Uptown Memphis digs mixed-use project
The Commercial Appeal | By Tom Bailey Jr.
Bulldozer operator Tommy West clears land on Thursday at Danny Thomas and North Parkway, north of St. Jude's, for a mixed-use project to serve Uptown Memphis.
Photo by Kyle Kurlick
A curious Uptown resident sent her e-mail at 10:34 a.m. Thursday to the Uptown Memphis official Tanja Mitchell: "What's all the digging? The earthmoving means more stores -- within walking distance -- are in store for the vast, 100-block Uptown Memphis neighborhood. Site preparation has started on a mixed-use development of commercial, residential and office buildings near the northwest corner of Thomas and A.W. Willis. The site is across Willis from the back gate of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The first tenant will be a SunTrust bank branch, for which construction should start this summer, said Alexandra "Alex" Mobley, vice president of Henry Turley Co. But the partnership of Turley and Belz Enterprises, working with the City of Memphis, is seeking to recruit a pharmacy, medium-size grocery and other tenants.
The new development sits on the southern edge of Uptown, bordered by Willis on the south, Mill on the north, Seventh on the west, and a new extension of Uptown Street on the east. The SunTrust branch will be at the corner of Willis and the newly lengthened Uptown Street. Uptown is the redevelopment of what had been one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, once anchored by a blighted Hurt Village public housing project. It's a varied-income community of public housing, market-rate homes and affordable rental units for low-income families.
Robert Barnes works on new curbs and walkways Thursday for a mixed-use development in Uptown Memphis near Thomas and A.W. Willis.
Photo by Kyle Kurlick
Since work started in 2004, 268 single-family homes, 549 apartments, a 69-unit senior facility and $12 million in infrastructure have been built, Mobley said. The mixed-use site sits at the highly visible, southern entrance to Uptown, where thousands of cars a day pass through the Thomas (U.S. 51) and Willis intersection, Mobley said. Single-family homes lining the north side of Mill overlook the mixed-use site. Buffering those residents from the bank and future businesses will be a row of more dense residential housing, perhaps town homes, on the south side of Mill.
Tax-increment financing is paying for the site work, Mobley said. That lets cities obtain development bonds to fund infrastructure improvements and to use taxes generated by the development to pay off the bonds. "Our objective was to get the basic services that pretty well have abandoned a lot of areas of the inner city," Henry Turley said. "One is a grocery. We don't have a grocery deal made yet, and that would be an objective," he said. "And there needs to be a drugstore." The ideal place for a 25,000-square-foot grocery would be on the west side of Thomas, where the long-closed Chism Trail grocery once operated, Mobley said.