The old Memphis Cycle & Supply Co. building at Monroe and Lauderdale will have a cycle shop, a coffee shop, retailers, and office space.
It’s customary when asked about Memphis’ progress to brag about the $11 billion in recent new construction, on against-all-odds projects like Crosstown Concourse, and the continuing downtown boom. Regularly overlooked is arguably the most exciting movement under way in Memphis, the one that is working hard to breathe new life into core city neighborhoods like Frayser, New Chicago/Smokey City, Gaston Park, and South City.
Redevelopment in such places is a tall order, considering that the area inside the 1970 Memphis city limits has had 170,000 people move away, leaving many neighborhoods with half as many people as they once had. However, most of them still have churches, nonprofits, and community activists that are providing foundations for their neighborhoods’ future.
That’s what makes The Edge one of the more interesting neighborhood revitalization programs in Memphis. It has had no such foundation.
What we now know as The Edge — the area immediately east of downtown — was once a bustling industrial and commercial district, where small manufacturing companies thrived, bread was baked, vehicles were repaired, and the city’s three largest hospitals dominated the landscape. But the area was largely abandoned after 2000 as large and small businesses closed their doors and/or moved away.
And yet, in the past two years, this overlooked neighborhood has given birth to a flock of new businesses, as artisan’s studios, a brewery, cycle shop, and restaurants have opened in the area between Fourth Street, Jefferson, Union, and Manassas.
The Edge’s success is a testament to the Memphis Medical District Collaborative, a group of “Eds and Meds” who came together to make the rejuvenation of this part of the inner city a priority. These institutions — Baptist College of Health Sciences, Memphis Bioworks Foundation, Methodist/Le Bonheur Healthcare, Regional One Health, Southern College of Optometry, Southwest Tennessee Community College, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital/ALSAC, and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center — are power players on their own, but together, they have the ability to create a better future for a district mostly defined today by 250 acres of parking lots and garages.
The Edge’s success is a testament to the Memphis Medical District Collaborative, a group of “Eds and Meds” who came together to make the rejuvenation of this part of the inner city a priority.
It’s hard to bet against them. Together, Edge businesses employ 16,000 people, educate 8,000 people, and have $1.2 billion in purchasing power and operating budgets of $2.7 billion.
While Tommy Pacello, president of the Medical District Collaborative, has been praised for his visionary leadership, he quickly points to the influence of the Edge’s educational and medical partners. They are “at the table together and nothing would happen without them,” he explains.
If The Edge is to become the quality place to live, work, and play that the Collaborative imagines, something has to be done to reduce the $370 million spent each year for parking. “If we are to have a thriving Medical District, we have to do more than use so much land to store cars,” says Pacello. “If we’re not working on that, it makes [developing] a mixed-use, mixed-income district that much more difficult. More vibrant real estate infill becomes more feasible if we don’t have to deal with using so much land to store automobiles.”
While Pacello is encouraged by the tangible changes in the Medical District, the intangible signs of progress are just as motivating. The 2017 annual survey shows a shift in perceptions among employees and students in only a year. “In the first [year], people said ‘someone should do something.’ With the second, that shifted to a cohesiveness and connection with the district. It’s not just a transactional place [where people go to work and school], but more of a place where people can develop connections. I thought, ‘Wow, this is beginning to happen.’”
No one at the Memphis Medical District Collaborative is glossing over the challenges of achieving the goals of its “Live Local, Buy Local, Hire Local” program. After all, 97 percent of employees and students in the district drive there and less than 3 percent of employees and 6 percent of students live within the district.
This defies the search for a “silver bullet” solution that characterizes many other projects. Rather, Pacello says the Edge situation calls for “silver buckshot,” an array of simultaneous actions that, when taken together, can transform the district.
With $3 billion in planned capital investment and 5,000 new jobs targeted for the next five years, the Memphis Medical District Collaborative has an awful lot of buckshot, and because of it, Pacello is confident that the timing is perfect to change the image — and the reality — of the area.
