After serving a stint as president of the Downtown Neighborhood
Association (DNA), Tommy Volinchak has had a bellyful of cliques,
preservationists, bake sales, and delayed projects.

“Downtown is a white, cliquey suburb,” says Volinchak, 54, a native
of Youngstown, Ohio, whose father worked in the steel mills all his
life. He and his fiancée are moving to East Memphis when he
sells his house on Mud Island.

Dressed in jeans and a black bowling shirt with “Tommy” stitched on
the front — one of several in his collection — Volinchak
sipped a cup of hot chocolate at an outdoor café in Harbor Town
this week and discussed his downtown disillusionment. A frequent letter
writer and e-mailer, whose pronouncements range from caustic to
bombastic, he is mellower in person, even to a reporter who has been on
the receiving end of his missives and hails from the dreaded state of
Michigan.

“I never hold back,” he says. “When the people you’re leading and
you don’t see eye to eye, then you’re beating your head against a brick
wall. The DNA was a bit of a social clique. You saw the same people,
and they all seemed to look alike.”

Volinchak stands out in a Memphis crowd. He is the size of a
football lineman. He is of Ukrainian heritage. He plays the accordion,
guitar, and several other instruments. He hopes to make the senior
bowling tour. A self-described bull, his heroes “are guys like Patton,
Noah, and Moses.” He has a college degree in biology and a water
purification business and is writing a book on contemporary music for
the accordion.

“I had a lot of support and a lot of detractors,” he says of his
tenure as head of the 500-member DNA. “You’re either going to love me
or hate me.”

Volinchak came to Memphis in 2001 from Ohio, drawn by the music
scene and positive reviews of downtown from his friend Carol Coletta, a
former downtowner who is now head of the group CEOs for Cities in
Chicago. He joined the DNA, which he thought spent too much time on
home tours and not enough time on political nitty-gritty and
establishing its clout in support of big-ticket projects such as Beale
Street Landing and Bass Pro in the Pyramid. His views, he says, were
formed by seeing the deterioration of towns like Youngstown in
industrial Ohio. He has served on the board of the Riverfront
Development Corporation and Mayor Herenton’s convention center advisory
committee.

As a resident for eight years, he found downtown more effete than
melting pot.

“I used to go to the movies at Peabody Place three to five times a
week,” he says. “I could count on my hands the DNA members supporting
that venue. Crazy kids with their hats on sideways … to me, that is
life. People my age are not the future of downtown.”

As a DNA officer, he quickly ran out of patience with town hall
meetings, which he calls “mental masturbation” in which opposing sides
often “came together to make new enemies.” Preservationists,
cobblestones proponents, reporters, politicians opposing the Bass
Pro/Pyramid deal, and the group Friends For Our Riverfront often drew
his fire.

“Memphians spend an enormous amount of time cherishing, protecting,
and fondling what Memphis once was,” he says, mentioning the
cobblestones and the Front Street cotton business as examples. “There
is no good outcome for that mentality.”

He is a staunch proponent of Bass Pro because “big projects make
small projects possible,” and he laments the criticism of its
fish-on-a-hook sign and proposed Pyramid redesign. A registered
Democrat, he says he is on good terms with Mayor Herenton and has
thought of getting into politics himself but only “in a position that
would allow me to lead and cause a ruckus.” Youngstown, he scoffs,
“makes Memphis look like Romper Room. When we had a sting, we netted
congressmen, judges, and gangland hits.”

He makes no apologies for the caustic tone of his writing.

“America has grown complacent,” he says. “Hypocrisy is rampant. I
don’t write anything I wouldn’t say to your face. Bipartisanship and
compromise is a sign of a man who’s not firm in his convictions.”