were sold, effectively ending Holiday Inns’ primary reason for being in Olive Branch in the first place. Without the companies, they no longer needed Holiday Industrial Park. It wasn’t long before it was sold, along with Olive Branch Airport, to Belz Enterprises of Memphis.
As changes and turmoil continued, in June of 1979, following a dispute with his board of directors, company founder Kemmons Wilson would resign and leave Holiday Inns. The evolution was complete.
Holiday University became Holiday Inn and Conference Center, which Holiday Inns continued to own and operate for another decade before selling it to a Dallas hotel consortium in the early 90s, at which time the name of the hotel was changed to Whispering Woods Hotel and Conference Center. The golf course surrounding the hotel would last until 2005 before closing, giving way to commercial development.
The industrial park, whose name had been changed to Metro Industrial Park when it was purchased by Belz, continued to attract non-Holiday Inns industries and companies to Olive Branch throughout the 80s and 90s, becoming the largest employer in DeSoto County with more than 90 manufacturing and distribution businesses located there by 2000. Olive Branch Airport became the second-busiest airport in Mississippi.
Perhaps it cannot categorically and simplistically be said that Holiday Inns’ coming to Olive Branch thirty-odd years ago was the sole reason for Olive Branch’s phenomenal growth during the last quarter of the twentieth century, but it can definitely be said that it was one of the reasons, perhaps the major reason, and without question, a defining moment in Olive Branch’s history.
Most of those involved with Holiday Inns Management during that era are dead now. Walton and Dixon live in retirement in Collierville; until his recent death, McCauley lived in Olive Branch. Kemmons Wilson died several years ago; Wallace Johnson before that. Holiday Inns long ago moved away to Atlanta, but the legacy of on of Kemmons Wilson’s entrepreneurial dreams that resulted in Holiday Inns’ presence in Olive Branch will forever be a major reason why we, as a City, are where we are today.
It all started “Once upon a time when Holiday Inns came to Olive Branch.”