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Demolition of ‘Eyesore’ Underway Soon

Credit: Google Maps

A multi-million-dollar glow up is underway at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center (UTHSC) campus in a plan that includes the $19.4 million demolition of a much-criticized, abandoned hotel on Madison. 

The plan was laid before the UTHSC board in a meeting Friday by Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Operating Officer Raaj Kurapati. The slate of projects underway at the Medical District school totals more than $100 million, Kurapati said. 

While not the most expensive project on the list, Kurapati said there is one that “everybody gets excited about every time we speak about it.”

“That is the demolition of the eyesore of a building that comes on when we drive on to campus — that’s the Holiday Inn tower and the adjacent buildings,” he said. “We’ve been able to put together some funds to be able to finally say we’re going to move forward with that.”

The buildings are currently under review for hazardous materials. Demolition work is slated to proceed next month, according to a slide shown during the meeting. That work, however, will likely only include readying the site, including things like erecting a fence around its perimeter. The work is expected to be complete by June 2026 at a cost of about $19.4 million.   

UTHSC bought the buildings from the Memphis Bioworks Foundation in 2015 for just around $1.5 million million. The parcels were eyed for purchase by the school as early as 2013, nearly a decade ago. A UTHSC board committee said at the time they were interested in the buildings for “for the control and future use of the land base as anticipated in the UTHSC” master plan. 

The school’s 2020 master plan said UTHSC’s new College of Medicine building will be “located at the southwest corner of Pauline and Madison on the old hotel site.”

UTHSC officials sought a developer in 2015 to transform the existing 12-story building into a hotel and conference center, according to a story at the time from The Daily News. While the school earned the approval to do so, it was apparently unable to find a develop for the project.

The building has been vacant ever since. This has earned the building criticism for years. 

“UT is forever planning on developing that site but I wouldn’t hold my breath,” wrote u/tristanape on Reddit two years ago in a discussion of the building. “My understanding is the cost to knock it down and clear out the asbestos is just too much.”

That is at least partly true, according to Kurapati’s update on the project Monday.

“The reason it took a while is because there’s a lot of remediation work that needed to be done, clearly because it’s a very old building,” he told committee members. “There’s some asbestos, and other building practices, and materials that were used that call for us to be very diligent about making sure that we bring it down in a very safe and responsible manner.”

The most expensive item on the list of upcoming capital projects at UTHSC is a new Gross Anatomy Lab. Renovation work is now underway for the $30 million project on about 35,000 square feet of the school’s General Education Building. 

Gross anatomy is the study of the human body’s structure visible to the naked eye like bones, muscles, and organs. 

Also, expect a new fencing project to commence around UTHSC soon. That project is set to showcase the school in the community and to provide better security for parking lots that have seen some break-ins recently.  

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International Park(ing) Day

(Credit: MidtownMemphis.org)

If you drive past Midtown’s Cash Saver on Friday, you might be tempted to rubber-neck at an unusual spectacle in the street parking spaces, since, in honor of International Park(ing) Day, those spots will be converted into tiny parks. 

Park(ing) Day is a global, public, participatory art project, explains Emily Bishop, board member of MidtownMemphis.org, the organization spearheading the event in Memphis. “That’s a mouthful,” she says, “but it’s where you temporarily repurpose street parking spaces into places for art, play, and activism. What we’re trying to do is get people to reimagine that area of Midtown.”

When the area around Cash Saver, Pho Binh, Crumpy’s Hot Wings, and the like was restriped to add bike lanes, the city added parking lanes, too. “Nobody uses them,” Bishop says. “They kinda get used as an inappropriate passing lane or turning lane. I mean, I see it all the time going to Home Depot.”

As such, safety is one of the points of awareness for this Park(ing) Day Project, the other point being to bring greenery to the space. The plan, Bishop says, is to plant black gum and maple trees along the sidewalk that runs east of Cash Saver on Angelus. “The sidewalk is 10-feet wide, and it has no power lines overhead, so it’s the perfect place for street trees,” she says, adding that under a tree’s shade it can be 10-15 degrees cooler, a much needed benefit during Memphis’ hot summer months. “We’re already working with Cash Saver and the City Engineer’s Office, and if all goes well, we hope to plant those trees in early November.”

Rendering of plans for tree-planting along Angelus (Credit: MidtownMemphis.org)

In the meantime, Friday will be MidtownMemphis.org’s second Park(ing) Day in front of Cash Saver. This year, the group has partnered with Memphis City Beautiful, Clean Memphis, Evergreen, Central Gardens, Neighborhood Preservation Inc. (NPI), The Works Inc., and The Home Depot. 

“We’ll have some green carpet out there to make it feel like grass,” Bishop says. “There’ll be some games. We’ll have plants and bushes that’ll give you a feel of what that would be like. We’ll just see what the creativity of each of our partners is and what they do with their spaces.”

Giveaways and free snow cones will also be available, and attendees will have a chance to meet with the various groups to learn about upcoming projects and ways to volunteer. 

Already, MidtownMemphis.org has planted native trees, bushes, and flowering plants on Avalon, behind Murphy’s and next to Crumpy’s. 

“We were really inspired by the Medical District, the improvements they made, and, of course, Overton Square is so beautiful now,” Bishop says. “We just want this area in between to continue the good work and spread it on down. Everybody travels up and down that section of Madison.”

International Park(ing) Day, Madison Avenue in front of Cash Saver, Friday, September 16th, 3-7 pm. 

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Slippery When Wet

CREDIT: Photo of Trolley by Lorae | Dreamstime.com

Last July, the front door of Jones Tool Service on Madison was demolished after a driver slammed her car into the store.

She wasn’t an angry customer; she wasn’t intoxicated. It was raining, and her tires slipped on the Madison Avenue trolley tracks, causing her to spin out of control and into Jones’ storefront.

The accident caused $12,000 worth of damage to the store, and though Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) investigators came out to the site, the cost of repairs fell to the driver rather than MATA.

Nearby business owners and employees know the danger of the trolley tracks all too well. Though the Jones Tool Service incident has been one of the most dramatic, some say they see accidents or near misses whenever it rains.

Mark Williamson, an employee at Ebbo’s Spiritual Supply on Madison, has seen two major accidents involving the trolley line.

“We’ve seen vehicles actually get stuck on the trolley tracks,” says Williamson. “There was one day when a guy in a pick-up hit the tracks just right and got his tires stuck in the grooves. He kept gunning it, and it took him about 30 minutes to get off the tracks.”

The Flyer requested data on all Madison trolley accidents since the line opened in 2004. Out of 21 accidents, nine have involved cars or motorcycles slipping on the tracks. The rest are trolley-vehicle collisions.

MATA CEO Will Hudson says he doesn’t think accidents along the trolley line are a problem when the pavement is dry. Though records indicate that some accidents occurred on wet tracks, that information is not available for all accidents.

“When the pavement is wet, it’s dangerous and slippery. Tracks just add more danger to that,” says Hudson. “We would suggest that people travel in the lanes on the other side of the tracks when it’s raining.”

Yet there are no signs along Madison indicating the danger of driving on wet tracks. “It’s not necessarily appropriate to warn everybody about every conceivable situation they may encounter when driving,” says city engineer Wain Gaskins. “Drivers should be aware of the roadway conditions and their surroundings.”

But what if that isn’t enough?

Agatha Cole wrecked an SUV last summer near the intersection of Madison and Marshall. “It was super rainy, and I was driving under the speed limit,” she says. “The tracks threw me into the oncoming traffic lane, but there was [no traffic]. I went directly into some kind of fence. It destroyed the front half [of the vehicle].”

MATA investigators did not come to scene, but police did. Though Cole explained the circumstances, she was given a citation for “reckless driving.”

Motorcyclists have problems maintaining control on Madison in all weather conditions.

Rusty Barnes and his wife were headed home from the Crawfish Festival last April when the tire on their bike caught in the tracks near Madison and Fourth Street. Both were thrown from the motorcycle immediately. Barnes broke two ribs, his leg, and a tooth. His wife was in a coma for several days. “There’s about a four-inch gap between the track and the pavement,” says Barnes. “My front wheel dropped into that hole, and I couldn’t get out. Once that wheel drops in there, the track starts guiding you.”

While he was in treatment at the Med, Barnes says two other bikers came in from accidents along the Madison tracks.

“If motorcyclists are safety-conscious, they would ride their bikes on the lanes that are safest to operate on,” says Hudson. “I would say operate on regular pavement.”