Work hasn't started on the cobblestones, but it is supposed to start in either September or October. Its part of stage 4 of Beale Street Landing, which includes other landscaping along the river front.

Memphis has tons and tons of historic buildings and landmarks all over the city, a lot of which are still around because new urbanism never quite made it to Memphis on a large scale, although it hit Beale Street hard when they bulldozed 3 blocks of Beale, much of which were where musicians and people who frequented Beale lived, for an apartment tower and parking lots.

is there not a plan to lengthen beale st.? i think that would be a worth-while project.

Extending Beale east or west? If they're doing anything, they need to extend it west (not in a tacky way that tries to look like Beale Street) so the city can direct people down to their $51 million boat ramp. One Beale would have done a decent job at that, but oh well. There's also the issue of Riverside Drive.

Methodist University Hospital seeking $33M ER expansion
Memphis Business Journal

http://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/n...l-seeking.html

South Main Athletic Club, Cafe Wins $200K Loan
Memphis Daily News

http://www.memphisdailynews.com/news...ins-200k-loan/

Updated Plans Unveiled for Overton-Broad Connector
Memphis Flyer

http://www.memphisflyer.com/NewsBlog...road-connector

Memphis Flyer
http://www.memphisflyer.com/binary/a...green-lane.jpg

(2) New Holiday Inns set for airport area, Graceland
Memphis Business Journal

http://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/p...port-area.html

ALAN HOWELL | MBJ
http://assets.bizjournals.com/memphi...dayInn.jpg?v=1

Apartments head to Schilling Farms
$48 million investment includes office, retail space
Memphis Business Journal

http://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/p...ing-farms.html

Courtesy Paradigm Marketing
http://assets.bizjournals.com/memphi...dering.jpg?v=1

^^New Urbanism in the suburbs...That's funny as hell.

ark, i hadn't even looked at your last post, but in my mind, as i read the boyle comment, i said exactly the same things---new urbanism indeed. how long has that development standing? so they must have known that a new urbanism was going to be initiated before 2007. how much mixed development does southeast memphis, marshall, tate, olive branch, and northeastern desoto county need? of course, collierville, germantown, piperton, and rossville will be around that submarket, also.

boyle seems to have a huge commitment to the east memphis market, and its little section of kirby and poplar, and some interest in the throughway possibilities and shelby farms. looks like they could, in the spirit of spreading things around for the community good, build one of their nice office buildings downtown. probably will be just one more negative and doomsday column for a smart city article. i don't believe they have ever written anything positive regarding memphis.

as for the addition to beale street, i think that it would have to go east. i never realized that the beale district, at one time, covered an area of about four streets, and several blocks.

With what I believe was only one slight mention in the local press, Boyle stated that they were "interested" in building Downtown Memphis. They've also mentioned building a fourth amongst their Shady Grove/ Marsh Center buildings near Ridgeway & Poplar in East Memphis.

The need for new office space in Memphis is there, so maybe one day we will have a new tower, but a developer would be smart if they developed a hotel within that office tower. Banks listen more when a hotel will put their own capital toward construction.

As far as Beale existing father east, I'm only in my 20's, but I've heard others talk about Beale existing as an actual neighborhood full of musicians and those who lived in the community. The addition of a 300 room hotel on the east end of Beale would do wonders for extending it. The hotel would easily put people on the far end.

So far, at least three hotels had been proposed downtown that are adjacent to the Beale Street Historic District and FedExForum, but most have been delayed due to the economy and a lack of adequate financing:

- New 300-room Hilton hotel on Linden/MLK Ave (Royal Phoenix)
- New limited-service hotel on MLK @ Danny Thomas (Lowen Hospitality)
- Peabody Suites (Belz)

As for an eastward extension of the historic area, it would most likely be the result of any future plans by the city of Memphis to build a new, larger convention center, with the most ideal location being along Union and Danny Thomas, but that is still years down the road.

On the heels of the announcement that the Chisca on South Main will finally be redeveloped and spared the wrecking ball comes this. A project so huge it will dwarf the Chisca and completely transform the Crosstown area. Absolutely incredible. :cheers:

'Founding partners' commit to lease most of Memphis' Sears Crosstown Building
The Commercial Appeal

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news...most-of-sears/

last week i read the article by a "smart" writer, who scoffed at the idea of readapting the sears facility. his stated argument was primarily based on the fact that it was not a downtown building. to me, i am really impressed w/ the nine agencies coming forward to put these services in this building. the west clinic, the church wellness program, the artist, lebonheur, st. jude, residential component, grocery, and more. also, it seems that some big bucks are already being collected for some of the agencies. regardless, i think the school for arts and sciences and the salvation of this huge building, as it was long identified as one of 9 or 10 to save in the city. i say "gitty up!"

it seems to me to be a bit ridiculous to go to piperton to do business, when one is most likely passing 2 or 3 hundred office buildings before going into fayette county. it seems that it didn't take very long for some to plan out where their buildings would go, even before the rest of the beltway is finished. i hope that that the 240 corridor doesn't end up being left w/ plenty of space for building, both vertically and horizontally. from the plans that boyle has drawn up for collierville and saddlecreek, it pretty much will service the 100-150 thousand in that 5 mile radius. i continue to think, if the city is going to sell itself as a tourist destination, it needs a vibrant downtown, and one thing the smart article pointed out is the fact that the mayor, chamber, redevelopment groups, etc., can't just sit back and be passive about the banks, law firms, and other economy firms leave downtown for the suburbs. you know they have to be aware that their presence downtown is needed and wanted. what incentives do they need? free parking, places to shop, grocery stores, dry cleaners, and other businesses that are presently unavailable in sufficient number.

and, btw, it never helps things, when metro nashville-davidson-franklin-murfreesboro is compared to "Memphis", which is memphis proper; not metro memphis, which sometimes contains 7 counties and sometimes contains 8 counties. too, that the current official population estimate for shelby county is 936,000, but will hopefully soon reflect the 50-60 thousand hispanics left out of the census, plus asians and additional blacks. people need to understand that to accurately compare memphis, you compare memphis w/ nashville-davidson county; not the memphis city proper to the 15 county greater metro---16 counties and sometimes the useless csa. the ua of memphis really puts things into perspective. that number is a contiguous area of urban population somewhere around 1.12 million residents. big changes are coming to the census bureau, and it looks as if they are correcting some of these grossly misleading applications of numbers and areas.

Awesome news about Crosstown. I've been in and its amazing. Whomever is contracted to removed all of the asbestos tiles, lead paint, etc is about to make bank! I just hope this entire redevelopment is done correctly and not half ass.

Like you said chef, Shelby county is probably already at a million people.

Hello Folks,
 

Hey Everyone,

I'm new to skyscraperpage but a local Memphian. I look forward to sharing my photography and learning about upcoming developments in our city.

Thx,
Memphis T.

i have worked on my projects from 2007 until 9-16-11. using various measuring instruments and 2 statistical models, i feel confident that my information is correct, much w/in an acceptable margin of error. while i admit that i completed the complete models on shelby county only, it is where i knew the biggest errors were, and where it made more sense to correct.

in march of 08, shelby county already had surpassed its projected estimated numbers for 2010. memphis currently has a corrected proper population of 729,307, as of june 1, 2012. this does not account for the recent change of 5000+ by annexation. consequently, shelby county numbers remained as they were on the 1 june, 2012, 1,019,244. this number reflects census tracts and corrected numbers for the hispanic community. it does not reflect the approximate 1,300+ error/loss of counted asians, and the approximately 8.7% black residents. standard dev taken on the numbers in the control models remain constant, in order to run both models using these demographics. no islanders, pacific, etc., put into the total, even though those numbers run under less than .03 /100,000.

shelby county, in the least reliable model, yielded a 2004 + gain in total population of 916,096. the 2010 population for shelby county 1,022,242.
contiguous ua in 2010 was 1,162.886. as for msc enrollment, it rose for 4 consecutive years, but on tracking by officials, they dropped, by estimate, the school number by approximately 1400 students. after the 2010 count, they chose to raise it approximately by 2800 students. it is all interesting. interesting, too, is the total household numbers comparison, the 18% vs. 15% of state's total population.

forgot, welcome memphis T.

i happened to read this, after posting several hours to finding this article. first, the article has a great deal of energy, and it drew me in to read. it showed both photographic content, along w/ the article, itself. it gives a great deal of history and tells about an apparently great renaissance of the city and the downtown. although i have been reading quite about indy in the news the last several months, i was under the impression that it was because of the national spotlight on the sports news. also, i knew of the big addition to ups, fedex, and its new airport. anyway, if you haven't seen the article on the redevelopment of indy, the redevelopment corporation, the 9 billion+ spent on downtown, what they got for their investment for the community, and what repurposing, renovating, updating skyscrapers, and, of course, the influence the skyline has on a city, then you should enjoy this read. i think, along w/ me, that ark and i believe jr are big believers in the need of the principal center and its business core. apparently, much of the corporate move of headquarters, the building of skyscrapers, and the downtown draw has come from a healthy and hard-working redevelopment group, which sells its downtown through relocation, through retail, going after corporate business, and, surprise, getting services that the people ask for, in order to help them live downtown. i think they have grocery stores, markets, etc., and not a great many excuses of why they could not get one. the same is true of so many other services. too, it seems they know their facts about their downtown, the information is updated, and that apparently has placed them as america's #1 placement as the new boomtown. find the article at indy redevelopment and revitalization. one other thing that i noticed in the article is the fact that citizens are actually kept informed about what is going on in the way of building projects, revitalization, and the like. i noticed, as i went past a part of the baptist research center that it was difficult to actually tell what was old and what was current. noticed several buildings that were to be renovated still as they were 2 and 3 years ago, when their announcements were made for reworking, etc.

Polite correction (I realize the mbj had it wrong too). The illustration is by Paradigm Marketing & Creative www.2dimes.com - you can see our logo in the lower right and we actually own the copyright, not a2h.

Thanks

Welcome Memphis T! We're glad to have you here and looking forward to some great discussions.

Also, nice work on the census and population growth Chef. Very informative that our city and metro has many more people than believed. Also, I seriously think that for somewhat a a development boom to occur downtown all we need is one spark. That spark could be a grocery store, new lofts, a new office building, hell even a new hotel if developed and placed in the correct location can spur new restaurants which in turn could spark more commercial development in the form of entertainment.