Tag: Unified Development Code

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Uptown’s Malone Park Move-In Ready Next Month

Malone Park Commons (MPC) units will be move-in ready next month, and local leaders say they bring a needed housing product to Downtown and the Medical District.

MPC housing development is currently accepting applications. The development will include 35 units with a mix of building types that were common prior to World War II.

Phase one of the project has 11 small cottages that share a courtyard. The cottages will range from 330 to 1,100 square feet and will have luxury amenities like red oak hardwood floors and large front porches.

“Many architects and builders today focus on materials and methods to promote sustainability. We believe beauty is just as, if not more important, as sustainability,” says developer Andre Jones of Jones Urban Development. “Simple, beautiful, flexible buildings that encourage human activity and interaction will be loved and repurposed for years to come. This was our vision for Malone Park Commons.” Jones Urban Development bought the land in Uptown from the Community Redevelopment Agency. 

“2021 marks the 99th anniversary of zoning in Memphis, and for most of that time the zoning code promoted low-density suburban development while discouraging the kinds of places that make cities special. That changed with the adoption of the Unified Development Code (UDC) in 2010,” says Josh Whitehead, zoning administrator for Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development. “Malone Park Commons is one of the clearest manifestations of one of the UDC’s primary goals: to promote innovate urban infill that blends in with the existing built environment.”

Financial incentives for this project were made possible by the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC). Financial Federal Bank has been a strong advocate for emerging developers and traditional, walkable neighborhood development. The Jones Urban plan is part of a larger revitalization in the area, with recent and planned investments in Uptown, St. Jude, The Pinch, and the Renasant Convention Center.

“Malone Park Commons is the type of project the DMC loves to support, one built with inclusivity and equity at the core,” says Brett Roler, vice president of planning and development for the Downtown Memphis Commission. “The project is being built in a key Downtown neighborhood by an emerging developer, who is building a new housing capacity in the same neighborhood where he lives.”

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Recently Passed UDC Amendments Bring Hope to Tattoo Artist

On Tuesday, July 17th, the Memphis City Council voted unanimously in favor of amending the city’s Unified Development Code (UDC). The new amendments will bring forth various changes to the code’s stance on development and zoning in the city. But the changes must be approved by the Shelby County Commission before the revised development code can take effect.

One such change affects aspiring tattoo shop owners, palm readers, psychics, fortune tellers, and massage parlors who desire to open businesses in the Commercial Mixed Use (CMU-1) zoning areas. While those businesses are currently forbidden from opening in CMU-1 zoning areas, the amended code will allow them to apply for a conditional use permit to do so.

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Tattoo artist Babak Tabatabai is breathing a large sigh of relief after the council’s decision. In November, Tabatabai signed a lease to open a tattoo shop and art gallery on Broad Avenue. After investing nearly $30,000 in the building and its remodeling, he received a rude awakening from the Historic Broad Business Association that the district was not zoned to allow tattoo shops.

He applied for a zoning variance to open the shop, but it was denied during a public hearing held at City Hall in March. Since then, his business has been at a standstill, but the new UDC amendments passed Tuesday could help change that.

“It’s hard to describe my reaction when I heard the results,” Tabatabai said, who attended the council meeting. “I wasn’t expecting it to go through. I was mostly relieved that I didn’t have to move all my stuff somewhere else. No matter what would have happened at this location, I think [the $30,000] would have never been lost anyway. They say it’s no lesson lost. It would have been a really expensive lesson, but it still would have been one that I could have learned something from. Now it has become even better.”

The next step is a second reading and public hearing on the changes at the Shelby County Commission on July 30th. The commission’s third reading is scheduled for August 13th.

If everything goes well, Tabatabai plans to apply for the Conditional Use Permit in August. He hopes to have his shop open by September. Named Ronin Design & Manufacturing, it will be a tattoo shop, art gallery, and design firm.

“Everybody on the street has a different opinion about tattoo shops, but the official position from the Broad Avenue Business Association is that we support what the process says,” said Pat Brown, vice president of the Historic Broad Business Association in regard to the recent UDC changes. “We never stated that we were against tattoos. That was never the case. Now that the entire UDC has been changed, we’ll support whatever that process is.”

Chooch Pickard, executive director for the Memphis Regional Design Center, was a part of the UDC stakeholders. The group worked with Josh Whitehead, planning director for the Memphis & Shelby County Office of Planning and Development, to come up with compromises on the amendments.

Pickard said he’s “90 percent happy with how things turned out,” regarding the code’s amendments.

“We weren’t wholesale against [the amendments] by any means,” Pickard said. “We actually were in favor of the majority of them, but we had a number of items that we took issue with. I think the Conditional Use Permit is a better option than just allowing tattoo shops outright, because that gives the neighborhood an opportunity to give their voice and perhaps put some limitations on hours of operation and things like that.”

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Blue City

CREDIT: DORIY | dreamstime.com

When they say Memphis is the Home of the Blues, they’re not talking about blue laws. But maybe they should be. The City Council voted last week to prohibit beer sales for off-premise consumption within 500 feet of churches, schools, and most residential areas. Though stores currently selling beer will be grandfathered in, any new stores wanting to locate within the 500-foot restriction will have to be located on a state or federal highway.

“We’ve got a crime problem, and this is the catalyst,” Councilman Joe Brown said during a recent committee meeting, adding that he was speaking from a moral perspective. “That’s why this is so important.”

But the ordinance wasn’t easy for everyone to swallow.

“As I understand it,” said Councilman Dedrick Brittenum at a full council meeting, “the existing stores that sell beer have a problem with people loitering around those establishments and selling beer to minors and that sort of thing. The original ordinance on the floor would do nothing to stop that.”

As initially proposed by Brown, the ordinance banned off-premise beer sales at stores near single-family homes and duplexes, as well as near schools and churches. Under that scenario, only 8,000 parcels of land would qualify for off-premise beer consumption, compared to more than 25,000 currently eligible.

“It tended to exclude a large portion of the city,” said Brittenum.

Citing economic and development reasons, Brittenum offered an alternative that removed residential areas from the ordinance but added a penalty phase.

“We’re trying to go to a more livable, walkable, smart-growth city. If that’s the case, we may need some stores close to residential areas,” Brittenum told fellow council members.

Under smart-growth principles, developments are often built as mixed-use, with residences near, next to, or even above retail stores. A draft of the new Unified Development Code, which lays out zoning and subdivision regulations, has provisions for just such mixed-use areas. In addition, many smaller stores see a large portion of their profit from beer sales.

“If you don’t leave out [residences],” Brittenum said, “no new stores will open in residential areas that will sell bread, sugar, your staples. The economics just won’t work.”

Brittenum also pointed out that the ordinance — as originally proposed — would essentially create a territorial monopoly for existing stores.

“We would be forever grandfathering in those businesses because they will be so valuable they’ll never go out of business. Ever,” he said.

To solve that particular problem, he suggested a penalty phase to the ordinance: If a store gets three violations in two years, it would lose the privilege of having a beer license. The licensee would lose the right to apply for a new beer license anywhere in the city for the following two years.

Other council members liked the penalty provision but could not be convinced to remove residential areas from the ordinance. In fact, when it was pointed out that the ordinance inexplicably left out a distance requirement for apartments, those areas were added, too.

“I do understand that we’re talking about livable communities and walkable communities, but we’re also talking about communities where our children are,” said Barbara Swearengen Ware during a committee meeting.

Brown said he thought the council was “in the business of eliminating crime.”

“There is a lot of criminal activity [at convenience stores]. People who walk to stores for beer have [alcohol and drug] problems,” Brown said. “Let’s stop this thing, and we can live in a good city.”

In a compromise, Brittenum suggested that the ordinance exempt those stores on interstates and state and federal highways, and the measure passed. The ordinance also gives applicants who are rejected by the beer board a chance to appeal directly to the City Council.

Even so, adding residential to the ordinance is an extensive change. Frankly, considering how many areas are now off-limits, I’m surprised that the measure didn’t meet with more resistance.

Just two years ago, after a Wal-Mart opened in Whitehaven and wasn’t allowed to sell beer at that location, the council considered lowering the distance requirement from schools and churches because members felt it was hampering economic growth.

There might be a lot of churches in this city, but there are a lot more houses, duplexes, and apartment buildings. The stores I can think of that sell beer for off-premise consumption — gas stations, drug stores, places like Miss Cordelia’s on Mud Island — are often located close to residential areas.

And for many areas, it’s already last call.