Just What Does Chris Ewing Control at Inspiration Landing?

 

Located near the entrance to Inspiration Landing is a small corner of land referred to as The Slag...or The Slag Yard...or The Slag Pile...or The Slag at Furnace Hill. In hind sight, it seems to have had more names than paying customers.

When the City of Sheffield deeded IL to John Elkington, The Slag was a part of the property. In a September 3, 2021, news article, Scott Michael referred to the Slag property as his. Michael is also known as Rooster Feathers of Oxford, Mississippi, and a close friend of John Elkington. We've found no property records that mention Michael.

In this same article, Michael referred to Chris Ewing as someone who arrived to the dance late, but wanted to squeeze Rooster out. Ewing is one-half of Ewing-Kessler and also a friend of Elkington. He's often referred to as a developer, but his business description indicates air conditioning services to large businesses. On September 17, Ewing is referred to as the developer of IL. At this point, Ewing and Michael were involved in court proceedings to establish just who ran The Slag.

By October 28, Sheffield mayor Steve Stanley made a comment that he hoped the situation was resolved soon. The city had four million invested and would begin in January 2022 to make 20K loan payments on the project each month.

Ten months later in August 2022, Ewing-Kessler announced that The Slag would not reopen. There was to be an entirely new configuration for the whole area. 

On a related note, IL is divided into six land parcels, and the contact person of record for each is Chris Ewing. There has been no mention of old pal Rooster in almost a year. John Elkington made his last appearance in local news in January of this year. 

And they're lining up to run against Steve Stanley three years from now...