Author: Halley Johnson

The Union Avenue Methodist Church’s dwindling congregation has relocated, but the future of the historic building remains in its hands.

Plans to demolish the church, which is located at the corner of Union and Cooper, are in the final stages. Last week, CVS pharmacy filed a development proposal for the property, currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

June West, executive director of Memphis Heritage, hopes the church will consider other possibilities. West said that several groups interested in maintaining the building have contacted both the church and Memphis Heritage, but due to miscommunication, the contract with CVS was signed before other options were fully considered.

“We don’t deny that it would cost money to restore,” West said at a community meeting last week, “but as long as there are people in the community willing to do that, it’s worth a discussion.”

Besides the uproar over tearing down a historic building, West pointed out the church’s design merit.

“There are significant architects involved,” she said — namely John Gaisford, who designed the Memphis courthouse and the Falls Building downtown, and Pink Palace architect Hubert T. McGee. “Memories shouldn’t be the only thing that saves a structure.”

Though keeping the building intact is Memphis Heritage’s first priority, several community members voiced their hopes for, at minimum, good urban design in the proposed CVS project. Kelly Reaves, who attended the meeting on behalf of CVS, presented the pharmacy’s plans and pointed out the compromises they’ve made.

In the proposal, the CVS building has been pulled to meet the street, in accordance with the restrictions a proposed Midtown zoning overlay will implement to ensure Midtown’s urban fabric.

“We realize that the Midtown overlay has not been approved,” Reaves said, “but we have been very conscious to meet a lot of those needs.”

The CVS plans go before the Land Use Control Board on July 8th for approval.

West hopes that before that date Memphis Heritage can facilitate an assessment of the building’s condition — and at the very least, a conversation between the church and potential developers interested in adaptive reuse.

“You have to look at it financially as well as emotionally,” West said, “and I do think that this building is worth saving.”

Six students sit facing a large projector screen in Ridgeway Middle School’s music room with djembes, or African drums, at their feet. Teacher Ken Greene fiddles with the controls of the computer that sits at his desk, and a classroom in Fairfax, Virginia, materializes on the screen. These students are wielding violins, and their teacher gives the Ridgeway students a thumbs up. Greene leans forward and asks, “Do you mind if we jam with you?”

Promethean’s ActivBoard, the 78-inch computer screen/chalkboard hybrid recently installed in several Memphis City Schools music labs, has connected Ridgeway students to classes in France, Belgium, and, last week, Virginia.

“Technology is such an integral part of most students’ lives,” Greene says. “It seems logical that we’d bring that familiarity into the classroom and make the experience not only more enjoyable but I think, overall, more effective.”

The students use ActivBoard for activities usually restricted to individual assignments, such as taking quizzes and practicing musical notation. ActivBoard also helps students to collaborate and create their own music while learning technology.

Greene can supply his own questions for games created specifically for ActivBoard, and the system tracks the progress of each student and the class as a whole.

“We get that immediate response and feedback,” Greene says. “It really serves us well in the classroom.” He also uploads student progress to the class website, where students can find music they’ve made, as well as homework assignments.

“When the students go home, they have a connection to our classroom and to our material,” Greene says.

Though the current labs were financed by a grant from Yamaha, the city schools are hoping to put ActivBoards in more Memphis classrooms.

“We’re going to keep on developing great relationships and using technology for all kinds of education,” Greene says.

The Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission has an ambitious goal: to make Memphis “one of the safest communities of its size in the nation by the end of 2011.”

Last week, community members gathered to discuss Operation Safe Community, a joint initiative between the crime commission and the University of Memphis. Started in 2006, Operation Safe Community targets crime through 15 strategies that focus on drug and gang activity, student safety, domestic violence, and restoring abandoned buildings.

“We didn’t want it to be just a law enforcement program. We wanted it to be broader than that,” said Bill Gibbons, Shelby County district attorney general and chair of Operation Safe Community.

Gibbons said that, since the inception of the program, serious crime has decreased 16 percent.

Each strategy is spearheaded by a community leader whose expertise can add to the overall success of the program. For instance, Memphis mayor A C Wharton oversees the “problem properties” part of the plan.

“You don’t have to be an expert to see the correlation between the physical condition of our various neighborhoods and the crime within those neighborhoods,” Wharton said. After presenting several buildings and explaining their intended uses after renovation — community facilities, housing, open spaces, a charter school — Wharton acknowledged the depth of the problem in many Memphis areas.

“We’re going to go after the worst of the worst and do the absolute best we can,” Wharton said.

Operation Safe Community also targets drug dealers, gun crime, gang activity, and student truancy. Though the Memphis Police Department plays a vital role, the initiative also works to integrate law-breakers back into the community.

“It’s the combination of law enforcement with people in the community that makes this program successful,” said Judge John Fowlkes. “Even today, with these successes, our community is creating too many people ready to commit crimes.”

Rarely are the terms “fire safety” and “adorable” used at the same time, but that was before the Memphis/Shelby County Veterinary Medical Association began raising money for pet oxygen masks.

Invisible Fence, a company that uses signal-based training to contain pets without conventional fencing, works with cities across the country to equip local fire trucks with pet oxygen masks.

The donation-based program offers pet masks to municipalities for free. With the masks, firemen are able to treat pets affected by smoke inhalation. The masks, which come in three sizes, are designed to fit cats and dogs of all breeds, but work for some other animals, as well.

“If you’ve got a ferret, it’ll probably fit,” says Barney Raborn, president of Invisible Fence of Memphis. “It would not fit a fish, though.”

Jokes aside, the masks will help solve a not-so-cute problem: pet deaths from smoke inhalation.

“It happens more than you think,” says Raborn of fire-related pet deaths. “There are 40,000 to 50,000 incidents a year.”

Given that, Invisible Fence and the Memphis/Shelby County Veterinary Medical Association want to ensure that every local fire truck has a pet mask.

Memphians who want to help can donate directly to the medical association, or they can donate at their veterinary clinic.

A donation of $25 covers the cost of one mask, while a donation of $75 covers a set of three in all different sizes. SunTrust and First Tennessee also have accounts set up for donations under the name “Puppy Breath.”