A protest filed over the sale of Elvis Presley's old Circle G Ranch, where the singer and Priscilla Presley spent their honeymoon in 1967, has been dropped. Plans for a large retail-residential development on the site of Elvis Presley's old Circle G Ranch in Horn Lake appear ready to move ahead.
A hearing in the dispute had been scheduled for Wednesday before Chancellor Mitchell Lundy. The protest was withdrawn Tuesday. "I have withdrawn my petition," said Gerald McLemore, one of the sons of William F. McLemore, who died in 2002. McLemore's family owns the ranch that Elvis once owned. "It is a done deal as far as I'm concerned," Gerald McLemore said.
Dale Morrow, the developer whose sales contract with the McLemore family was approved by Lundy in November, said work can proceed full speed on a development plan. "Now we can get back to the business we had started earlier," Morrow said. He said he expects to have a preliminary development plan in March for the 155-acre ranch property at Goodman Road and Mississippi 301. Morrow said the project likely would be anchored by city facilities and possibly a couple of hotels, with sit-down restaurants and shops tied to a boulevard-style main thoroughfare.
The ranch had been the key to a proposed multimillion-dollar golf and entertainment resort development touted by J.D. Stacy. When Stacy and his backers failed to secure financing for the project, Morrow stepped in. Lundy entered an order Nov. 15 approving the sale of the ranch to Morrow's High Pointe Investments LLC for $7 million, and the High Pointe contract calls for the sale to close on or before April 14.