Lobbyists representing check-cashing businesses, payday lenders and auto title loan shops are meeting with Memphis and Shelby County lawmakers to voice their concerns over a proposed zoning ordinance designed to curb their growth.

As The Daily News first reported last month, city council member Bill Morrison came up with the idea for the legislation in an effort to break up what he says is the cluster effect those businesses produce.

In parts of the city, they line the street like collections of oversized neon ATMs, each of which hawks the alchemy of turning a debtor’s worthless post-dated check or the title to a car into instant pocket money.

The business owners who run those short-term lending enterprises have a variety of reasons they’re pushing back against Morrison’s proposal.

Representatives of the fringe lending industry regard the zoning change as an unnecessary business restriction. Those business owners are expected to be present to air their concerns when the city and county government bodies discuss their final version of the ordinance.

Former City Council member Dedrick Brittenum Jr. – an attorney at Farris Bobango Branan PLC – has approached council members recently on behalf of some members of the industry. He spoke briefly with Morrison on the day of a recent council meeting about the proposed zoning change.

Covert could not be reached for comment. Check Into Cash CEO Allan Jones was not familiar with the details of the proposed ordinance in Memphis, but said it was unfair to place his business in the same category as auto title lenders and businesses that cash payroll checks.

Unlike customers of most other short-term lending businesses, Check Into Cash requires that its customers have active checking accounts. Customers can get a maximum loan of $200 from a Check Into Cash store and would then pay a fee of no more than $30 on that $200 loan.

The chain’s Memphis-area presence is emblematic of most of its competitors. Most of the stores are concentrated inside the interstate loop with a smaller amount in suburban markets.

Check Into Cash’s local stores include a Downtown store about three blocks from Memphis City Hall and one in a strip center on the north side of Wolfchase Galleria near Lakeland.

Such stores are often a stone’s throw from traditional banks. The Wolfchase-area Check Into Cash, for example, is about half a mile east from a First Tennessee Bank branch that sits on the side of Wolfchase Galleria facing Germantown Parkway.

Those two businesses are not only separated by distance. They are divided by a world that traditional bank customers might never venture into, but that low- to middle-income customers know all to well. That world is characterized by post-dated checks written to cover unexpected expenses and by the burden of triple-digit interest rates on short-term loans.

Jones said it makes sense for his stores to be near customers.

To paraphrase Morrison’s response: Count yourself lucky. Morrison did not specifically mention Advance America, the largest payday lending chain in the country, but his comments allude to the fact that the chain is feeling a squeeze like many of its competitors as lawmakers tighten restrictions governing the industry.

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