Big home sale: Tom Oreck buys Minnie Pearl mansion

Vacuum cleaner maker Oreck Corp. has insisted that its headquarters won't be moving out of New Orleans, but it appears that the president and chief executive officer sure is. Tom Oreck, Oreck's president and CEO and a son of founder David Oreck, has just bought a house at 874 Curtiswood Lane for $4.6 million from Scott Douglas Smith and his wife Nan Frazer Smith. The 7,800-square-foot house, once owned by the late Grand Ole Opry comedienne Minnie Pearl (Sarah Ophelia Cannon) and her husband, sits on 4.6 acres next to the Governor's Mansion. The Smiths bought it in 1999 for $1.1 million, extensively renovating it and making additions. They put the five-acre property up for sale in 2004 with Shirley Zeitlin & Co.

The Orecks have said that their company's headquarters wouldn't be moving from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Tom Oreck himself recently told Business TN Magazine that the company's headquarters wouldn't be moving at this time. But he was refuting comments to the magazine from board member Jim Amos of Franklin, Tenn., that Oreck would be moving its HQ here.