MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Fried grits, down-home blues and a new luxury hotel will be central to the newest development taking shape in the city's famed Beale Street entertainment district.

The $52 million project, called Lee's Landing, will include Beale Street's first hotel and a Ground Zero Blues Club.

"People want to hear the real Delta blues, and we're going to offer that," said Bill Luckett, a co-owner with actor Morgan Freeman of the original Ground Zero in Clarksdale, Miss., famous for its fried catfish and fried grits.

Lee's Landing is named for Lt. George Lee, a black World War I veteran, community leader and reputed political boss of Beale Street in the early 1900s.

Bawdy and bustling in those days, Beale Street was an entertainment and business center frequented by black folks from throughout the Memphis and Mississippi Delta regions.

But by the 1970s, the nightclubs that once hosted entertainers such as W.C. Handy, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and B.B. King were gone. Political and social shifts had turned the strip into a rundown cluster of empty buildings.

The strip began a comeback in the 1980s, however, and now the Beale Street Historic District, with its bars, restaurants and shops, is a major tourist attraction and a key part of the revival of downtown Memphis.

Performa Entertainment, the private company that manages Beale Street for the city, puts the total number of visitors to the strip at 6 million a year. Performa is also a partner in Lee's Landing.

"We think that fully 40 percent of everybody who comes to Beale Street is either an out-of-state visitor or out-of-country visitor," said John Elkington, Performa's chairman.

The 200-room, $39 million hotel, part of the Westin chain, will have 21 suites and a Daily Grill restaurant providing 24-hour room service. Most hotels its size, Jones said, have three or four suites.