Sears Crosstown

[eastmemphisguy]

Originally Posted by jabogitlu

Awesome. I have a few friends that bought houses around McNeil/Pkwy that will be really happy to hear this.

The neighborhoods to the east of Cleveland are already pretty nice. I'm wondering about the streets between Cleveland and 240. They're pretty beat up (and dirt cheap) right now. Maybe the area will get fixed up? Bellevue, Cleveland, Claybrook, etc have a lot of potential but need some major TLC. I wish I knew something about fixing up old houses.

[jabogitlu]

I said McNeil/Pkwy, but I meant McNeil/Poplar. There's a little pocket of pseudo-blight right in there (or, well, was - it seems to have gotten better in the past couple years).

Anyway, I don't know much about fixing up old houses either, but, heck, I wish I just had some extra cash lying around. I'd be snapping up some property for sure. I think the area between Poplar, Cleveland, I-240 and North Parkway will gentrify first, but if we can fix up Klondike all the way to Uptown, that will go a loooooong way towards helping out this part of Memphis. Realistically I think Crosstown will push the gentrification into Speedway Terrace and Klondike east of I-240, but I can always dream!

[Mouldy Old Schmo]

I wonder how much taxpayer money is going to fix up the Crosstown.

[jabogitlu]

I don't know; depends on the nature of some of the other loans they've got lined up.

Let's just say - a hell of a lot less taxpayer money than built I-240 and TN-385 and TN-78 and I-269 and Austin Peay and Germantown Parkway and Goodman Road that caused the crap like Crosstown to happen in the first place.

[jabogitlu]

I was lucky enough to receive a tour of the Sears building today. Wow, is there a LOT of space in there! Got to climb up in the tower as well - it's beautiful and would make a pretty awesome penthouse suite.

Interesting to see the old cafeteria and bank still like they left 'em, just with lots of peeling paint and smashed glass. The warehouse section of the building is gigantic with huge pillars and totally open floorplans.

[tigerphan]

I'm glad this is finally happening but I wish it would depend less on taxpayer funding....seeing as how it will be leased up and maintained by private companies and individuals.

Originally Posted by jabogitlu

Let's just say - a hell of a lot less taxpayer money than built I-240 and TN-385 and TN-78 and I-269 and Austin Peay and Germantown Parkway and Goodman Road that caused the crap like Crosstown to happen in the first place.

TN 385 and major freeways built into areas that don't yet have development restrictions and zoning are definately enablers of sprawl...but they are not the cause of sprawl and the corresponding decay of the inner city. If we can't be honest about the root cause of our sprawl problems, we can never truly address them.

[tigerphan]

Originally Posted by eastmemphisguy

The neighborhoods to the east of Cleveland are already pretty nice. I'm wondering about the streets between Cleveland and 240. They're pretty beat up (and dirt cheap) right now. Maybe the area will get fixed up? Bellevue, Cleveland, Claybrook, etc have a lot of potential but need some major TLC. I wish I knew something about fixing up old houses.

That may be the new focus for some redevelopment efforts in the future......depends really on who owns those properities.

[jabogitlu]

Originally Posted by tigerphan

I'm glad this is finally happening but I wish it would depend less on taxpayer funding....seeing as how it will be leased up and maintained by private companies and individuals.



TN 385 and major freeways built into areas that don't yet have development restrictions and zoning are definately enablers of sprawl...but they are not the cause of sprawl and the corresponding decay of the inner city. If we can't be honest about the root cause of our sprawl problems, we can never truly address them.

I guess my argument was that one could view Crosstown as an infrastructure investment. These companies will be stacked on top of each other (and paying rent), instead of spread along a highway which taxpayers would build in order for workers to get there. May be apples and oranges, but...

If highways aren't the major cause of sprawl, what would you say is? I agree that there are other factors (many of which highways enable, such as cheap land). In places like Memphis, the inability of race/class to coexist peacefully seems to exacerbate the sprawl of the landscape.

[tigerphan]

Originally Posted by jabogitlu

In places like Memphis, the inability of race/class to coexist peacefully seems to exacerbate the sprawl of the landscape.

I think it was almost exclusively forced bussing in Memphis. It was clearly too much and too fast for what the city was ready for. Beyond the racial issues in a town where things were still very touchy (This is where King was shot).....you can't honestly expect to families to stick around when their son is bussed 40 minutes to another school and their daughter is bussed an hour in the other direction and districts are redrawn seemingly every 20 minutes.

The near-death of the inner city and sprawl were the unintended consequence of those well intentioned but poorly implemented policies. Before those population shifts, downtown and mid town was where all the best public services and amenities were located. The areas where today’s suburbs are located were tiny independent towns surrounded by miles of rural area.

After this occurred, places like mid town and downtown started to decline – including the area around Crosstown. Amenities started to move to the suburbs to service the paying customers who were flocking to those areas. By the 1980s, the damage was done. Those tiny suburbs were now established and independent and could attract residents and business based on their own merit. Employers even started to move to the outskirts of town. The middle and upper class had less investment in the city and the public schools...which declined (and still is declining). It was a death spiral that is still going in in some ways.

There were other factors. Of course being in middle America, where people get married and have children fairly young, Memphis was behind the curve on some of the redevelopment efforts that swept other cities. The suburbs are still superior places to raise a family if you prefer public schools to private, but people now are waiting longer to have children and the south is far more welcoming of all types of lifestyles today than it was 3 decades ago…..so you are seeing young professionals without children choosing to locate in culturally distinctive neighborhoods. Young families still flock to the suburbs en masse, but today’s trend is beneficial to culturally unique parts of the city as well as the suburbs that manage to offer good public services and reasonable taxes.


Things like highways and widely available FHA loans are just enablers.....they increased the speed and intensity of the developments out in the suburbs but they DID NOT cause it. Hwy 385, Winchester Road and Stage Road would still be a highways to nowhere had people not moved "out east" in the past 50 years and built communities with attractive housing, good schools, and enough amenities to at least cover the basics (and also some luxuries).

In my opinion Memphis will continue to see increased redevelopment and investment within the downtown core and mid town that cater to young people without families. Projects like Sears Crosstown will happen all over the parts of town that have unique sense of place….like architecturally or culturally significant areas.

I don’t see much of a future for suburban areas without good public services and reasonable taxes. Frayser, Whitehaven, and Hickory Hill don’t have a very positive future unless the public school situation changes…..and I don’t see any meaningful public education reform happening in this country during my lifetime. If you take away good public schools from the suburbs or continue to raise taxes in Memphis without acceptable levels of infrastructure investment, the entire metro area will decline. Memphis needs attractive suburbs with good public schools just as much as those suburbs need Memphis to continue investing in its core (private and public investment in places like Crosstown is an example) in order for the entire metro to attract people from other parts of the country and the world. I see animosity between the suburbs and the city as very damaging and counter productive for that reason.

[bjh]

Here we go again. Will they ever get this show on the road? These articles are from June 2014.

A final look inside the Sears Crosstown building Memphis - Memphis Business Journal

Developers pull $115M in permits for Sears Crosstown - Memphis Business Journal