EPE Did Not Consider Purchasing 1034 Audubon

After the sale of 1043 Audubon, Elvis home before he bought his Graceland Mansion, we asked Todd Morgan's EPE if they considered buying this house, here is his reaction:

We did not consider purchasing 1034 Audubon.

If the house at 1034 Audubon Drive were closer to Graceland and were not sitting in a neighborhood zoned as purely residential, perhaps we would have deemed it a potentially viable addition to our Graceland tour operations and might have considered trying to buy it. The kind of money owners Mike Freeman and Cindy Hazen were looking for was way beyond our budget for new archival acquisitions at this time and there would have been no sure way for us to recoup the investment. All our energy and resources for perservation are focused on Graceland Mansion and our vast Elvis archives. We felt confident that the future of 1034 Audubon would be "safe" when we saw that the bidding was exceedingly far above market value for homes in its neighborhood. Any of the bidders surely had to value its Elvis history to be willing to pay so much.

Some fans suggested that we buy the house at 1034 Audubon and move it to the Graceland visitor center property to make it available for tours. It's an intriguing idea, but it would have been prohibitively expensive in addition to the purchase price, and there is no room in the budget for such an undertaking in our plans for revamping the visitor center properties.