Bianca told me about Lester Fixins Buffalo Wing Soda she had seen at Sweet Noshings. I was appalled, and, of course, I immediately went out and bought a bottle ($2.50).
I thought there may be potential there as a sort of Bloody Mary-esque mixer, but this carbonated savory drink is truly awful.
Lester Fixins specializes in “food” drinks, including a bacon soda and a sweet corn soda.
On the upside, Sweet Noshing began serving ice cream about a month ago. Flavors include peanut butter fudge.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and a renovation of a building with a thousand windows begins with five of them on the fourth floor of Sears Crosstown in Midtown.
“It’s not construction, it’s due diligence for the window companies,” said Todd Richardson, spokesman for the project.
Still, it’s something for a blighted building that has been closed for years. The five windows on the south side of the building were removed so that bidders could do a mock up. About 65 percent of the building is windows, Richardson said.
The cost of replacing them will be several million dollars because they must comply with historic guidelines to insure tax credits and be more energy efficient than the originals.
“It’s going to be an interesting bid process,” said Richardson.
Asked if this indicates that the project is moving forward, he said “work is ongoing.”
Plans call for a mix of educational, medical, commercial and residential users.
In light of news that the new owners of the Nineteenth Century Club” on Union Avenue will demolish the historic building, many Memphians, particularly Midtowners, are furious.
Perhaps the City Council can propose a bill aimed at mollifying the notoriously vocal Midtown crowd? The SUMO (Shut Up Midtowners Ordinance) would require that any Midtown building that is more than 50 years old can not be demolished unless it is replaced by a Trader Joe’s.
Such an ordinance should have the effect of short circuiting Midtowners brains to the point where they are utterly unable to respond to any proposed demolition.
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.
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.
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.
My view is evolving. My view of dog parks, that is. I’ve been watching as the “Dog Bark” — that is not a typo — takes shape at Overton Park.
On the one hand, I think it’s a great idea and overdue in my book, having been spooked by big dogs while walking a small dog and having stepped in dog poop in the Overton Park playing field and greensward more than a time or two. The Dog Bark will have separate fenced areas for large and small dogs. Workmen were out Thursday morning laying down the surface, and this looks like the Hyatt Regency of dog parks. The grand opening is set for June 2nd.
On the other hand, I wonder if dogs and their owners are like motorcycle riders who don’t wear helmets and beach lovers who don’t wear sunscreen. They want to ride or run free and let their inner rebel out. The dog owners in my neighborhood have a little community that meets at an unfenced park in Midtown. The dogs — mostly big ones — seem to like it that way. The dog park behind the Board of Education on Avery looks kind of stark, and most people have to drive to get there. Shelby Farms, of course, is the field of canine dreams because of its size.
The dog owners I see in Overton Park like letting them off leash in the Old Forest and on the playing field next to Rainbow Lake, which is an irresistible attraction to some mutts. But if the owners don’t scoop, they’re tempting a war with those who want to use the playing field for Ultimate or playing catch or simply walking from the Memphis College of Art to Rainbow Lake.
A leash ordinance and strict enforcement would not be in the spirit of Overton Park. This is the park whose friends successfully defied an interstate highway. Polite encouragement might work, but I predict there will be some dogs that will continue to run free outside the confines of the Dog Bark. Maybe they can evolve.
I had AT&T’s U-Verse installed in my house last week. If that old saying about only using ten percent of your brain is true, then I am probably also only using about ten percent of U-Verse so far, but I don’t have buyer’s remorse either.
AT&T and Comcast seem to be waging a war for dominance of Memphis, or at least the part of Midtown where I live. For months, our mailboxes have been stuffed with three or four mailers a week from each company plugging their bundled service packages of Internet, land line, and television.
Before last week I had AT&T (Bell South) Internet service and land-line service and Comcast cable, for a combined monthly bill, including taxes, of about $125.
In a moment of weakness, curiousity, or longing for wireless, I took a cold call from an AT&T representative pitching U-Verse one evening about a month ago. Some 45 minutes later, I signed up. I was sold by the salesman’s pitch on the benefits and the competitive price of about $125 a month for the first year.
Several months ago we signed up for U-Verse but AT&T’s techs, despite working at our house for half a day, were not able to install it. This time the two technicians finished the job in about five hours. You have to be in the house the whole time. It happened to be my birthday so I was off work, but this was no party. The techs sure earned their money, especially the one who had to crawl into the basement crawl space.
I’m a first-grader when it comes to technology and a cheapskate when it comes to household finance. I asked the tech guys here at the office of Contemporary Media what they thought of U-Verse, and they said, unconditionally, “go for it.”
So far, my wireless connection has been flawless and has allowed me to move my laptop computer from upstairs to downstairs. Speed is noticeably faster, especially on videos, even though I did not order the fastest package. I have not yet figured out how to reconfigure my printer.
As for television, there are now not two but three remotes on my living room table, or four if I misplace the one for the stereo tuner. Of course I get more TV garbage than ever, but it is easy enough to find the 10-20 channels my wife and I watch regularly. We spent a little time last weekend watching the Tennis Channel, which we did not get in our Comcast package. We also watched the “fart mask” segment from Jackass. Yes, we are living on a doomed planet. We don’t have the desire or patience so far to record programs but I suspect we will sooner or later. I like the music channel and played around with it for a while. Surfing one click at a time now wastes even more time than before and leaves me muttering to myself “Get a life.”
Telephone service is the same, except for the pause and hiccup of a few seconds before there is a dial tone. I wonder how many other fogeys can’t give up their land lines.
Canceling Comcast was simple enough. One phone call, no argument, no hassle, no balance due. I got a $50 Visa credit from AT&T, which took about 15 minutes to register and will activate in 30 days.
I guess if I ever sell my house or rent it to boarders I can brag about the “free wireless” like a Hampton Inn. I expect to have to go to the mat with AT&T a year from now over new taxes and higher rates, but that was probably coming anyway with my old combo package.
Any suggestions welcome, but remember, speak slowly and use one syllable words if possible.
With suburban sprawl derailed by energy costs and subprimes and downtown sleeping off the condo hangover and arena fatigue, attention has shifted to some potentially big deals in Midtown.
One of them, proposed by Memphis developer Henry Turley, would redevelop the Mid-South Fairgrounds as a sports complex, Kroc Center, hotel, and shopping center. A second proposal by Miami-based WSG Development Company would put a 28-acre retail center in a blighted area near the intersection of Poplar and Cleveland. Both projects would cost several million dollars in public and private investment, rely on complicated tax schemes to attract national retailers such as Target or Wal-Mart, and won’t show tangible results for at least another year.
Big-store fever has also spread to downtrodden Overton Square, where there is some buzz but no firm proposal about a new grocery store and hotel.
That something needs to be done is obvious. Over half of the fairgrounds property is vacant, and someone driving on Cleveland from the abandoned Sears Building to Methodist Hospital on Union Avenue would think Midtowners mainly shop for auto parts and title loans. The question is what? Midtowners are a diverse, activist, and choosy bunch — fiercely loyal to what they like and fiercely critical of what they don’t like. And downtown’s Peabody Place is a reminder that multi-million-dollar mixed-use retail projects with the best planners that money can buy can fail.
by Justin Fox Burks
If any of this works, the developers will owe a debt to small businesses and neighborhoods that invested in Midtown without fanfare or tax benefits, relying on personal risk, sweat equity, customer loyalty, and creativity. They range in size from the residential redevelopment of the abandoned Interstate 40 expressway corridor to restaurants and small businesses in Cooper-Young and the Evergreen Historic District.
Big or small, successful projects filled an unmet need — new houses with historic architecture, a walking trail on an abandoned railroad line, a Home Depot in a building that had failed twice as a grocery store, a movie theater in Overton Square that outlived a much bigger competitor downtown, or a family-run neighborhood restaurant whose owner trained at Bennigan’s, the bankrupt national chain. They succeeded because people wanted them and liked them. They got little or no assistance from tax credits or quasi-government agencies like downtown’s Center City Commission. There were no debates about development fees or corporate logos. Collectively, they help make Midtown the unique group of neighborhoods that it is.
First, a little disclosure. I have beaten this horse before. Fifteen years ago I coined the slogan “Midtown Is Memphis.” The driving force was driving. Some Midtown parents were tired of hauling our children to Cordova and Germantown for shopping, movies, and sports, especially when two Midtown teams would play each other. Artist Tom Foster and I put the slogan on a bumper sticker that is still around, no thanks to me. Our design was full of graphic icons of happy little scenes. Midtowner Calvin Turley reduced it to its current white-on-red or green-on-white incarnations. Less was more. His son Rayner and daughter Lyda sold a ton of them.
by Justin Fox Burks
The campaign fizzled. The school board and Park Commission collaborated on a track, two baseball diamonds, and an alleged soccer field next to East High School, the sum of which is a sportsplex in name only. So the bumper sticker was overdesigned, and the sportsplex was underdesigned. There is probably a lesson in there somewhere.
Anyway, here are some Midtown projects with real staying power and comments from some of the people who got it right and made it work.
The Overton Park Expressway Corridor: A generation has grown up since Midtown just west of Overton Park was marked by a swath of weeds, vacant land, and broken foundations 400 yards wide and nearly a mile long. Even residents have a hard time telling where the old houses end and the new ones begin on some blocks. From 1992 until about 2003, more than 200 new bungalows and four-squares were built to historic guidelines on land bulldozed for an expressway 30 years earlier. (More recently, another Midtown residential infill project followed similar guidelines after the old main library was demolished at Peabody and McLean.)
by Justin Fox Burks
Neighborhood leaders obtained historic designation for the Evergreen Historic District. The city reacquired the land and sold lots through real estate agents to former owners, builders, and prospective homebuyers. Construction quality was uneven, but architectural guidelines were enforced, and within a decade most empty lots were gone.
“Three things were done well,” says Dexter Muller, former director of the city’s division of Planning and Development. “The first was working through issues of ownership and acquiring the land. At the state and federal level that was a challenge, and I really give credit to my assistant, Cindy Buchanan [currently director of Parks and Recreation]. The second thing was a plan that was realistic in the marketplace. There was so much demand you didn’t need government incentives. And third, the planners and local government set it up as a historic district and imposed guidelines to make it compatible with what was there. That was huge.”
by Justin Fox Burks
Corridor homeowners, like Shelby County commissioner Deidre Malone and her husband, made the planners look good. The Malones bought their lot in 1993, hired an architect, moved into the house in 1994, and have been there ever since.
“We went through the Landmarks Commission process and everything,” said Malone, who was working in Midtown at WMC-TV at the time. “They wouldn’t let me have shutters on the house. But I moved on. Our kids went to Snowden and Central, which are great neighborhood schools. We love the feel of Midtown. It’s a very diverse community, and the neighborhood association is fabulous.”
by Justin Fox Burks
Malco’s Studio on the Square: Opened in 2000, Malco’s boutique four-screen theater has been an unqualified success while Muvico’s Peabody Place megaplex, which was built at about the same time, has closed. The theater was developed by Memphis-bases Southland Capital, which planned to redevelop all of Overton Square but has sold its interest. The section south of Madison is still struggling, with several vacancies but a tantalizingly large parking lot that keeps the rumor mill grinding.
“I’m a Midtown proponent and convinced our people it would be a wise thing to do,” says Malco’s James Tashie. “Parking is critical for us. We wanted this theater to be bigger with more screens but parking prohibited it. Still, we’ve held our own very well with the big guns downtown.”
Tashie said the developers got some tax credits “but that didn’t tip the scales for us.” The original concept of an “art house” was discarded for more standard fare, but the theater is still very different from, say, Malco’s Paradiso in East Memphis.
“Our theater fit the niche of Midtown. We do a lot of film festivals and special events there, and we have a sitting area and a wine bar. I think it works for that reason. But if you don’t have movies people want to see, it doesn’t matter what you build.”
The V&E Greenline: An abandoned railroad line in the middle of a stable neighborhood was a challenge for the Vollentine-Evergreen community. Rhodes College professor Michael Kirby was one of the neighbors who bought the land in 1996 and turned a potential trouble spot into a walking and biking trail.
by Justin Fox Burks
The 1.7-mile Greenline is much shorter than a proposed railroad abandonment bike trail to Shelby Farms, making acquisition costs and construction much cheaper. Organizers got less than $10,000 from government sources to build a bridge and a storage building and develop a master plan. They raised many times that amount in donations from Keeler Iron Works and other businesses and in donated labor for the original clean-up and ongoing maintenance.
“We used to think the area between University and McLean was unsafe,” said Kirby. “People had a vision of a trail that was nicer than what we had, and the more it was improved, the more people started using it. I remember seeing a 75-year-old lady in the neighborhood walking her dog, and the fact that she felt safe enough was an indication of our success.”
Stewart Brothers Hardware: Stewart Brothers, at Madison and Cleveland, is the ultimate Midtown survivor, founded in Memphis in 1887 and occupying the same location since 1935. Like a sprawling old house, it has expanded several times as space became available, but it’s the antithesis of the big-box store. A sled, a child’s bike, tools, and the $1 bin are all on display a few steps from the cash register and entrance.
“Our specialty is customer service,” says Chris Dempsey, 36, one of five family members working in the store purchased by his father, Jim Dempsey, in 1975. “We’re able to greet customers when they come in the door, take them to the product they want, and answer any questions.”
Stewart Brothers has never received any tax breaks, unless you consider being next to MATA’s $60 million Madison Avenue trolley extension a break. Dempsey doesn’t. Construction was “a terribly negative process” that cut business 35 percent. He knows of no benefits and says “the road back up was a lot harder than the fall.” He would welcome the proposed development at Poplar and Cleveland and the demolition of blighted properties.
Fresh Slices Sidewalk Café & Deli: If you’re not looking for Fresh Slices and its neighbor, Diane’s Art Gift and Home Store, you won’t find them. Midtowner Diane Laurenzi, a respiratory therapist at the time, opened her store in a former Masonic Lodge in the middle of the Evergreen Historic District in 2002. The restaurant opened in 2004 and an upstairs gallery this year. They get no tax credits.
Fresh Slices owner Ike Logan had several years experience with the Bennigan’s restaurant organization. Eight family members work in the restaurant, which emphasizes neighborhood ties with dishes named after residents.
Laurenzi features neighborhood artists in her gallery and store, which became profitable after two years. She makes it a point to make friends with her customers and carry a variety of items at different price points.
“The neighborhood is very loyal to our business, and part of that is we have something to offer them,” she says. “I think they want to see us do well.”
The Levitt Shell in Overton Park: “Save Our Shell” was a rallying cry for decades, but the outdoor bandstand and shell appeared to be doomed until the Mortimer Levitt Foundation came to the rescue thanks to a chance encounter.
Memphis musician David Troy Francis was performing at a restored shell in Pasadena, California, and had dinner with Elizabeth Levitt Hirsch. He told her she had to come to Memphis.
“We had lunch at the Brushmark and then walked over to the shell,” said Barry Lichterman, president of the shell’s board of trustees. “She looked at it and said, ‘This is it. I want to do this in Memphis.'”
The Levitt Foundation donated $250,000 for renovation and $500,000 for operating costs for the first five years. The city of Memphis contributed $500,000, and an additional $600,000 was raised from private sources.
Lichterman credits the shell’s initial success to architect Lee Askew, who lives nearby, and to local donors. The Levitt donation is only a start. It costs $450,000 a year to operate the shell, so “without local participation this is not going to happen.”
Cooper-Young Business District: Midtown’s most successful neighborhood restaurant and entertainment center is 20 years old this year. It has overcome safety fears and a lack of parking garages with a police mini-precinct, an annual street festival, and constant marketing.
“This is a tribal gathering place, and the one element you have to have is safety,” says Charlie Ryan, a Cooper-Young investor and president of the Cooper-Young Business Association.
Ryan is proud of the district’s independent business owners and absence of franchises.
“That is the beauty of it,” he says. “Nowadays, you do a lifestyle center and talk to all the big boxes and wind up with something boring. Cooper-Young is not boring. It is unique.”
The district does not receive the sort of tax credits that are commonplace downtown and in the proposed fairgrounds and Poplar-Cleveland projects.
“We got a HUD grant in 1991 for $500,000 for street improvements, street trees, and antique lights, and some of the individual owners got historic credits for facades on their buildings,” Ryan says.
“We operate on the Karl Rove theory of commercial. The truth is what you say it is. Every few months we came up with something to get some publicity. The festival is a once-a-year public relations event that says it is okay to come to Cooper-Young, and we are a cool place. You don’t have to put in gazillions of dollars if you’ve got creative people. There is a lot to be said for just working with what you have and building on your strengths.”
by Justin Fox Burks
From the blog: “I measured a 13 degree difference as I traveled from parking lots and clearcuts to urban shade and sunlit greeenswards and finally to the rich shade of the Old Forest. All within a 1 mile radius of each other.
“Since the Old Forest is Memphis’ natural state — what we approach when we let up on the chainsaw and lawnmower — the 87 isn’t special, it’s normal. We complain about the heat in Memphis, but a good chunk comes from the artificial climate we’ve created with bulldozers, which we then have to over-correct with the artificial climate of air-conditioning …”
Read it all at CPOP’s website.
When Midtowner Brittany Redmond moved out of Woodmont Towers on North Parkway last April, she had a good reason: The high-rise apartment building was being converted to condominiums.
Although the building’s management was still honoring tenants’ leases, the renovations were disruptive.
“At first, it was just pressure washing the building,” the college student says. “Then it became invasive. They were working on the balconies. They used jackhammers to rip up the tile floor in the apartment above us.”
But Redmond never imagined that, when she signed a new year-long lease for a Midtown apartment on Belvedere, she’d be moving again within the month — for the very same reason.
“I was there a week and [one of my neighbors] told me that these buildings are being bought and may be converted to condos. I thought, You’ve got to be kidding me. I haven’t even unpacked my boxes yet,” she says.
Although a staple of the current downtown real estate market, luxury condominiums are gaining a foothold within Midtown, too. Across the country, condo communities are popular with both young professionals and empty-nesters. And even in an area of town known for its unassuming craftsman bungalows and lack of amenities such as extra closets and bathrooms, developers see opportunity.
Woodmont Towers became the Glenmary at Evergreen in May. The brand-new Pie Factory condos opened in Cooper-Young in June. Park Terrace, a ’60s-era high-rise apartment building across from Overton Park, was recently renovated, and its 35 condos will be on the auction block Saturday, August 18th. Belvedere’s Ashley Manor is in the process of a condo-conversion. And work just started on two other condo properties near McLean and Peabody.
Dick Willingham is one of the developers behind the Park Terrace project.
“What we have found over the years is that people want to move in-town,” Willingham says. “They’re tired of the commute. They’re tired of coming in from way out of downtown. They want to be in more urban areas.”
Willingham and his partner Randy Sprouse were actively looking for conversion opportunities. The out-of-town developers both have family in the area.
“This property came to our attention. It had all the ingredients of success,” Willingham says.
The $2.6 million renovation included stainless-steel appliances, a new roof, and retooled kitchens. The choice that has made them stand out the most, however, is that the building’s 35 condos will be offered by auction, something Willingham says is becoming more popular. Part of the proceeds will be donated to the Children’s Museum of Memphis.
“Years ago, people thought auctions were all distress situations. The world is becoming more familiar with the auction process. There’s no question the Internet has opened people’s eyes,” Willingham says. “Having an auction is a very efficient way of determining what the true market value is.”
Other condo properties are still being sold the traditional way.
At the new Glenmary at Evergreen, 190 apartments were converted to 150 condominiums with new cabinetry, granite countertops, gas ranges, and other amenities. Some of the apartments were combined to create large two-bedroom, two-bath units. Prints from the Jack Robinson Gallery on Huling — including Lauren Bacall at a birthday party and a 17-year-old Donald Sutherland — dot the interior.
“We have great traffic through here,” says Tommy Prest, a member of the Glenmary sales team. “We have a lot of graduates of Rhodes who are starting jobs. We get a lot of Midtowners who have raised their kids and want to be able to lock the door and leave whenever they want.”
Prest says the building isn’t competing with the booming downtown condo market.
“We’re a convenient location to downtown and East Memphis. We’re five minutes from St. Jude and five minutes from Sam Cooper.”
Kendall Haney, president of the realty firm selling condos at the Pie Factory, agrees.
“I think it’s more affordable than downtown, and a great alternative to downtown,” he says. “It’s really a different market. … [Buyers] still get what they want. They’re still in a neighborhood that offers restaurants within walking distance. The infrastructure is all there. And if they work downtown, it’s still convenient.”
The condos might also sustain aging neighborhoods by pumping them with new investment.
“I think it encourages other people in the neighborhood to improve their property, as well,” says Haney. “It gives everybody hope that the neighborhood is going in the right direction and that people are putting money into it.”
Park Terrace’s Willingham agrees: “Whenever a developer comes into the area, blighted or not, it creates energy for the rest of the community to clean up.”
But if Midtown is going condo, 21-year-old Brittany Redmond wants to stay out of the way.
“I knew it was happening downtown …,” she says. “I just hope it doesn’t happen again.”
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. ■
