It took developers several years to reclaim and renovate the colorful row of century-old storefronts that hug the south side of Summer Avenue at National.
It took dozens of firefighters five hours to put out the late December arson fire that gutted the complex.
No one knows how long it will take to restore the project, a critical part of the long-range restoration of the surrounding neighborhood known as the Heights.
“Unfortunately, the property owners are dealing with insurance claims right now and figuring out how they’re going to be able to rebuild,” said Jared Myers, executive director of the Heights CDC.
The wreckage and rubble in the heart of the Heights stands as a stark and daily reminder of the challenges of reclaiming a once-vibrant, long-distressed urban neighborhood.
Few know the challenges as well as Myers, a Heights resident who became the CDC’s founding director in 2014.
“We’re trying to battle against the development of things we don’t want… but also, how do we attract things we do want?” Myers said. “How do you sell your neighborhood as a space where you could see a good return on your investment?”
Those are questions facing many distressed Memphis neighborhoods as public, private and nonprofit leaders work to redevelop them without gentrifying them. How does a declining neighborhood lift itself up without displacing residents who live there and love it?
City planners call it equitable development or shared prosperity.
“The aim is to ensure that the neighborhood’s residents directly and actively benefit from revitalization and reinvestment initiatives,” said Dr. Stephen K. Diko, a professor in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Memphis.
Heights CDC is collaborating with neighborhood residents and students from Diko’s Planning Studio to create a long-range Equitable Development Plan for the neighborhood.
The 112-page plan, presented to residents late last year, will guide the CDC’s work in the years ahead. “The Heights will be a self-sustained neighborhood that can accommodate its residents’ needs within its immediate boundaries,” the plan states.
Those boundaries are wide. The Heights is a collection of three contiguous neighborhoods between Summer and Jackson — Highland Heights, Grahamwood, and Mitchell Heights.
The Heights, one of city’s first streetcar suburbs, has changed dramatically over the past half century. The neighborhood’s population, now about 13,000, has declined by almost 20% since 1970. Median household income has plummeted by more than half in each of the area’s four Census tracts. The number of residents living in poverty has tripled.
But employment in the neighborhood is higher than it was 50 years ago. Single-family homes still make up 75 percent of the housing stock, And the Heights is more diverse than Memphis.
Half a century ago, more than 90 percent of the neighborhood’s residents were white. Today, about 40 percent are Black, 35 percent Hispanic or “other,” and about 25 percent white.
The neighborhood’s growing diversity is reflected in the name of the development plan’s name: Hecho en Heights, or “Made in the Heights” in Spanish.
“People are very proud of the diversity of the Heights,” said Meredith Keaton, a master’s degree student at the UofM. “I love that people see that as a strength of the neighborhood.”
The diversity of the Heights is evident at the The Anti Gentrification Coffee Club #1 by Cxffeeblack, more widely known as Cxffeeblack.
It opened as a pop-up shop on National Street in 2019. The owners, Bartholomew Jones and his wife, Renata Henderson, have since turned it into a brick-and-mortar location.
Cxfffeeblack has won multiple awards, including the 2023 Global Notable Roaster of the Year awards from coffee publication Sprudge. The owners are hoping to open their international roasting headquarters in Memphis before the end of 2025.
J’Arvis Harris has worked at the shop for a year and lived in the neighborhood for almost three years. “We’re definitely a family at this point,” Harris said. “It’s so supportive. I feel like Bart (Bartholomew Jones) believes in my dreams as much as I do.”
The coffee shop and its patio sit directly across from the Heights Line, a 1.75-mile linear park built along the median of National Street. The paved pathway is lined with trees, benches, and local businesses such as Cxffeeblack.
“Community members have said they want to see more mom-and-pop type restaurants, more small businesses,” Keaton said. “They’re very clear about the amenities they want for the neighborhood.”
The Heights Line, built jointly by the CDC and the City of Memphis, aims to bring a communal greenspace and foot traffic to National Street — the neighborhood’s primary north-south artery.
“We have these historical buildings (in the neighborhood), and we’ve started to acquire those buildings on National,” Myers said. “Along with that (we) worked with the city to have the Heights Line built, so now we’re focusing a lot of our efforts around that area of the neighborhood.”
The Heights is filled with more than 1,100 vacant or abandoned properties.
“Commercial buildings that are vacant, especially those on National Street and Summer Avenue, are a sign of larger issues,” stated the UofM’s equitable development plan. “Underutilized places left by former big retailers like Walgreens and Family Dollar underscore the need for more investment.”
But not just any investment. Two abandoned buildings at the corner of Summer and Highland illustrate the promise and peril of redevelopment in distressed neighborhoods like the Heights.
The former Walgreens on the northeast corner shares the intersection with two other gas stations. A Collierville construction company planned to convert the property into a “neighborhood market” that included gas pumps.
The CDC and neighborhood residents responded by creating a neighborhood petition opposing the plan. The proposal was withdrawn from consideration by the Land Use Control Board in December. The property remains vacant.
“To my knowledge, that type of corner development is not really consistent with what the community wants for a more thriving, walkable community,” said Christina Edingbourgh, former Heights CDC employee and current City of Memphis urban development planner.
The abandoned Highland Heights United Methodist Church, a neighborhood anchor for a century, presented another challenge. The denomination closed the church in 2019 and sold the property to a developer.
The developer planned to raze the church buildings and put another gas station on the corner. Heights CDC and neighborhood residents collected 4,000 signatures in opposition. Memphis City Council rezoned the property to prohibit gas sales.
In February 2022, The Avenue Community Church announced that the former Methodist Church would become their future home.
That’s the sort of neighborhood-friendly redevelopment that Diko and others are hoping to see.
“The plan recognizes and balances development with inclusiveness to help make the Heights neighborhood sustainable and resilient,” he said.
