Tag: gentrification

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

United in Grief

© Atomazul | Dreamstime.com
Buffalo’s East Side has faced tragedy throughout its history.

Ten people’s lives were stolen May 14, 2022, in a shooting fueled by white supremacy and bigotry. The wounds will never heal, and as a Buffalo native, I want to tell the story of Buffalo’s East Side before May 14th because this massacre isn’t the only tragedy it has faced. This is the product of decades of neglect, policy failures, inaction by those in power, and institutionalized racism.

Buffalo has the oldest housing stock in the nation. Many people live in homes that desperately need repairs and are a century old. Buffalo is also the sixth most-segregated city in the U.S. Decades of national and local policies — from redlining to neoliberalization to gentrification — created the conditions of this massacre. In the ’60s, Robert Moses cut the East Side in half and destroyed Buffalo’s Olmstead designed park system by replacing Humboldt Parkway with the Kensington Expressway. The expressway was seen as necessary because, at the time, white flight was occurring. As Black people began to invest in rooting themselves in Buffalo, white people departed to the suburbs. The continuity of the East Side was permanently ruptured, and in favor of white commuters. The pollution still poisons generations of residents, but they got good news on May 6, 2022: Lawmakers announced over $1 billion in support of an infrastructure project to restore Humboldt Parkway.

In the ’80s, the War on Drugs and policies of broken windows meant that many homes on the East Side were razed under the false pretenses of being suspected drug dens. Some homes were even occupied at the time, and their foundations still sit exposed underneath a layer of weeds that symbolizes a failure to address a racist past. In recent years, development via displacement has become the norm in Buffalo. Gentrifying forces slowly creep into depressed neighborhoods and increase property taxes. Lifelong residents, many living on fixed incomes, are pushed out.

Residents I spoke with during my MA research in Broadway-Fillmore, an East Side neighborhood, told me the story of their fight for a supermarket. The investiture of a supermarket by the powers that be is a blessing for growth, and a sponsorship of a future. A supermarket shows a commitment to care for residents, as all people need affordable, healthy, and accessible food. The Tops on Jefferson Avenue services much of the East Side because it is one of the only commitments to food justice in the area. And still, for some residents, that Tops is a 15-minute drive, or 90-minute bus ride. No matter how people get there, the supermarket’s significance is priceless.

Much of the national media attention has been focused on the Black community in the East Side, and that community has been harmed in ways I will never understand. But I’ve spent enough time in the City of Good Neighbors to know that the community extends well beyond race, religion, sexuality, gender, creed, politics. I have felt the love of people who are welcoming of everyone, including a naïve and green wannabe activist like myself. Buffalo’s East Side boasts a burgeoning immigrant and refugee population. At Public School 31 in Broadway-Fillmore, students speak a combined 24 languages. PS 31 is more cosmopolitan than some schools in New York City!

BIPOC are an important part of Buffalo’s tax base and also the most underserved. These are people who have historically been the subjects of violence by hateful people, and May 14th is not the first instance of violence directed at minorities there. The city is $20 million in debt, and more than $11 million is the result of civil lawsuit settlements with the city and the Buffalo Police Department. The world saw what BPD would do to an elderly white man, Martin Gugino, on June 24, 2020. That violence is enacted on BIPOC in Buffalo every day, and it often goes unseen.

I am pained by the fact that, weeks after this horrific massacre, our country seems to have moved on. And since, there have been more such tragedies. We need to continue talking about the societal ills that produce the conditions in which such hateful acts can occur. The problems that plague Buffalo are not unique — they are the status quo across the U.S. The history of the East Side I’ve shared is a broken record, and it should sound familiar to people here in Memphis. I imagine many Black parents in America had to explain to their children what happened on May 14th in Buffalo because the reality is too real.

There are two reasons people have made their homes on the East Side: They care, and they hope for a better tomorrow. Citizens fought tooth and nail to get a supermarket, and the Tops on Jefferson Avenue became an oasis in a food desert. That place of respite, nourishment, and interaction has been permanently stained. I hope that stain can be overcome, but I also understand that the pain, and the fear induced, cannot be forgotten. We must make sure not to forget, too.

Everyone on Buffalo’s East Side not only lost a loved one on May 14th — they lost a piece of themselves. Those lost were people guiding the future to something greater, and have been working for decades to better the lives of their neighbors. I am left asking myself: How much of ourselves can we lose before we’re damaged beyond repair? Will expressing our hurt ever close wounds, or are we doomed to continually reopen the trauma when the next racist massacre occurs? If we keep shelving necessary and uncomfortable conversations and continue to fail to give those most marginalized in our country a better future, we will only add to an always unfolding tragedy.  

Joshua Swiatek moved to Memphis in 2019 and graduated with his MA in anthropology from University of Memphis. He enjoys reading, writing, and reminding people that time is a construct. 

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Where Has My City Gone?

New buildings and new fears (Photo: Jokerproproduction | Dreamstime.com)

One morning, my girlfriend woke up to see our view was gone. It happened in stages. At first we noticed scraps of metal growing where Midtown Nursery used to host Christmas trees a couple of years back. Before the nursery came, it used to be Neil’s Bar. She told me stories of her wild nights there. I held her close and sighed as they put up the new sign: Madison@McLean. An unoriginal name for a bland building.

Now my view is the inside of strangers’ windows. I’m a reluctant voyeur. I keep my blinds shut now; I have nothing to see anyway.

When I found out that The P&H Cafe was closing, that was the final straw for me. I knew the city was remaking my home for some mediocre profit. And who will see those profits?

The P&H is a historic landmark for Memphis. Craig Brewer filmed his first movie there. He even named the movie after the place: The Poor & Hungry. Countless comedians made the bar their watering hole. Musicians played some of their first shows here. The ceiling glorified the best of Memphis. It was a home away from home for them all.

Home. That word is getting so much harder to say now as I recognize less and less about Midtown.

There is one area of town where these efforts of gentrification have worked for the better: Crosstown Concourse.

From the wreckage of a Sears distribution center has come an art gallery, school, and, even better, a medical clinic. It has given space to new businesses as well, such as Global Cafe and French Truck Coffee. Outside of it, Black Lodge Video and Hi Tone, two locally grown Memphis-based businesses and centers of culture, have been saved as well. They returned with vigor.

But, still, the increase in rent around that area, as well as inside the Concourse itself, prices out local people and caters to people outside of Memphis. I know we want to attract newcomers to the city, but not at the expense of the locals who made it what it is.

As much as I appreciate and advocate for this former blight turning into a new neighborhood and cultural touchstone, I fear that, with the rise of gentrification in Midtown and other neighborhoods, we are turning our former home into a new Frankenstein creation that resembles places such as Portland. Or worse — Nashville!

My connections to Midtown run deep, but it’s not the only neighborhood being eyed by developers. There’s Summer Avenue, rebranded as Memphis’ international district and home to old businesses, antiques stores, and taco shops and diners and dives that give the neighborhood its flavor. The Pinch District, where the Tower Project might bring jobs and attractions, Uptown, the Edge — I welcome investment in these neighborhoods, but it’s vital we find a balance between the old and the new.

But I’m a Midtowner, so that’s where the heart of this piece lies. We have had a lovely community of folks striving to make this part of town unique and quintessentially Memphian in flavor.

Midtown has a variety of neighborhoods that define our modern Memphis culture. From the streets surrounding Idlewild Presbyterian, where one of the first integrated congregations took place, to the shops in Cooper-Young, where OUTMemphis has hosted programs benefiting the Southern queer community and helped house so many disenfranchised.

Midtown is where I grew up. Where my dad grew up. Where his own father grew up.

And of all the stories we share, there is one common thread: a feeling of home and security, of community. That essence is disappearing fast with the introduction of these big-box apartment buildings, replacing the very character of Memphis that we have all come to love. Historic monuments stand now in fear of who’s next. If we can just hold onto that history though, we may save our neigborhoods’ distinct vitality — and keep the spirit of Memphis alive.

William Smythe is a Memphian and published poet.

Categories
News News Blog

Report: Memphis Sees Gentrification Without Displacement

CREDIT: TDOT

TDOT

A recent study showed that from 2000 to 2013 six different census tracts in Memphis were gentrified.

The report, “Shifting Neighborhoods: Gentrification and Cultural Displacement in American Cities,” was released last week by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), a grassroots organization that works to create opportunities for people to build wealth.

The NCRC identifies gentrified neighborhoods as areas with lower incomes and home values that see new investments and amenities, leading to increases in median home values, educational attainment, and income levels.

The study assessed the educational level and economic status of residents, and the value of properties in the neighborhood at the beginning of the census period, then assessing changes in the next U.S. census.

In Memphis, gentrification largely took place in census tracts in zip codes 38105 and 38103 Downtown, as well as 38107 in North Memphis, 38106 South Memphis, and 38109 near the state’s southern border.

Over the 10-year period, the combined average household income in the five neighborhoods increased by about $14,000. The total percentage of residents with a bachelors degrees also rose by more than 50 percent. 

[pullquote-1]

“Gentrification is a powerful force for economic change in our cities, but it is often accompanied by extreme and unnecessary cultural displacement,” the report reads. “As these rising costs reduce the supply of affordable housing, existing residents, who are often black or Hispanic, are displaced.”

“This prevents them from benefiting from the economic growth and greater availability of services that come with increased investment. Gentrification presents a challenge to communities that are trying to achieve economic revitalization without the disruption that comes with displacement.”

Though the study found evidence of gentrification here, it did not report any cultural displacement during the time period surveyed. This means that no population of a single race group in any of the neighborhoods decreased by more than five percent.

In Nashville, the study sites that between 2000 and 2010 there were three neighborhoods that underwent gentrification. But unlike in Memphis, one of the three areas saw cultural displacement with close to 14 percent of the black population moving out during that time period, while the white population almost tripled from 501 to 1,345.

Meanwhile the median home value nearly doubled from $82,800 to $191,400 there.

National Community Reinvestment Coalition

Number of areas gentrified in American cities

Across the country, of the 11,196 census tracts the study looked at, 1,049 tracts or about 9 percent of them saw gentrification and in 22 percent or 232 of the areas, cultural displacement was also evident.

Washington, D.C., saw the highest levels of gentrification, followed by San Diego, New York City, Albuquerque, and Atlanta.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The “G” Word

Sears Crosstown rendering

Last week was a busy one for Midtown news. To recap: Parkway Grill and those delicious chicken pitas are history, hopefully not for good. YoLo is moving west to make room for a restaurant at the southeast corner of Madison and Cooper. Crosstown Concourse’s apartment units, the “Parcels,” are available for pre-lease and will be ready in December. And the Greensward debate might finally be settled? I’ll believe that one when I see it.

More changes are on the way. Some seem exciting, others just “ehhhh.” I’m not sure all of them are good ideas, but I’m willing to wait and see. I’ve heard reactions to the Overton Square and Crosstown news that were far less measured, with terms like “overpriced” and “bullshit” and even the dreaded “G word” bandied about.

Whoa there. I had no idea y’all were so passionate about your frozen yogurt. You’d think Pho Binh was being replaced with an artisan mayonnaise boutique or something, the way some people were carrying on. Now THAT would be a crisis.

Let’s not conflate revitalization with gentrification. Not while we’re trying to compensate for a half-century of population loss and alleviate poverty in the poorest metro in the country.

We need Midtown, and Memphis as a whole, to thrive. Yes, authenticity is important. We strive to support and uplift local businesses. We also need safety and good schools and other public goods that cost money. These needs are hard to fulfill in a city that’s full of renters but relies on property taxes. Memphis the metropolitan area spans three states, but Memphis the city only collects sales taxes in one of them (Think about that when you drive to the outlet mall).

I digress. Go to smartcitymemphis.com — they explain this stuff better than I can.

I used to think Midtown was so much more fun when I was in my 20s. Really, my nostalgia was more for the plot of my 20s than the setting. I do miss Square Foods, when it was in the space the Bayou now occupies. I miss the old Hi-Tone. I miss seeing bands at the Deli. I miss the Republic Coffee that was on Madison. Everything else I loved is still around, though. Some things have moved or improved. Some are harder to get to, but that’s because the empty and abandoned places have been replaced by other nice things for all kinds of people to enjoy. Yes, “all kinds” should — and does — include people who live outside of zip code 38104.

Rent was $500, split two ways, for the 2BR/1BA duplex near the Piggly Wiggly (better known to y’all new-to-town folks as “Cash Saver”) where I used to live in the early 2000s. It was much bigger than the entry-level Crosstown Parcel, which is $874. Unlike a Crosstown Parcel, it didn’t include wifi or a washer and dryer or a gym membership or a functioning stove. Like most things that are cheap, it was that way for a reason. The place was falling apart. Literally crumbling. What it lacked in amenities, it made up in “quirks” and experiences that would hopefully inspire a novel or at least an interesting chapter or two in my memoir.

Nearly every element of old-house charm had been painted over or sealed off to exempt the landlord from having to maintain it. I had to screw plywood boards to my window air conditioning unit so it would fit in the one window that opened. The hardwood floors were probably gorgeous at some point, before they were painted black.

The downstairs neighbors were a family of four hearing-impaired insomniacs who hated each other’s guts. Their favorite activities were yelling at each other and watching network television at top volume; often they did both at once. Vonage was running that commercial with The 5.6.7.8‘s “Woo Hoo,” and I swear it aired 100 times a day, double that on my days off. To this day I clench my teeth and fists whenever I hear that song.

The house was boarded up not long after we moved out. It’s still there, probably waiting for a fire or perhaps a strong gust of wind to put it out of its misery.

The character of Midtown hasn’t changed much, but little improvements like “not letting that entertainment district wither away completely” and “finally doing something about that dormant 1.5 million square foot building” seem to be working out OK so far. Housing demand is increasing as more people want to move in than to leave. New apartments are being built for the first time in years, and the market will decide whether the prices are right. Meanwhile, let’s hold off on throwing around words like “gentrification” — at least until the mayonnaise store opens.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and a digital marketing specialist.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Playing the Bike Card

In a recent Flyer column, Wendi C. Thomas posed a question that demands an honest and sincere answer. Her question is relevant to all Memphians, and to all residents of Shelby County, Desoto County, Greene County, and any other place in the U.S., or in the wider world, where people of different races and cultures must live and work together. She asks: “How will biking be different from the other well-intentioned movements that still leave brown and black people and poor people behind?”

While her question was framed in the context of the economic impact of bike lanes on disadvantaged brown and black Memphians, the underlying problem behind her interrogative will come up again and again for as long as the world turns: How will we all make public policy together that doesn’t leave someone behind? This isn’t some random local issue that we Memphians alone have to deal with when we’re worrying about bike lanes, of all things. This is a fundamental problem within democracy itself, and woe to us all if we ignore it.

Nobody likes talking about race, but there it is, staring us all right in the face every day. Memphians, especially, must strive to reconcile the race issue for ourselves and for others, because we have the opportunity to do so. If we, of all communities, of all houses divided, can work out our differences and stand united afterward, we can become an example for the rest of the world to follow. The world desperately needs that kind of example, and we are uniquely poised to offer it. The stakes are higher for us than we might at first realize, because there are a lot of other people who don’t live in Memphis who will also be helped if we can we can get our own house in order.

Here is how we will not work out our differences: leveling the charge of “replicating racist systems” — essentially an accusation of racism — for supporting bike lanes. Firstly, if institutional racism is so pernicious that it can infiltrate the minds of staunch anti-racists when they endeavor to support a public project that has nothing whatsoever to do with race, then we all may as well drive home and go back to bed because there is no possible way to defeat an enemy that powerful. Moreover, even if the social theory behind that accusation describes reality with 100 percent accuracy, that is one of the single most depressing things you could possibly tell someone else: You were being racist without even meaning to. That message will win no elections and change no minds, because it immediately puts the listener on the defensive and tells them that they are not in control of their own thoughts and feelings. Nobody wants to hear that. Not even the Devil himself is believed to have that much power over the human will.

There is a movement afoot to make privileged Americans more aware of the largely invisible class, sex, gender, and race structures that undergird our society. Contemporary academics who study race and gender use a framework for understanding and mapping out those social dynamics called intersectionality. Among social scientists, intersectionality is used as a way to account for the fact that a single black mother of two in Binghampton might face a different set of challenges in life than an unmarried white male college graduate in Connecticut. In popular discussion or debate, it has become a way to bludgeon privileged individuals who are seen to be insufficiently devoted to the cause of social justice. If you’ve ever been told to “check your privilege,” you’ve already encountered it.

As long as this movement points an accusatory finger at the people it ostensibly aims to enlighten and tells them that they have no control over the problem, it is bound to fail. Race and class privilege are difficult enough concepts to understand and apprehend on their own, let alone when they are accompanied by a guilt trip. There are many more constructive ways to approach the problem, and while those privileges may very well permeate every aspect of our daily lives, the insistence that we shoehorn a discussion of race into absolutely every aspect of public policy decision-making is simply not practical. Sometimes a bike lane is just a bike lane.

Categories
News News Feature

Bicycling Bias?

Those who sit left of center often gloat at the relative ease with which we broach the tender topic of race, at least as compared to the right. But given the oversized defensive reactions to a recent journal article about the primary beneficiaries of Memphis’ bike lanes, perhaps we progressives should pump our brakes. Without the thick skin that conservatives earned during decades of regressive racial politics, some Memphis progressives winced like spin-class rookies at the assertion that the movement does more for the creative class than it does for the 30 percent of city residents who live below the poverty line.

In “Behind a Bicycling Boom: Governance, cultural change, and place character in Memphis, Tennessee,” published last month in the journal Urban Studies, the authors quantified in detail the rise of the biking movement in Memphis.

Despite the advent of 60-plus miles of bike lanes, the development of the Shelby Farms Greenline, and plans for the Harahan Bridge project: “…change does not automatically benefit all citizens,” the authors wrote. “In fact, changes in place character of cities may play an active part in perpetuating inequalities in who has power and for whom that power is used.”

What the article did not do is call the bicycling bunch classist and racist, but that seems to be what some heard.

A commenter on the Memphis Flyer‘s website wrote: “Because we should obviously tilt our city to the ‘uncreative class’ and the ‘stagnation machine elite’ instead, for the sake of ‘inclusion’. (sic) … I’m as liberal as anybody, but cities cannot survive or grow on the backs of the apathetic, the unemployed, the dependent, and the criminal.” Another online reaction: “Idiots (both black & white BTW) who choose to try to stand in the way of positive changes with claims of racial inequality are what’s wrong with this city.”

In a far more sophisticated rebuttal, Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bicycle/pedestrian program manager, noted that the percentage of black cyclists was 57 percent in 2013, which almost mirrors the city’s black population.

Although the number of bicycle commuters has more than doubled between 2005 and 2013, the actual number of two-wheeled commuters is fewer than 650.

Does this mean that bicycling is bad? Of course not. But in backing Madison Avenue bike lanes despite business owners’ protests, did bike advocates lead with their commitment to reducing racial/structural inequality? Did they throw their fund-raising prowess behind the failed 2012 gas tax referendum that would have raised up to $6 million for public transportation?

They did not. And that’s okay, but it’s disingenuous to bristle when the article’s authors note the class privilege inherent in the $2 million raised for the Shelby Farms Greenline, used primarily for recreation.

Take the $4.1 million in tax breaks won by a developer to build an apartment complex along a planned pedestrian-bicycle route connecting Main Street in Memphis to Main Street in West Memphis. How will the profits from these and related projects build wealth for black families, where the median household wealth is $6,446 compared to $91,405 for white families?

How do we secure bikes for those who have lost their driver’s licenses because of unpaid traffic tickets — while advocating for changes in criminal justice policies?

How can a single mother of two kids (the typical makeup of a low-income Memphis family) get to her job by bike? Where would she shower when she arrives? Where would she store her bike?

There are bike advocates considering these tough questions, but if it’s true that only a hit dog hollers, why did this article strike such a nerve?

“Studies show that inequalities are reproduced by social processes, sometimes despite the best efforts and best intentions of good citizens,” said Wanda Rushing, a sociology professor at the U of M and one of the article’s three authors. “Sometimes good intentions lead to unexpected, and sometimes undesirable consequences.”

(Disclosure: Rushing and I will co-teach an economic inequality class this spring. The journal article was written months before we met.)

The awful efficiency of racism is that it persists even when there are no cross-toting, white-hooded Klansmen to be found. You can be a spandex-wearing, black-friend-having, progressive white bicyclist and still unwittingly replicate racist systems that advantage some and neglect others.

The question isn’t whether bike lanes run through black neighborhoods (they do) or whether bicycling advocates are bigots (most probably aren’t).

The question is: How will biking be different from the other well-intentioned movements that still leave brown and black people and poor people behind?

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Bicycle Politics

Antonio Gramsci, imprisoned by the Italian government in 1926 for his intellectual work, watched from his jail cell as fascism slowly consumed Europe. Disgusted with those ignoring the spread of totalitarianism, Gramsci wrote in his prison diary: “Indifference is the dead weight of history … nothing of what happens … is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens.”

If you’re interested in the story of citizens working to make Memphis a better bike city, you’ll be disappointed by the recent article “Behind a Bicycling Boom: Governance, Cultural Change and Place Character in Memphis, Tennessee.”

The authors claim Memphis’ recent bicycle boom has created only “superficial changes to the city’s image” and effected no real change in “divisions along city and suburban lines, profound racial residential segregation, and stagnant population growth.”

Why? Because bicycle advocates in Memphis are an elite white “consumer citizen” class who, in partnership with Memphis Mayor A C Wharton’s government and local developers, crafted an “amenity-based urbanism” that reinforces their power.

Titillating though it is, the authors have a neat theory in search of a problem.

Their first mistake is portraying people on bikes as spandex-clad, helmet-wearing elites with no interest in truly connecting with people unlike them. Their second mistake is painting a portrait of bicycle advocates as an elite white class espousing connected communities while actually marginalizing poor non-white people.

The most recent U.S. Census reports the bicycle community roughly mirrors the demographics of the city at large: 53 percent of people on bicycles in Memphis are black, 37 percent are white, 4 percent are Asian, and 6 percent are listed as “other.”

What’s more, Memphis’ bicycle culture has shifted in the past five years from one dominated by spandex warriors to a culture filled with a growing group of daily commuters. If anything, the people being marginalized are “the bike guys” with helmets and spandex.

But more troubling is the authors’ assessment of bike advocates who, they claim, occupy a “class status higher than that of many of their fellow city residents.” Why? Because bike advocates possess “the command of capital” to support businesses that support bike lanes — turning bike advocates buying sandwiches at Fino’s into Andrew Carnegie-like capitalist magnates.

But the more damning implication of this argument is that less well off “fellow city residents” are too broke to do anything to revitalize their neighborhoods. Just as the authors rely on a false image of bike riders as spandex titans and bike advocates as white elites, they also rely on the condescending image of a poor and helpless citizenry.

Finally, the article is patently wrong about the South Main neighborhood. The authors claim the neighborhood is suffering from “racialized gentrification” because the black population around South Main fell from 43 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2012. (It’s worth noting the population of Hispanics and Asians in South Main doubled in the same period).

Despite the fact that artists drove South Main’s revitalization decades before Memphis had a bike lane, the authors attribute these demographic shifts to the failed “politics of bicycling.” These “bicycle politics” are even more despicable because they emptied out a black neighborhood less than a mile from the Lorraine Motel — connecting the failed politics of bicycling to the assassination of Dr. King.

I concede that bicycles haven’t bridged the urban/suburban divide or healed wounds of the King assassination. But they haven’t made them worse.

The city’s recent improvements for bikes have made Memphis a better place, and the authors might have understood this had they talked to Big Mike — the Ice Man — about his bike business. Or asked Sylvia Crum about the “kidical mass.” They could have talked to James Williams about his work to repair bikes for his neighbors near LeMoyne-Owen College. Or they could have talked to Megan at the YMCA about the Multicultural Achievers’ regular rides on the Greenline.

But they apparently didn’t talk to anyone in Memphis.

So what’s left? At best we have a cautionary tale about the need of “professional” thinkers to shoehorn a complex city full of people into a neat academic theory.

Anthony Siracusa is a graduate fellow in history at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as president of Bike Walk Tennessee.

Categories
Opinion

Gentrify My Historic Neighborhood, Please

CREDIT: John Branston

sears.JPG

There seem to be some concerns about gentrifying Midtown if the Sears Crosstown project is completed.

I say we should be so lucky. Gentrification, a fancy word for raising property values and the quality of neighborhoods, is a good thing, not a bad thing. If the Crosstown planners who want to turn the Sears building into a vertical urban village can’t understand that then I don’t know why they’re fooling with this monster.

My perspective on the Sears building comes, daily, from the front door of my house in the Evergreen Historic District three blocks from Sears, where the summer sun sets behind the tower. My wife and I bought our house in 1984, raised our children here, sent them to Snowden school down the street, and have welcomed and said good-bye to a succession of mostly exemplary neighbors. Friends who live in East Memphis or the suburbs or other cities say we live on a good street. We agree.

We paid $86,500 for the house. The county appraisal we got in March values it at $204,200, an average annual increase of 3 percent over 29 years in which we put on a few roofs and added a new garage, central air, and a bedroom-to-bathroom conversion. This compares to the nearly 9 percent annual return on the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same period of time. If only . . .

Granted, I have taken pains to keep the county appraisal low because it means lower property taxes, and we don’t plan on moving any time soon. On the other hand, this is a big chunk of our retirement plan, and if we did decide to move we would want to get top dollar.

blight.JPG

One reason appraisals are all over the place in this part of Midtown is because of the notoriously uneven quality of the houses. There are a bunch of relatively new houses built on the old expressway corridor in the 1990s, several classic bungalows and four-squares that are 100 years old, and quite a few blighted wrecks. Some of them are occupied, some are not. A stone’s throw from my place is a rental for college students. Some people would describe them as members of Richard Florida’s creative class. The owners of the house, since 1989, own a small business in Midtown. They get rental income. The students are able bodied. But for whatever reason, nobody believes in house or yard maintenance. Every year, the neighbors have to notify code enforcement, which does what it can.

good_house.JPG

This is the story of Midtown. For every dump, there are four or five houses that are well kept, sometimes at great cost. A couple of fix-ups on our street were featured in the HGTV television program “Best Bang For Your Buck.”
Bless ’em.

My friend Carol Coletta, a Memphian who studies and speaks about cities for a living, says “cheap cities are cheap for a reason.” Memphis is a cheap city. Nashville isn’t. We could use some Nashvillization in our neighborhoods. I am not at all sure that Midtown needs more housing on the scale the Crosstown planners envision. A case can be made that it needs less housing. There are good, 1999 houses with 1700 square feet of living space two blocks from Sears Crosstown on the market today for $118,000 and older houses selling for much less than that.

The neighborhoods around Sears Crosstown are affordable. They are not in any danger of becoming unaffordable due to gentrification. That is as wild an exaggeration as the fear-mongering stories about Kroger’s at Poplar and Cleveland where many of us shop. Granted, 28 years ago there was a bombing at the old Kroger’s across Poplar where Walgreen’s is now, but, hey, stuff happens.

Seriously, rising property values, blight reduction, and increased home ownership are good things for neighborhoods and for Memphis at large. If this is gentrification, bring it on.