Andy Meek - The Daily News -

Take a good look around you, Memphis.

The next 12 months have so much in store, almost anywhere a person looks – from the neighborhood school to the family doctor to office buildings Downtown to industrial space in South Memphis – the pace of change is likely to make 2011 one for the record books.

Some of it possibly will come in ways that can’t yet be imagined. Who’d have thought, for example, that Memphis would see its former five-term mayor Willie Herenton, the man who first took office back in 1991, face his first campaign loss in 2010 and then anti-climactically fade from the public eye?

Or that in one meeting, after years of contentious brawls over funding, resources and its proper place in the local scheme of things, the city school board would vote itself out of existence?

All of that and more happened in 2010, a year with ripples that will stretch well into the New Year.

Political figures went a few rounds – and then some – in a struggle to save the city’s safety-net hospital, the Regional Medical Center at Memphis. That struggle has born fruit, but the work is far from over.

Voters in 2010 elected a sheriff as a mayor who formed along with his counterpart at Memphis City Hall a veritable two-man chamber of commerce. Look for Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. to continue working in 2011 behind the scenes as salesmen-in-chief for the city and county.

Among 2010’s other highlights, a metro charter proposal was defeated, while entrepreneurs across the city facing the recession’s tail end refused to accept defeat. They opened unique ventures like cupcake stores and yogurt shops. Farmers markets multiplied, while beloved bookstores continued hanging on.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the nationwide forces that came to fruition in 2010 like health care and banking reforms that will bring scores of new uninsured patients into doctors’ offices and change how the financial services industry interacts with customers.

Throughout this week’s issue of The Memphis News, those people and events along with the many others that shaped 2010 are discussed at length in a series of retrospective articles.

They collectively point toward the same question: What happens next?

With that in mind, here’s a glimpse at the people, events and trends liable to be 2011’s big newsmakers and worth keeping an eye on.

BIG DEALS. One minute, the exodus of jobs south across the state line seemed unstoppable. The next, elected leaders and civic officials in Memphis were convincing big employers like Pinnacle Airlines Corp. to stay in town and were bringing even bigger employers like Swedish appliance maker Electrolux to the city.

By November, Pinnacle is bringing about 650 of the regional airline’s employees to Downtown’s One Commerce Square. By the end of April, Electrolux is looking to break ground on a 700,000-square-foot plant in southwest Memphis’ Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park.

Neither of those economic development coups happened by accident.

Luttrell and Wharton joined the Center City Commission and other business leaders – including AutoZone founder J.R. “Pitt” Hyde III – in making a direct pitch to Pinnacle’s board about the merits of coming Downtown. Hyde also directed his real estate investment firm, Worthington Hyde Partners, to get involved with the local ownership group.

Around the same time in October that Pinnacle was preparing to announce it would stay in town and move to One Commerce, Wharton and Luttrell were ramping up their involvement in the talks to bring Electrolux here.

A site location and development agreement for the Electrolux deal shows it took just about every arrow in the state and local quiver of incentives to make it happen.

Per the terms of the deal, if it all goes off without a hitch Electrolux would break ground in April and start rolling products out of Memphis about 14 months later.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. That points to another reason it’s worth keeping an eye on the budding Luttrell-Wharton partnership.

Their partnership helped solidify the retention and recruitment of a few thousand jobs in the span of only four months or so in 2010. Also, the mayors reportedly plan to roll out a new economic development framework for the city and county sometime in January.

They’ve not yet spelled out fully what it will entail, but it’s no secret what some of it will be.

Luttrell’s transition team, for example, recommended the creation of a new economic development entity similar to the CCC except for one major thing. The CCC focuses exclusively on the Central Business Improvement District, while the new entity would promote the county as a whole.

The new entity would be a separate body outside of government, Wharton said during the Dec. 17 episode of WKNO’s show “Behind the Headlines,” hosted by Memphis Daily News and The Memphis News publisher Eric Barnes.

“Our plans are approaching the final stage,” Wharton said. “The whole purpose behind it is to pull together under one umbrella all of the entities that play a role in economic development, so that when we bring in this (new) director he or she will be able to speak with authority on behalf of all these entities as opposed to having to make five visits to answer one question as we negotiate.”

2011 also is an election year for Wharton, who’s finishing the two years left of the term Herenton vacated in 2009.

SCHOOLS. Talk to any business leader, talk to companies considering a location in Memphis, talk to suburban residents moving to the far fringes of the county, and you’ll eventually hit on a common theme: schools.

2011 may well be the year upon which the future of public education in Shelby County is balanced. Memphis voters are weeks away from going to the polls to decide whether they agree with the city school board’s decision to surrender its charter.

If they agree, a new school system would emerge that meshes Memphis City Schools and Shelby County Schools into one massive, reborn whole.

To say there are unanswered questions about how that enterprise will work is an understatement. New district lines have to be drawn, not to mention how the new thing will be governed – and what the effects on children will be.

New Shelby County District Attorney General. Bill Gibbons’ successor in the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office will in 2011 have plenty of opportunities to influence the daily lives of city and county residents.

Career prosecutor Amy Weirich in January takes the reins from Gibbons, who is leaving to become the state’s commissioner of public safety and homeland security.

During his tenure, Gibbons pursued everything from busting politicians to closing strip clubs.

He filed nuisance petitions against the owners of more than 200 nightclubs, strip clubs, apartment complexes, motels and alleged drug houses, closing several of the nightclubs and strip clubs permanently.

Weirich will finish Gibbons’ term and has said she will run for the office in 2012.

Meanwhile, as if all that weren’t enough, major nationwide forces of change are sweeping across the country.

HEALTH CARE AND FINANCIAL REFORM. Everyone is talking about it. Some people are still fighting it. But one thing that meets widespread agreement about the controversial and historic health care reform legislation Congress passed in 2010 is that it will reshape not only the health care industry but many large and small businesses.

Doctors’ offices are preparing for an influx of millions of previously uninsured patients, now that new coverage is available. Meanwhile, big employers throughout the city and beyond are figuring out if they’re not already how they’ll absorb the cost of the health care bill’s reforms in their short- and long-range planning.

On a similar note, sweeping financial reform Congress passed in 2010 will do plenty of things for ordinary Americans, like clamp down on myriad bank procedures. The industry also is being pushed to offer simpler financial products.

And there’s a new regulatory agency whose main purpose is acting as a watchdog for consumers, protecting against things like exorbitant fees and traps buried in small print.

REAL ESTATE. No mention of the national forces shaping the future would be complete without a mention of real estate.

Homebuying still remains tentative. Congress and two presidential administrations since 2008 have spent billions on programs to shore up banks stung by residential real estate losses and to restructure troubled home mortgages.

But to some, there’s still a giant question mark atop the nation’s collective mass of malls, shopping centers, office parks and industrial properties. The question mark is there because there’s the possibility a rebound is starting to take hold in commercial real estate. Big-ticket sales, coupled with a growing economy, should help. A handful of major CRE deals in 2010 in Memphis highlighted that trend.

The top retail investment sale of the year came near the end of December when Loeb Properties Inc. bought Park Place Centre from Belz Enterprises Inc. for $10.3 million. The new owners of One Commerce Square may be 60 days out from announcing lease deals with tenants they’re trying to add to the mix there.

CONSUMER CONFIDENCE. Overshadowing all the preceding people and newsmakers to watch in 2011 is one group of people that’s likely the key to everything: consumers.

Public and private sector leaders have pursued policies and practices they hope will stabilize the economy, which has for more than a year been a patient lying on a gurney in the intensive care ward. The hope is that patient will soon regain enough strength to voluntarily leave the ICU and take charge of its own recovery.

You, to put it simply, are one of – if not the most – important factor in making that happen. If enough of you find and keep jobs, keep paying bills, keep buying goods and services and otherwise pumping money into the circulatory system of American commerce, it’s likely a recovery is not far off.

If not, well, we won’t have to wonder what a large chunk of the 2011 retrospectives will focus on 12 months from now.