Tag: TIF

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University District Starts on a Refresh

CREDIT: University Neighborhoods Development Corporation

University Neighborhoods Development Corporation

Works has begun and will continue in the University District to make it more walkable with slower car traffic and more police cameras to ”discourage and decrease criminal activity” in the area.

The intersection of Walker and Highland will soon have a new crosswalk, thanks to funds from the Highland Revitalization tax increment finance deal approved for the district in 2016. Officials expect the deal to generate $21 million for the district over the next 20 years.

University Neighborhoods Development Corporation

The new crosswalk will have LED signage, reconfigured sidewalks, large planters, new median features, and a painted ground mural, according to a Friday newsletter from the University Neighborhoods Development Corporation (UNDC).

“Improving pedestrian safety and access to businesses is the primary goal for this project,” reads the letter form UNDC. “Its expected to slow vehicle traffic, while allowing for greater walkability and ease of crossing Highland Street on foot.“

The UNDC recently hired local planning and design firm Looney Ricks Kiss to “re-imagine” the Highland Strip from Midland to Kearney, with a focus on streetscapes and traffic.

University Neighborhoods Development Corporation

The study includes, “parking and traffic studies, access management, opportunities for better parking solutions, utility relocation, railroad quiet zones, and ways to slow traffic to promote business success.” The study is expected to be finished next month.

University Neighborhoods Development Corporation

Last month, work began to install 27 SkyCop cameras and license plate readers in eight locations in the district.

Here’s where the police cameras are located:

• intersection of Highland and Midland

• intersection of Highland and Mynders

• intersection of Highland and Walker

• intersection of Highland and Southern

• mid-block Walker

• intersection of Walker and Brister

• intersection of Mynders and Brister

The license plate readers are at:

• intersection of Highland and Midland

• intersection of Highland and Southern

The plate readers are to “capture all vehicle traffic passing through the area.”

“The cameras are positioned to discourage and decrease criminal activity in the Highland Strip and Walker Avenue business districts, as well as near the new student housing developments just east of Highland,” says the UNDC. “Future phases will expand the network deeper into the University District.”

And remember Spin Street? The atrium of former record store at the corner of Highland and Poplar was, for years, the home to an enormous picture of Elvis Presley in gold lamé. The store closed in 2017 and Elvis has been missing from the corner for awhile.

But the UNDC partnered with the University of Memphis and Poplar Plaza for a brand new installation. Check it out:

University Neighborhoods Development Corporation

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Editorial Opinion

Shelby County Commission: A for Effort

There’s no doubt about it. The Shelby County Commission, in a current configuration that is about to expire because of the forthcoming August election, has taken bold steps to confront the established order of things.

As of August, when a minimum of eight members of the 13-member body are due to be replaced because of the county charter’s term-limits provision, the newly elected county legislature may not be so forward about things. But let’s enjoy this rebellion while it lasts and hope that the precedents it sets will inspire the newcomers of the next four-year term to similar innovation.

This commission has achieved results in numerous spheres by challenging custom and by pioneering in new directions. It has established task forces on such problems as the under-representation of women and ethnic minorities in county contracting, and those ad hoc bodies, fueled by the commission’s own disparity report, have made enormous progress in rectifying inequalities that had been taken for granted for decades.

The body elected four years ago, in 2014, has also managed to aggressively re-order its relationship with the county administration, challenging it on matters of financial oversight, among others, and, while neither branch of county government is always right and always deserving of having its opinion honored in the conduct of county business, the commission’s self-assertiveness has forced a more or less continuing dialogue on key matters. The recent establishment of a trans-governmental initiative to combat the plague of opioid addiction had its origins in actions taken by the commission, later court-approved, that forced the hand of the county administration and enticed city government and law enforcement agencies at large to come aboard.

And such re-ordering of priorities that has taken place has left undisturbed the ongoing focus on reducing county debt that Mayor Mark Luttrell has made an overriding administration goal.

This past week has seen yet another bold step by the commission. Confronted by the wish of Elvis Presley Enterprises to expand its campus to include a new, modestly sized arena so as to attract musical acts and other entertainments that would otherwise go south across the Mississippi state line or to Little Rock or Nashville, the commission was faced by the stated reluctance of the Grizzlies, backed by the city of Memphis, to give an inch on the terms of a strictly binding operating agreement that currently would prohibit the construction of an arena, containing more than 5,000 seats, that might be construed as competing with FedExForum, where the Grizzlies have proprietary status.  

Heidi Shafer

Instead of knuckling under on the matter, the commission voted on Monday to upgrade EPE’s share of revenues from an ongoing TIF, thereby allowing the arena construction, contingent (and that’s the operative term) on the courts recognizing the expansion as consistent with the terms of the aforesaid operating agreement with the Grizzlies. That seems both a progressive and a cautious way of probing for a solution that solves the Solomonic problem of having to satisfy what commission Chair Heidi Shafer referred to on Monday as “two favorite children.”

This strategy may work and it may not, but it was worth the effort to give it a try.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

A Tiff Over TIFs

Shelby County commissioner Mike Ritz is a first-termer who, on issues ranging from outsourcing Head Start programs to combating sexually oriented businesses, has indicated a willingness to stick his neck out. He is about to do so again.

This week, Ritz threw down the gauntlet against funding a developmental proposal which the University of Memphis is pushing hard and which Ritz sees as an out-and-out rip-off of the taxpayers.

The projec, approved by a 7-2 vote in committee Wednesday and up before the full commission next week, t would require TIF (tax increment financing) outlays for a portion of the adjacent Highland Street strip as a “gateway” to the university. The premise of TIF projects is that they generate significant increases in the tax base over the long haul.

“These TIFs are supposed to be used for public projects,” Ritz says. These include such things, as he has pointed out in notes sent to the media, as housing developments, street and sewer improvements, lighting, and parks.

But the Poag McEwen Lifestyle Center project on Highland, as Ritz sees it, is little more than a “gift” to the developers, who propose building a retail center/apartment complex on the west side of Highland from Fox Channel 13 north to the site now occupied by Highland Church of Christ.

“The University of Memphis is running interference for something that shouldn’t get done,” says Ritz, who maintains that the developers would be using a total of $12 million from the city and county and would be under no obligation to pay any of it back.

“There has been no analysis done on this project, and it contains no performance requirements,” says Ritz, who argues in his distributed notes about the project that “retail centers move sales and jobs around, they do not grow local economy; [there is] no growth of jobs or tax base.” In a conversation this week, he added, “It’s like moving checkers around on checkerboards. There’s no lasting benefit.”

Ritz’s statement of concern comes on the heels of two new reports.

One report from county trustee Bob Patterson notes that 120 local companies have tax freezes under PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) programs and that some $44 million worth of county property taxes and 372 parcels of land are involved in the programs.

Another report, from the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board’s performance and assessment committee, indicates the likelihood of default by several corporations on obligations relating to their tax breaks under PILOT programs. Under the circumstances, Ritz says, the Highland project amounts to an additional “giveaway” which the county simply can’t afford.

University of Memphis officials have been aggressively promoting the project as a way of shoring up the university’s “front door.” One who concurs is veteran U of M booster Harold Byrd, who has had his differences with university president Shirley Raines concerning her lack of enthusiasm for an on-campus football stadium, of which Byrd has been a strong proponent.

But Byrd says he’s on “the same page” with Raines about the Highland Street project. “It would shore up an area that, particularly south and west of campus, has begun to deteriorate.” Citing what he says is a prevalence of “cash-for-title businesses, pawnshops, and fortune tellers,” Byrd says, “It’s definitely a distressed commercial and retail area.” Moreover, he says, “the residential area south of the university is in strong decline.”

Both circumstances would respond positively to the proposed Poag McEwen Lifestyle Center, he said, and the “gateway” aspect of the project would benefit the entire community, not just the university area itself. (For more on this perspective, see In the Bluff, p. 10.)

On the first round on Wednesday, the Highland TIF project, which has the imprimatur of the Memphis and Shelby County Redevelopment Agency, got preliminary support on the County Commission, too. The 7-2 vote in favor (Wyatt Bunker joined Ritz in opposition) came despite a recusal from Commissioner Steve Mulroy, a University of Memphis law professor.

The commission is scheduled to take up — and approve — the measure on a formal vote next week.

• This coming week sees the formal completion of the 2007 Memphis election cycle, with four City Council runoffs being decided on Thursday, November 8. The contests are between Stephanie Gatewood and Bill Morrison in District 1; Bill Boyd and Brian Stephens in District 2; Harold Collins and Ike Griffith in District 3; and Edmund Ford Jr. and James O. Catchings in District 6. Pre-election updates,as well as full coverage of the results, will be posted on the Flyer Web site and in next week’s print issue.