You know that empty lot next to Earnestine & Hazel’s on South Main?
Well, it’s not going to be empty for long. Phil Woodard and Paul Tashie are going to put a building on it.
They’ve been buying property on South Main for some time. “We started at 502 South Main and bought it from Shep Wilbun, back 22 years ago,” says Woodard, a developer with Woodard Properties. “That was our first building together.”
They then bought the double building at 523/525 South Main. “We renovated them over the years and had several tenants in there.”
The empty lot came with 523/525 South Main, which has housed several businesses, most recently Paper & Clay and Primas Bakery + Boutique.
“It’s the last available lot on either side of the block,” says Tashie, a developer as well as owner of Ciao Bella Italian Grill.
“When Harley-Davidson moved out of the 525 South Main building, I put a sign in the window,” Woodard says. “And I had four or five people want to rent that spot here during COVID. Here we are locked down and I had all these people that wanted it. I said, ‘If there’s a demand, we need to build.’”
The lot, which is about 25 feet wide and about 100 feet long, encompasses about 2,600 square feet, Woodard says.
He told Tashie, “We might as well build something with that lot.”
The building is being designed by archimania. “It’s going to be all modern. All glass front. I had one neighbor that wasn’t crazy about it, but I told them, ‘This is what I do and it’s going to be nice.’”
The design was approved by the Memphis Landmarks Commission. “They just approved it saying, ‘That’s what ought to go there.’ It’s an historic area. You cannot match the other buildings. It still has the lines as the other buildings. Same height — 18 feet tall. Just a one-story building. We could have built two or three, but one’s enough.”
But, he says, “I stay below the windows on the second floor of Earnestine & Hazel’s so they can keep the light in there.”
The building should be ready “before Thanksgiving.” Woodard adds, “I don’t know who’s going to rent it. A few people have called, but I don’t know.”
About 22 years ago, Woodard bought his first building on South Main. “Most buildings were boarded up. My first building was 508 South Main. We had tours through that thing. Well, everybody vacated right after Dr. Martin Luther King was shot. For that many years it laid vacant. When I bought 508, there was a tree growing out of the basement.”
He bought the building for he and his wife, Terry, to use as “an apartment for Downtown,” Woodard says. “We enjoyed going Downtown to the Orpheum and the ‘great nightlife’ of maybe the Peabody and a couple of restaurants. We couldn’t find [an apartment], so we built our own.”
Their old building now houses Diddy TV. “We enjoyed it. Had a big time. We had a house out East. We lived Downtown during the week and went home on the weekend.”
He began to buy more South Main property because he liked it so much. “That’s when Paul and I bought 502. He owns 506 by himself.”
Woodard then built an ultra-modern home on the river, but he and his wife eventually moved back to the South Main area. He built the house at Nettleton and Wagner. He recently sold the last of 30 townhouses he built next to their house on Front Street and Butler. “Archimania did the design. Single family homes. You have so many apartments.”
