Tag: Jeffrey Higgs

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Judge Gives Aretha Franklin House One More Month

Aretha Franklin’s home before Memphis Heritage volunteers boarded up windows.

The LeMoyne-Owen College Community Development Corporation (LOCCDC) has just over 30 days to make progress on its plan to salvage the blighted birthplace of Aretha Franklin. In court on Thursday morning, Shelby County Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter issued a stay on his order to demolish the home. 

Earlier this month, Potter put the home at 406 Lucy in South Memphis into a city receivership and ordered the home to be demolished. It was first declared a public nuisance in October 2012 due to its blighted state. The entire back half of the home was nearly destroyed by fire years ago, and one side of the roof over the porch was sagging. South Memphis Renewal CDC was appointed a receiver for the property about a year ago, and Jeffrey Higgs of the LOCCDC informed the Environmental Court at that time that his group would fund-raise and relocate the home elsewhere in Soulsville. But little physical progress had been made.

However, Memphis Heritage volunteers showed up a couple weeks ago to board up the home. Its owner, Vera House, had her son remove the partially collapsed back portion of the home last week. 

Because those steps had been taken to secure the home, Potter told Higgs that he could have 30 days to prove that his plan to save the home was actually underway. Higgs told Potter that both Mayors Jim Strickland and Mark Luttrell had stepped in to help put him in touch with Franklin, who he said may put some funding toward saving the home.

“Ms. Franklin has talked to me personally and expressed an interest in saving the home,” Higgs told Potter, after first admitting that he wasn’t comfortable discussing that deal in court.

Higgs later told Potter that Franklin had said she’d like to see the home, where she was born and lived until about age 2, salvaged and placed in a museum. Higgs also told the court that he’d had some interest from local business owners who would be willing contribute money to saving the home.

After looking at the most recent photographs of the home, Potter commended the efforts to board the home and demolish the back portion. But he instructed Higgs that he must remove debris from the property and cut the grass.

“Let’s let the country know we’re going to clean up Aretha Franklin’s house,” Potter said.

After court ended, Higgs said his next step will be approaching the partners who have expressed interest in saving the home to let them know it’s “time to put up or be quiet.”

House and her grandson Christopher Dean were present in court on Thursday morning. Afterward, Dean said he hoped Higgs would come through with his plan, but he said Potter “should have given him five days instead of 30,” adding that Higgs’ group had had plenty of time before now to make progress on the house. Dean said, should Higgs’ efforts fail, he and his family have a back-up plan for saving the home.

As for Potter, he admitted that his demolition order on the home earlier this month wasn’t “one of his golden moments,” but he said the house was in such bad shape for so long that he was left without a choice.

“The moral to this story is that you may work on a case for four years, but as soon as you order the house to be demolished, by golly, it goes national,” Potter said. “So maybe we should just order everything [blighted to be] torn down.”

Higgs must appear before the court to report on progress on August 11th.

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Preservation Advocates Discuss Ideas for Aretha Franklin House

Aretha Frankin’s birthplace at 406 Lucy

Preservationists have less than a week to come up with a solid plan to save Aretha Franklin’s blighted birthplace home in South Memphis or else Judge Larry Potter will have it demolished. That’s what Memphis Heritage Executive Director June West told a room of advocates for saving the home at a meeting at Howard Hall on Wednesday night.

“Unless someone comes forward with $1 million and wants to do [all the work to save it], then we need to come up with a collaborative plan now, and it needs to be a plan that’s achievable and financeable,” said West, noting that a “solid plan” for saving the house must be presented to Shelby County Environmental Court by Tuesday. The group will have to show up in court to discuss that plan next Thursday. Unless the judge gives the group more time, the home will be demolished.

Last week, the Environmental Court put the home into a city receivership and ordered the home to be demolished. It was first declared a public nuisance in October 2012 due to its blighted state. The entire back half of the home was nearly destroyed by fire years ago, and one side of the roof over the porch is sagging. South Memphis Renewal CDC was appointed a receiver for the property about a year ago, and Jeffrey Higgs of the LeMoyne-Owen College CDC informed the Environmental Court that his group would fund-raise and relocate the home. No physical progress has been made with that plan so far, so last week, a group of volunteers from Memphis Heritage worked to board up and stabilize the home.

Higgs attended the Memphis Heritage meeting on Wednesday, and he said he has a $15,000 commitment to help stabilize the property, but he said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss those details. West emphasized the need for “serious players” to step up and put money and an actionable plan together. After the meeting, she invited anyone who could get serious about saving the home to stay and help them come up with a plan to present to Potter on Tuesday.

Addressing Higgs, West said “We have a history here. And we’re down to the wire. We need better communication.” Higgs nodded his head in agreement. 

Earlier in the meeting, a group of about 20 or so Memphis Heritage volunteers, South Memphis residents, Soulsville stakeholders, and preservation enthusiasts threw out various ideas for what the house could be. They also debated whether or not the house should be moved from its current location at 406 Lucy.

“The most impact would come from seeing it stay as close to what it originally looked like,” said artist Jay Etkin, who advocated for revitalizing the home to its original state and using it as a birthplace museum similar to Elvis’ birthplace house in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Other ideas included a place to host music and arts lessons for kids, a Soulsville radio station, or a “musical playground” with an outdoor stage on the porch.

Many, including West and Higgs, advocated for having the house moved to another location in South Memphis, closer to the Stax Museum. The street where the house is located now is filled with blighted and boarded-up properties, many with waist-high weeds growing in the front yards.

“Part of the rationale for moving it is that it will be 10 to 20 years before there will be development over there. It will be a hard sell to get people to go over there [to visit the home] if the only thing over there is Aretha Franklin’s house,” Higgs said.

Shelby County Historical Commission member Grover Mosley was perhaps the loudest voice at the meeting advocating leaving the home where it is. He said he’d like to “see the whole neighborhood revitalized, period.”

At the end of the meeting, a young man, who walked in late, spoke up. He identified himself as Christopher Dean, the 2011 Booker T. Washington graduate whose introduction of President Barack Obama before his Memphis speech earned Dean an internship at the White House. Dean said he grew up in Franklin’s old house, which is currently owned by his grandmother Vera House.

“We’ve been trying to save that house for so long, so I want to say thank you to people here trying to save it,” Dean said.

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Soulsville Returns

Jeffrey Higgs has been working on the Towne Center at Soulsville project for three years, so it’s understandable if he’s a little anxious. “I’m ready for the ground-breaking,” says the executive director of the LeMoyne-Owen College Community Development Corporation. “I’m ready to see things happening on the site.”

But it looks as if Higgs will have to hold on a little longer. County commissioners this week deferred approving a $700,000 investment in the venture until July 24th. The $11 million mixed-use lifestyle center, which involved funding from both the city and the federal government, will bring retail, restaurants, and a 24,000-square-foot grocery store to the Soulsville U.S.A. neighborhood in South Memphis.

“You come out of the Stax Museum and look around and say, ‘What do you want me to do now?'” says Higgs. “There’s a lot of slum and blight there. … We know we’ll get tourists because of Stax, but it’s really for the neighborhood.”

Higgs and former county commissioner Bridget Chisholm, a consultant on the project, went before the county’s budget and finance committee last week to present the proposal. Though commissioners are supportive of the project, they are wary of giving the Community Development Corporation (CDC) what could essentially amount to a blank check.

“I think we need to have further conversations about how we structure the county’s involvement,” says David Lillard, the commissioner who asked to defer the item. “It would amount to the county giving $700,000 — basically in cash — directly to the CDC.”

Lillard suggested the county earmark funds for the CDC and then disburse them directly to contractors to build streetscape improvements and infrastructure for the project. Because the CDC has time to finalize the deal, the other commissioners agreed to wait two weeks.

“We’re not getting in the business of making open-ended … contributions to any organization,” Commissioner Bruce Thompson said at the committee meeting, “no matter how worthy the cause.”

Regardless of the capacity or how they structure the deal, if this is the cue that the county is getting more in tune with urban redevelopment, I’m all for it. Traditionally, the city has played a more active role than the county in revitalizing communities in the inner city. Which is understandable, I admit.

For the Towne Center project, the city paid for the demolition of existing structures on the four-acre property and pledged an additional $250,000 to the project. The CDC also secured several federal grants, as well as a pending $9 million bank loan. But for a project this large, it doesn’t make sense for anyone to try it solo.

I think that more often than we like to admit, we forget that the county and the city are not two separate entities struggling independently with their own challenges. Granted, they’re not completely in sync. But perhaps we should view them as a harmony and a melody, playing off each other, making both sound better. Redevelopment within the city limits obviously helps the city, but it helps the county as well, slowing sprawl and thus that big, fat debt.

“This is really about economics,” says Higgs. “It’s not about a little nonprofit. This is serious economic development.”

The CDC estimates that Towne Center will create roughly 200 jobs in restaurants and retail. The four acres it will encompass currently generate about $13,000 in property taxes each year. Once developed, it’s expected to generate about $200,000 each year for a 20-year period.

“That’s only speaking to our four acres,” says Chisholm. “It does not factor in the ripple effect: the sales tax revenue, the property taxes of nearby businesses.”

“Or the turnover effect of the wages the workers make,” adds Higgs.

Even so, Higgs maintains that the real benefit is to the neighborhood.

“Because of what’s going on in this particular community, all the dollars being put in by the federal government, by private businesses, by the city … [Towne Center] is just another cog in the wheel turning this community around,” he says.

But perhaps this will give the entire region something to sing about.

“I liken it to Peabody Place,” says Chisholm. “That was really the fulcrum of downtown’s re-emergence. Now you have restaurants; people walking around; they need housing. Downtown is a neighborhood. This is a catalyst to the continued development of this area.”