condo – Memphis Flyer

There’s no denying the sights of natural beauty downtown living has to offer, namely the Mississippi River. But everybody knows Midtown is the greenest spot in the city. Overton Park is the main leafy feature, but Midtown is bustling with trees from one end to the other. And now, with Glenmary at Evergreen, a newly renovated condo building on North Parkway and Evergreen, Memphians are getting their best look yet at that feature.

“There’s no view like it in Midtown,” says Martin Group Realty principal and broker Terry Saunders. “It’s the green carpet of Midtown.” She’s referring to the panoply caught from atop the Glenmary: trees to the horizon in all directions — with the downtown skyline jutting above it in the distance.

Glenmary at Evergreen used to be Woodmont Towers, built in the 1960s by Avron Fogelman. The M Collective, the redevelopment team for the Glenmary, has drastically overhauled the Woodmont. There’s new HVAC throughout the building, all the finishes are new, along with new lighting and hardware, smooth ceilings, new kitchens, entryway and interior doors, landscaping, and a spiffy, fresh building exterior. Interior design was done by Amy Carkuff.

The quality of the work can be seen as soon as you walk in the doors. “The lobby is contemporary, hip, funky,” Saunders says. The feeling extends into the lounge, with its billiards table, comfortable seating, flat-screen TV, and Internet café. The overall effect is boosted considerably by the photographs placed throughout the lobby, the lounge, and on each floor at elevator landings. “It’s a real tribute to Jack Robinson,” Saunders says. The photos, from Memphis’ Jack Robinson Gallery of Photography, are of fashion, celebrity, and music subjects. The lobby is graced by the elegance of Robinson’s photos of the Dior Salon and the palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, taken in 1959.

The Glenmary is a condo with benefits. “It’s an unbelievable array of amenities,” Saunders says. Like: the Sky Deck roof garden, on the southwest corner of the building’s rooftop, where you can take all that green in. (“It’s Midtown’s first roof garden,” Saunders says.) Like: a pool area with a Jacuzzi, a cabana with a bar, a fire pit, and lounge furniture. Like: a fitness center and additional storage for residents on the basement floor. Like: Each floor has two laundries with two sets of washer/dryers in each. Like: Nine-foot ceilings on all floors except the ground floor, which has 10-foot ceilings. Like: The Glenmary is pet-friendly and has covered and uncovered parking (covered is yours for a one-time, up-front fee). And: Every unit has a balcony, Troy Glasgow

full-sized, stainless-steel appliances, oversized (by Midtown standards, especially) walk-in closets, granite countertops in kitchens and bathrooms, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a choice of stained concrete or bamboo floors.

The homeowner-association dues include basic cable and Internet connections in every unit, insurance for common areas, and maintenance of the building and grounds. There’s also wireless Internet available in the common areas.

Green spaces are accessible on the Glenmary’s grounds and immediate proximity. There’s a doggy park, a treed grassy area, and a limited-access gate from the property to the adjoining V&E (Vollintine and Evergreen) Greenline walking trail.

The Glenmary is 11 floors high and has 169 units. Units run from $82,000 for a studio condo to $204,000 for a top-floor, 1,322-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath condo. There is also a penthouse on the 11th floor (it originally was the space Fogelman made for his mother to live in) that runs for $324,000 and has three bedrooms and two baths over 2,278 square feet. Other units on the top floor can also be made penthouses on demand.

Though the Glenmary is abuzz with subcontractors and workers putting more elbow grease into the building, models are complete, and the development is open for business. All common areas will be complete by later this summer, and units are available for move-in 45 days from closing. Martin Group Realty is handling all sales.

For more information, call Martin Group Realty at 881-6052. ■

Anyone who’s ever lived in a condo will tell you: Condo living necessitates smart living. When it comes to your stuff — clothes, kitchen items, laundry essentials, mail — you can’t be frivolous with a condo space the way you can with a 2,500-square-foot house. That said, a home can get just as messy in 2,500 square feet as it can in half that.

The key to household sanity is, of course, organization. But if organization was simple, everybody would be organized. In my experience, entropy is the rule rather than the exception, and home spaces aren’t easily kept free of clutter.

Thankfully, there are lots of smarties out there to offer some solutions for organizing your home. John Loecke is one of them. He wrote Organizing Idea Book, a handy guide to getting your house in order.

Organizing Idea Book has lots of tips from professionals and suggestions on different methods of storage and display of household items. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, of course, and one of the best features of the book is that it gives the reader lots of different means to get to the same happy-home goal.

To be sure, much of Loecke’s advice is common-sense stuff, such as the suggestion to “place things at their point of use” in the kitchen. And the book has a love of hooks and pegboard that’s borderline fetishistic. To be fair, hooks are a hit at my household too: My 2-year-old daughter gets a kick out of hanging her little purses and necklaces on hooks in her room. (The book also states, “Rooms exclusively devoted to the activities of children don’t have to be chaotic.” Says you.)

The book can also be a little frustrating in its suggestions for storage in the kitchen. I’d love extra cabinets too, but where am I going to put them?

But the author evidently grasps human psychology, as when he suggests: “Avoid forcing yourself to learn new habits. If shoes are always piling up by the door, create storage for them there by adding a large bin or basket.” This is helpful advice coming from a realistic perspective, and it’s far preferable to phony rah-rah cheerleading that readers must change everything about themselves to have an organized home.

Some of the kitchen storage ideas and cabinetry are the stuff of dreams — I may have drooled a little on page 37. But the book’s best suggestions are universal: “Getting organized isn’t about changing the way you live, but rather it’s about accommodating your lifestyle” or “Pretend you’re a stranger and write down the things in each space that need improvement.”

One of the better features of Organizing Idea Book is the resources it lists, including companies that sell containers and organizing supplies, furnishings, and storage systems.

True to its name, there’s lots of ideas in Organizing Idea Book, and lots of them are good. And, really, there’s no excuse, so armed, that your own space can’t be relatively crazy-free.

So, buy multipurpose furniture: a bench for putting on shoes that also has storage spaces, an attractive coffee table that can conceal magazines and remote controls. Use see-through and open-topped storage bins to teach your kids to clean up their toys. Repurpose items that are no longer useful in one part of the house and give them new life elsewhere.

In a world where there’s such a thing as the National Closet Group (www.closets.com, natch), how hard can it be? ■ — GA