These days, many people, even those with a cup half-full attitude, consider Commerce Square the symbol for downtown Memphis. It’s less than half-full and its future is in doubt.
But for us, it’s just as much the signalization poles at intersections. They are symbols that remind us of the benign neglect that has characterized downtown for so.
There are fine-looking green poles on Main Street, but at intersections, there are often poles – we count about three dozen of them – that are either not painted or have different colors for different parts of them. That’s because three city agencies have responsibilities for various parts of the poles, and as a result, no one has responsibility as the agencies debate who’ll pay the paltry sums for painting them.
City of Memphis Engineering is responsible for the arms of the poles that hold the signal lights. Memphis Light, Gas & Water Division is responsible for the poles themselves. In some cases, City of Memphis General Services installed the poles.
In other words, everybody is in charge and nobody is in charge, and in that way, it sums up our feelings about downtown.
Hypnotized by Our Own Rhetoric
All of us are accustomed to the glowing rhetoric about downtown, and it does seem to have a hypnotic effect on elected officials in particular. City and county officials have watched – and propelled – the abandonment of offices downtown. County officials (ironically led by the former head of the Center City Commission) started moving offices out of downtown with a vengeance in the late 1990s, and only downtown patriarch Jack Belz raised an alarm. It was ignored.
It was the beginning of the erosion of downtown as an office hub for our region. Slowly but surely, other firms abandoned downtown and county officials couldn’t really complain about it since they contributed to it. The Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t complain or recruit firms to downtown because it said it represented the whole county and couldn’t show partiality. The mayor of Memphis talked a good game about downtown, but never used his bully pulpit to fight for firms to stay downtown.
The Center Commission was so totally politicized that it seemed paralyzed when it came to doing its job, which should have been fighting aggressively to keep every job and firm and making it an issue that the mayors had to respond to. Upon the announcement by SunTrust that it was moving, the Center City Commission failed to sound the alarm and instead said: “Of course (we’re) sorry to see SunTrust leave, but it is hardly the death knell for the Downtown renaissance.”
When Storage USA left downtown a few years ago, the Center City Commission said: “Times change. It’s not a reflection on downtown.” It made similar comments when Union Planters Bank left, when Ellers Oakley Chester and Rike moved, when Shelby County Government moved hundreds of employees out of downtown, when Glanker Brown just moved out and when other important employers closed their downtown offices. It’s anybody’s guess what downtown has to look like for someone at the CCC to understand that we have a serious crisis that needs strong, decisive leadership to correct.
Standing for Something
It’s no wonder that with four decades of experience in the downtown core, we’ve never seen it as poorly maintained and more in need of desperate attention than right now. We can only imagine what it would look like if there hadn’t been so many people talking so much about the “downtown renaissance.”
Too often, the people we expect to articulate and fight for a defining principle or a critical issue seem to go along to get along. It’s inexplicable why this is such a core part of our civic DNA. It’s as if there is never anything important enough for some leaders to drive a stake in the ground and tell it like it is. Instead, we soft peddle the overwhelmingly negative impacts on downtown and perpetuate the myth that the local economy is strong and positioned for the future. It’s a curious attitude of laissez faire, because any honest reading of key economic indicators most often puts Memphis in the bottom of the city rankings.
Unfortunately, in the case of the bank move eastward a couple of years ago, The Commercial Appeal became a co-conspirator in misleading the public with the editorial, “SunTrust move’s no death blow.” Around the same time, The Commercial Appeal perpetuated the self-delusion: “Downtown Memphis office market gains momentum.” Contrary to the editorial, it was indeed time to panic, or at least display some sense of urgency. We’ve watched anchor business after anchor business exit downtown without as much as a forceful word of protest from elected officials and downtown development leaders.
If downtown is in the midst of a renaissance, it’s hard to tell it at what was once called the hottest corner in downtown – Union at Main – where all four corners are typically vacant. If downtown is in the midst of a renaissance, it’s hard to tell it by the Peabody Place development on Main Street, where not one original tenant is left on the block.
Answering the Right Questions
We don’t want to belabor the point, but suffice it to say, if downtown Memphis is in a renaissance, we sure don’t want to see it struggle. Too often, we are seduced by our own hyperbole and lulled to sleep by our compulsion to define success by comparing Memphis against itself. That goes double for downtown. But, compared to other cities, our progress is defined at best as modest.
After the SunTrust decision, the Center City Commission said: “What downtown once was, it will never be again.” That’s certainly the case, but surely, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t put up a fight or make a compelling public case for why it’s in our city’s best interest for these companies to remain downtown. It also begs the question: If downtown will never again be what it once was, then what does our downtown development agency plan for it to be? What is the plan to make it competitive, vibrant and the site of a real renaissance?
When the Center City Commission was formed, it was said that the future of downtown was as the government, finance, legal and arts hub for the region. We’re hard-pressed to say what’s left of that vision now. It should matter to all of us because the self-congratulations turning into a residential center belies the fact that the taxes produced by residences pale in comparison to commercial taxes (a fact complicated by the fact that so few new projects pay taxes in the first place).
Thank God for AutoZone, Morgan Keegan and Burch, Porter and Johnson. They continue to anchor downtown, but few companies have displayed the same measure of civic leadership. If you don’t understand the importance of all this, just talk to some of the young researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital who say the absence of a “real downtown” is a reason they don’t stay when their contracts expire.
Tell It Like It Is
It would be a sign of our civic maturity if, in the face of a decision by another business to abandon downtown, someone in a key position of leadership would tell it like it is – it is indeed a serious blow not only to downtown but to the entire city by eroding our tax base, attacking the vibrancy so desperately needed to sell our city and removing an important magnet for young talent.
A few years ago, a national columnist revisited Memphis after an absence of 10 years or so. His reaction: Downtown Memphis is in real trouble, and I’m not sure it’s going to make it. That’s why we begin by being honest. We owe it to ourselves. The real question is who has the courage to do it?
Here’s the question: why did this mass migration occur? Were the downtown office buildings charging too much per square foot vis-a-vis out east? Did the panhandlers frighten these folks? Did workers get tired of paying for parking?
Look, I love downtown too, even if I don’t work or live there. I want to see it flourish.
You have to admit, though, that Downtown has received more attention in the last 20 years than the rest of the city inside its limits, with the possible exception of the part of Cordova that was annexed.
Look at how North and South Memphis, Raleigh, Whitehaven and Hickory Hill have been ignored (yet Whitehaven seems to roll right on). Downtown has been showered with attention (granted, to make up for the 30 years of apathy that preceded it), so I don’t really understand this at all.
So, with all of that, with the Forum and the growth around it, why did the banks bail out? Why are the law firms leaving, when the courts are downtown?
When you get answers to those questions, you might be onto why this has occurred.
The law firms are leaving because their well-heeled clients live out east. It’s about being convenient to clients, not the courts. Most of those lawyers don’t see much of the inside of courtrooms anyway.
Flight from the federally-subsidized, poorly socialized underclass, by parents with school-age children — not affluent enough to have the MUS school bus pick them up — moved the population, wealth, and shopping centers of the city out to safer taxpayer-funded schools.
Service purveyors, your office tenants, followed the money, where real estate was less monopolized by a few families, and where drive time was less for both workers and customers and parking was safer and free.
Notice rich whites without school age children are the base of downtown residential, and despite their affluence, there are a lot of things they’re just too old or childless to be buying.
Downtown also has the over-concentration of churches that won’t die, even though they have more bums in attendance than members, enabling panhandling, setting of fires in winter that spread to other buildings, and no one empowered down Beale Street way to protect the workers and tourists down there by giving these alcoholics, whiners, and liars the bum’s rush they deserve. Institutionalize then for treatment for their poor helpless mental problems or just sheer bad luck for which they have no responsibility, to hear them tell it; but in any event, get them out of downtown in such numbers.
Banks gravitated to the more desirable depositors and borrowers; no-brainer there. Lawyers who don’t do a lot of criminal law but more transactional, tort, contract, or domestic practice are better off closer to their lawyers’ sub- and ex-urban homes and the similarly located homes and offices of their clients. I hesitate to say most lawyers don’t have to go to court every day, but they can schedule their General Sessions business on “their” chosen day(s) for collections work, and do the driving instead of the client doing it, in many cases.
You’ve noticed this site is longer on analysis and problem-pointing than it is on solutions. Tom may be a smart and nice guy, but if you are trying to get paid for consulting, you are going to do more boosterism than saying the unsayable and admitting the basic federal welfare and demographic trends are very unlikely to change until we go Chinese out of dire necessity, as they did, and that without that change, all these problems will continue and probably worsen.
Pack is right- a physical presence near the courts does not carry the weight that it once did- as explained by the decision makers at Glanker Brown recently. Sure they waxed eloquently concerning their history as a mainstay of the downtown employment scene and had much to say concerning the difficulty of the decision. However, when the decision was made, a downtown location was not considered vital to the firms future plans and no amount of apologizing or reasoning will be able to explain that fact away.
These points have been discussed here before- on a per square foot basis, office occupancy creates a far higher density of individuals than the same square footage devoted to apartments or condos. Assuming that new square footage is not added to the market, as one converts a market from office use to residential use the results are a net loss of population who are in downtown on a daily basis and a related decrease in street activity.
I agree with the point that the CCC’s inaction and denial concerning the office market is beginning to reflect a lack of understanding in the ranks about what it actually takes to create a vibrant neighborhood. The comment “What downtown once was, it will never be again” needs clarification. If it is to suggest that downtown will never be the commercial heart of the city again, well I think that is obvious. This leads one to believe that the CCC plans to enable a viable neighborhood with residential development as the driver. If that is the case, then we have seen nowhere near the level of density or intensity of development to achieve that goal. That and/or far more public parking must be made available to infuse the number of people into the market that is necessary to create the place that we want downtown to be.
The CCC’s lack of commitment to the downtown commercial market is also reflected in the CCC’s list of “Top Ten Redevelopment Sites” found on their “Available Commercial Properties” search page. Among others, this list includes the Sterick Building (I’m not kidding!), the Sears Building (which is not in downtown) and the Tennessee Brewery. I am not suggesting these buildings are not worthy of preservation should a willing developer come along, but does the CCC seriously think that these buildings should be listed as the “Top Ten Redevelopment Sites” downtown? That shows a complete lack of understanding in what it takes to recruit and maintain a healthy office market. When a company is looking for space, it usually needs properties that require a minimal investment or it needs raw land in order to build its own facilities. The Top Ten for Memphis commercial property should reflect these factors. Don’t just post the 10 most obviously vacant buildings downtown unless you can show an estimated cost of converting that space to Class A or B office. It should include marketing some of the parking lots that embarrassingly occupy some of downtown’s most visible real estate and existing office buildings (Class A and B only – C is probably better off being converted to residential at this point).
Sorry, after being so long winded, I wanted to say one more thing. I am not sure we are truly being honest if we start with the premise that downtown is not dead. There is little question that the active, vibrant downtown of yesterday is gone. You might say it was on its deathbed following the departure of Union Planters and Sun Trust simply represented its final heartbeat. It is a shell marginally filled with a few ghosts of former users and those who prefer a “deluxe apartment in the sky” as the Jefferson’s would say. Right now, the designation as “Downtown” carries little significance beyond a geographic reference.
That’s alright though- while Chelsea has always been the label of the same geographic area, its personality has evolved radically over time.
Listen, we’re all Memphians, we all want a better future than the gun barrel we’re staring down now, we all see positive things here, and yet we’re all afraid that Memphis is about to die and that our current positives will not sustain or grow Memphis. We all see huge swaths of land and people in decay. We know it’s here. We all want to do something about it.
I think many of us feel that anything we do will be enough and that anything we’ve done is actually helping, and it may be, but, going by our stats, it’s just not enough.
To get to the bottom of why, we need to ask ourselves Why are our efforts not having efficient effect on revitalization of our beloved home, Memphis?
Seems obvious:
“We keep trying to invest in the past” even though the past is over!
OK,” so what?”
Now we have a blank slate to create our new future!
GET EXCITED!!!
THAT’S what has to happen, CREATION from nothing. What we seek does not yet exist here in Memphis.
It actually doesn’t matter who, what, where, when, or, why downtown isn’t happening up to now, as much as, “what exactly are we doing about it, and how effective has it been?”. We have the stats that answer those questions.
Re-describing the problem is not a solution, we all know the problems.
Complaining with no solution is not a solution.
Blame storming is not a solution.
The problem is “If we’re doing plenty to no appreciable effect, what’s missing”.
To zoom and focus on, what is downtown missing? There may be a few broad issues that need addressing for long term solutions.
Downtown has residential development, but, all costs in the sticker is a bit high, and there are no ancillary service nearby. Who wants to live downtown and drive to Cordova to shop?
NOBODY!
Doing it that way, we get not enough residents in the nice new expensive development and some moving out. Check the stats.
Wages are definitely going to have to go down in some sectors globally. So must the costs of goods and services. In Memphis only the costs went up. A fraction of the population saw wage increases and left unsupported areas.
If the energy efficiency of the buildings is crap, people won’t like their utility bills in old buildings, so, what do you do when they move?
You retrofit and turn everything electric, put in a 3kw Powerdish or two on the roof so tenants pay rent and get super cheap heating & cooling, lighting and cooking. That’s a bit of a green attraction nationwide. YOU”LL GET TENANTS FOR A SMALL INVESTMENT. They will get to keep the buying power of their wages while they are earning instead of waiting on a fractional return via tax return. This would attract creative types, degreed and non-degreed, we need both.
DON”T try to make up the difference in utilities in rent profit for at least two years, give people a chance to get some savings. People ended up on credit because they couldn’t generate any savings and a crash was inevitable. They left areas that cause that.
People like to live somewhere that is not a trap to keep them there. People like to feel free to go or to stay. Economic traps do not work to attract or retain desirable people, that stats are in.
IF you had a decent, or, even spectacular GROCERY STORE nearby, people who would be attracted to this would like a Whole Foods, and/or, a Balducci’s very nearby. A Walgreens and a Krogers won’t cut it alone, but, they’ll need a presence too. The tenants of your green area would never want to move. You’ll need to serve many economic classes well. Service with a smirk is “a joke”, people like to be served, not placated.
So far, we’ve created a place where you can afford your bills and rent, and put in decent groceries, but, people living downtown may work at home, so, you need office supplies downtown.
Now you have a place where you can get office supplies, afford to live and decent food, what else do you need?
A decent dry cleaners when you do have to go to meetings, or, appear on Live IP video conference.
You need retail, art, music, restaurants, clothing, arty jewelry, preferably, all that by local artisans, all the affectations of “reality,” and all of it must be done in an excellent manner. Something to make your new green neighborhood personal, attractive, desirable, durable. But there is nothing in Memphis that supports teaching these artisans to do anything in an excellent manner. Been to the farmer’s market? Pretty haphazard, yet charming. Not enough. It’s got to be done better. HOW? Provide training. Practice.
You’re going require a big meeting of all the players, it’s got to be done right.
You’ll need to current owners of vacant properties, the stores mentioned, the farmer’s market folks.
Give (under special contract) the farmer’s market an indoor space to operate everyday all year and let them spill into the sidewalk during the weekend market in summer so they can cool off and attract more patrons.
Separate their people into departments: food and herbs, plants, and artists.
Then give each division a bay to operate in with a contract that they would be shooting to develop a regular retail store, with at least two or more employees, and regular hours 8 am or earlier to 8 pm. or later. Do this as an incubator project.
That is just one retail city block! It’s also VERY hip Memphis!
Independent Music is also very hip Memphis, look at the Music Foundation on South Main. Maybe a nightclub “like” the HiTone would be good downtown too, many of it’s patrons live or would like to live in the area.
GET THE COURTS AND BAIL-BONDS OUT OF THE AREA.
They should all be in the office complex adjacent to the prison-jail out east. They need to be required to operate with a LOT more class than the classless operations that still exist downtown today.
Having witnesses and victims of crime, including violent crime unprotected and mixing in the basement with their victimizers is a very bad policy and a recipe for neighborhood retaliation and gang behavior. The lawyers won’t have to travel as far if they stay downtown or already moved out east.
If we can get appropriate sentencing and EFFECTIVE rehabilitation going that problem will need to create a self healing and perpetuating system of support to keep the numbers of new and re-offenders down. When there is psychological support and opportunities for them to do something legal and gain self-worth instead of having to commit crimes to eat, new offenses will disappear. That will help downtown’s image a LOT.
FYI, there are some people who get into the system only to get work and help. We provide no effective help. We use federal money for that for who knows what, really, who knows what? That’s a bad policy.
Fix it and all of Memphis steps toward desirability.
You already have a nearby entertainment district downtowners can walk to, IF it were safe enough, SO, get more police downtown. Getting rid of “waste of space tacky flat parking lots” is a stellar idea, secure decks only in downtown areas. Find some way to assist landowners in getting this done without going broke or buy them out fairly. It will be a wise investment in the long run. Make sure those decks have charging stations built in. Smart buildings are the only type to build now. It’s not hard to retrofit.
Commend the Mayor, City Council, and especially Larry Godwin for a visible police cleanup effort. It has made a VISIBLE difference in north and south Memphis. Bravo! Keep it up, diligence works. Downtown needs more presence all over downtown.
Forget the CCC, it’s not working out, maybe it would, maybe there’s a block in place, or, a necessary restriction missing, it needs looking into. They seem to be generating stats that they are for eastern migration instead of the downtown thriving. Get them on board, or, get rid of the BIG WASTE of city budget money. They shouldn’t be receiving city funds anyway.
But all of this will do no good if MCS doesn’t stop creating people not viable for work by the hundred thousands. MCS lives as if it can recreate the past. That should be the motto on the door, “Living in the past everyday, not designing a new future for anyone”. There are exceptions but they are about 5%. Bad bad Bad.
” Under the No Child Left Behind federal mandate, MCS was supposed to graduate 74.6 percent of its seniors in 2009. In 2010, it must graduate 77.6 percent of its seniors or risk punitive measures, although the state is requesting a waiver from the US Department of Education.Graduation rates in Memphis City Schools have slipped again, falling nearly 5 percentage points in a year to 62.1 percent.
Last year, the Memphis rate was 66.9 percent. The national average graduation rate is about 69 percent.
MCS missed its target by 12 points.
“We just had way too many kids drop out in this four-year time span,” said Bill White, head of school choice and student accounting for the district.”
Those stats don’t sound bad enough until you add up the attrition pre-graduation from kindergarten up. Attrition is the yardstick.
WHY?
Their families got sick of Memphis and left,
They saw more future not graduating with what they had learned at MCS and “doing something else” (though they had really given MCS a long chance staying in so long),
They already gave up on legal life in Memphis (which had their parents overworked, underpaid, committing crime, single, and unhappy turning to drugs in huge numbers) and began a life of crime of their own.
They saw themselves as worthless (seeing that one’s-self “could not” contribute to the betterment or welfare of one’s own family or community either by blocking, intitutionalized obstacles, economic inability, or devaluation) and thus couldn’t care less about life, theirs or yours since they can’t make either better.
The result of an Ivy League pricetag per student at MCS and no oversight.
Proud of it?
We should stop acting like we are. There’s 120 other MCS schools other than White Station. GET MCS ON TRACK OR GET RID OF IT, put it under Mayoral control get rid of the school board if you want it to happen.
What needs to happen?
THAT MEETING, where all the players necessary are present to provide everything needed to have a discussion on how we can turn all that space into one giant downtown incubator project and what kind of assistance we should get from the government, which means we’ll need an envoy from the whitehouse present.
I would suggest that some of the players be there in a live video conference session.
We’ll need a succinct multimedia presentation which will describe the problems in an overview manner (ariels, short 5 sec interviews, 10 sec slideshows of vacancy, vagrants, a brick from downtown pavement complete with “the odor”,
the current situation that has been created, with ariel shots,
and a visual description of the mechanics of the solution as we see them.
We’ll need to get some people who know how to create that presentation. I’ll volunteer my studio.
We’ll also need to alter the Memphis zeitgeist for long term viability.
The self perception of Memphis over time AND the way we traditionally look at things as Memphians is incomplete, because we have been mentally manipulated.
I have some plans on how to address that without insulting ourselves and just giving us something to think about without being able to opt out of thinking about it, in 15 seconds or less. I’ll volunteer my studio. I already have scripts written for 10 PSA’s. I’ll need assistance.
If we plan it and do it well, with a minimum of politicizing, this can work better than Portland’s renaissance. In fact, if it’s done right and supported by best practices, it can’t fail.
Press will do articles on new things and reputations worth having will spread by word of mouth, no banners campaign needed.
Frugal and focused, trained, attractive, desirable, well designed, opulent, workable, forward thinking, forward acting, durable, supportive, lasting, environmentally advanced, valued, growing, listening, those will be our “tags” for a new Memphis matrix.
Who has a vested interest in seeing this shot down and keeping business as usual/killing downtown, MCS, and our people’s future?
That would be a factor in success of this. If they can keep anyone who needs to be there from participating wholeheartedly. That’s it.
The shift of retail goods (department stores, speciality shops, etc) and retail services (lawyers, banks, FIR, etc) from downtown to the suburbs was caused by customers and employees moving to the suburbs – in Memphis and practically every city in the U.S. after World War II.
CCC had encouraged residential development that, until the housing bubble exploded, was revitalizing downtown; and this will begin again after the current economic depression. If you review the renaissance of SoHo, Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side in NYC after the 1970s, you will find that residential development led the way. The question is: What per cent of the Memphis Metropolitan Area’s current population plus the increase in 5, 10, 15 years can be attracted to downtown? There is a limit that is tied to the economic capacity of the metro area.
While we are waiting for a return to a normal economy, we could do some reorganization of agencies responsible for downtown. The Riverfront Development Corporation and the Beale Street Development Corporation should be folded into the CCC so that one agency is held accountable for downtown. CCC should be independent with oversight by the Mayor/Council of the new consolidated government. The current arrangement under two governments is difficult at best.
Well, you say increase in population and our stats say decrease in population.
I lived in SOHO 1981+ for a few years and my loft was a garage before it was converted. Some were warehouses, some friends converted some buildings in Brooklyn to really posh apartments.
You’re right about that.
If downtown was done right, we could attract in any economy, but, we’d have to be inventive and precisely design the who and where of it. The streets downtown are not traffic friendly, there will have to be some road restructuring, we need an overpass to the freeway for the forum and Pyramid. That big flat lot across the street needs to be a deck.
Maybe if City hall and MCS get cleaned out by the Mayor and the FBI we can use the money that’s currently being stolen to do some of that with the federal stimuli and get it right this time.
The CCC should be accountable by being held to standards of ethical practice and to statistics that state whether it is effective or not, and by what percent effective, a low percentage = not effective. Disband. NYC didn’t just put in residential, those residents had to be served with what they needed to survive in their neighborhoods and with reliable mass transit to get to others.
Every failed agency in Memphis is culpable for the demise of downtown.