Hyde Foundation aids many, including Civil Rights Museum

Friday, January 29, 2010
Memphis Business Journal

The Hyde Family Foundation continues to show why it is one of the greatest supporters of Memphis.

The foundation is spending nearly $1 million on two tracts of land Downtown that it will donate to the National Civil Rights Museum to ease crowding in the museum’s offices and help accommodate its planned expansion.

The foundation bought a surface parking lot and a two-story office building near the old Lorraine Motel where the museum is located.

While details are still in the planning stages, the need for additional parking and office space were certainties with the planned expansion. Employees there currently work in cramped office space.

$535,000 already has been raised for basic, needed repairs to the museum site.

The first phase, which cost $185,000, included repairing drainage problems, the walkway, redoing the public restrooms and re-roofing the museum.

The second phase, which cost $350,000, involved repairing and repainting woodwork on the Lorraine Motel, adding a second exit to a converted meeting room and bringing exterior walls up to code.

But a larger renovation of its gallery space, including upgrades to exhibits and new technology, is still being planned and will take more than two years to complete. That multimillion-dollar project could include the addition of a 300-seat amphitheater.

While the museum has forged alliances to create various fundraisers to raise capital for the project, leave it to the Hyde Foundation to say, ‘Here, this will help.’

The foundation, started by AutoZone, Inc., founder J.R. ‘Pitt’ Hyde, has touched so many parts of the city it is impossible to name them all.

In addition to supporting public education, the arts and charities across the city, it is one of the key drivers of Memphis’ burgeoning biotech industry.

And it supports generously without a lot of fanfare or political motivation. If it’s good for the city, the Hyde Foundation will have an open ear.

As a leader in moving Memphis forward, the foundation has spurred many corporations to get behind and support the same causes.

As an attraction unique to Memphis, the Civil Rights Museum certainly represents a worthy cause. We hope its efforts to become a world-class museum continue to gain the support of the larger Memphis community.

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Hyde Foundation aids many, including Civil Rights Museum