Organizers of a community-centered revitalization plan for Orange Mound are seeking resident feedback.
The plan, Mound Up, is a collaboration between JUICE Orange Mound and the Rhodes College Urban Studies Department that began in the spring of 2020.
Britney Thornton, founder of JUICE, is leading the charge to create a strong resident-driven plan in order to have a say about future development in Orange Mound.
“When people show up ready to develop, they’re not trying to wait on you to come up with your plans,” she said. “We want to be ready and in position to know what our asks are. Otherwise, we would just have to follow the lead of people who show up ready with money.”
Thornton said the goal is to get 350 responses to the survey on the plan by the spring in order to have a finalized plan by the end of the spring.
Thornton said the inspiration for the plan came from South Memphis’ revitalization plan, SoMe Rap.
“They’re rallying around an actual document that they created with resident input,” Thornton said. “This isn’t something where we feel like we’re innovating. We’re just replicating and just trying to put a spin on it wherever we can to make it something uniquely signature to Orange Mound.”
Thornton said the motivation to initiate the plan came as she began to notice a shift in the market with more interest in Orange Mound properties. She feared that if there was no intervention, people in Orange Mound would be displaced.
“We want to be ready and in position to know what our asks are.”
“So I knew we had to do something,” Thornton said. “Mound Up is a proactive approach for us to be able to be in position to show up in these conversations knowing what it is that we want and know what direction we want to go in.”
Displacement is prone to happen, Thornton said, but the goal is to prevent the culture of Orange Mound from being completely altered.
“Our whole premise is that we want to work with people to develop people,” Thornton said. “We don’t want to displace people.”
Thornton, who is from Orange Mound, said it’s always been her desire to move back into the neighborhood. But she said she doesn’t want to sacrifice any of her expectations.
“I want the house that I want, the look that I want, and the amenities in the community that I want,” Thornton said. “It’s been a real fight to advocate for the things that I personally want to see in my community. I have to go to neighboring communities often to access the amenities that I seek.”
Thornton said the neighborhood needs a spectrum of options in housing, amenities, and common community spaces.
“To be as great as we can be, we need to see more options,” Thornton said. “Those options need to scale down to meet people where they are and also scale up to be able to offer attractive options for people who want to come here.”
Austin Harrison, adjunct professor at Rhodes, is leading the course that is working with Juice to bring the plan to fruition.
The courses began last fall, introducing students to Orange Mound and the needs of the neighborhood. Topics included housing, community development, and the history of systemic racism — “why and how Orange Mound looks the way it does and Chickasaw Gardens looks the way it does.”
With the help of community leaders, the students came up with six focus areas for the plan: housing, community health, crime and public safety, economic development, education, and cultural preservation.
This is the second year of the project with a new class of 13 students. This year’s class is centered on crafting strategies to implement the plan, focusing on how to implement an equitable plan with community input.
Throughout the process, Harrison said community engagement is a key part of the plan’s success.
“Engagement isn’t static for us,” Harrison said. “It’s something that we’ll continue to do. We think when you’re working relational and not transactional, there isn’t just an event that you call engagement and you check that box and move on. We’re always working side by side.”
It comes down to ownership, Harrison said. If residents in the neighborhood don’t see themselves in the plan, they aren’t going to fully support it.
“If community members don’t feel like they own the plan or it’s something they had a say in, it’s going to make implementing it almost impossible,” Harrison said.
When the plan is complete, Harrison said he would love to have the support of local government, but the plan will move forward and be enacted whether there is official adoption of it or not.
“We’re not asking for it,” Harrison said. “It’s not ‘can you let us implement this?’ It’s more of ‘this is what Orange Mound sees for their community.’ We’re telling government officials, developers, and outside actors looking to work with Orange Mound, these are the rules of engagement.’”
“If community members don’t feel like they own the plan or it’s something they had a say in, it’s going to make implementing it almost impossible.”
Harrison hopes that the plan will lay a framework for other neighborhoods to replicate.
“It’s a framework for holding stakeholders accountable,” Harrison said. “It’s also a framework for residents to take control of their neighborhoods. We want residents to take control of the narrative and of who is casting the vision for where they live.”
As the first neighborhood built by African Americans for African Americans, Orange Mound has a rich history that Thornton and Harrison hope is reflected in the plan. Harrison said he’s never interacted with a community that has such pride. That’s why cultural preservation is one of the project’s six focus areas.
“It may seem odd to some other planners to include cultural preservation as a priority, but I don’t think that’s an option in Orange Mound,” Harrison said. “A through line throughout the process is preserving the culture and keeping legacy residents at the forefront of our planning. That’s what’s missing from a lot of neighborhood redevelopment plans.”