The Russians supposedly called them Potemkin villages — elaborately constructed fake villages designed by Grigory Potemkin, lover of Russian empress Catherine the Great. True or not, the term has come to represent any fake construct that hides underlying poverty, decay, and abandonment.
With the bankruptcy of the Horizon high-rise condo project on the South Bluff and the foreclosure sale of One Commerce Square office building in the downtown core adding to an already long list of problem properties such as The Pyramid, do we have our own Potemkin Village?
Architect and planner Tony Bologna, who has worked in downtown Memphis since 1964, has some thoughts.
