Memphis should see two 27+ story towers on it's riverfront within the next few years. I'd love to see something like this in the Landing (Hey Drury... pay attention!)
Memphis has an intriguing skyline and downtown. Seems very small when you are up close to it, yet the north-sound expanse between the main bridges is somewhat impressive. The vantage point when crossing the Hernando bridge toward the city should lend a nice visage of this project and how it ties into the rest of the skyline.
Agreed on the Landing, something like this would be cool. Also of note, Peacock similarly mentioned the potential stadium as a skyline changer like the guy at the end of this article. As much as some are in the camp of "too much parking","waste of resources" etc, there is the broad message of progress that building something new downtown tells the country. I realize that this is a mixed use, 365 day a year project of a much different scale, however there is something to be said for new construction.
I have a job offer in Memohis currently, and I'd be lying if I wasn't hoping to live here in the future. While its smaller than St. Louis, downtown seems to be a lot more live able and urban. From their trolley system to even the residential buildings... It may not have a lot of height but there is potential there.
Congrats on the job opportunity. The trolley system has fallen on hard times, but hopefully will be back up and running in 2015.
St. Louis is a lot more city than Memphis. I think the big difference from St. Louis and a lot of its smaller brethren (Memphis, Louisville, Indy, and Cincy) is that you don't have as many strong outlying neighborhoods. So while the DT's can be comparable, they don't have quite the diversity of active interesting neighbs.
^ I would agree with this. Memphis has a stronger downtown and Midtown is awesome, but that's pretty much it as far as urbanism goes in Memphis. St. Louis is stronger in the neighborhoods. There's a lot of exciting things happening down there, though. When I was in high school downtown had probably half the establishments it does now and Overton Square in Midtown was pretty much dead. It's great to see so much new life every time I go back.
After two years in Memphis, (lived in East Memphis). I think Memphis' downtown has the appearance of strength because of the buzz around Beale St. and Main Street (closed to traffic, I'm sure many on here would love that) however it doesn't come remotely close to STL's architectural diversity, housing stock, or street level density. The housing stock part is true all over Memphis. I found basically nothing close to the types of apartments you could get a dime a dozen on Cherokee or SWG, TGS, Dogtown, or CWE. My co worker while in Memphis lived downtown, and she lamented how during the week it was a ghost town when she came home from work. In fairness, she was from Brooklyn, so obviously her frame of reference was skewed. Regardless, after a year she chose to move to East Memphis. This was 2013-2014.
I think Memphis is a great place to live, an outstanding place to raise a family, and offers a high quality of life for the money. However, if using potential as a barometer for a diverse urban lifestyle, STL wins big. And I'd go to Beale Street anytime to hang out, but you can get just as good Blues music in Soulard or Near Southside, just without the Six-Flags-type atmosphere.
East Memphis is a zone of the eastern border of the city that actually includes a number of specific residential neighborhoods. I guess we lived in White Station technically. Analagous to STL boundary-wise it would be like living in the central west end without the urban panache of living in the CWE.... if felt like living in Brentwood to me. Urbanity aside, it was incredibly easy to live there. My job was a mile or two east on the border of Germantown and my wife worked in downtown Memphis, about 25-30 minutes down Poplar Ave.
We lived within the city limits proper, but the majority of the "city" once you are outside of downtown feels like driving down Manchester Road. The most urban parts are Maplewood-ish and the least are like Ballwin. Midtown is like downtown Kirkwood.
Not sure how many people are familiar with the Overton Square area, but this is a good win for the neighborhood. Ballet Memphis is currently housed in a fairly isolated area of Cordova/Germantown and should fit in nicely in a growing urban district. Sounds like the design will interact smartly with the streetscape.
The Air BnB we stayed at last weekend was just across from the ballpark. The last time I was in Memphis was 2016 and stayed at a motel across the street that was razed for this project (A good thing as that place had seen better days). In addition to the motel there was a lot and some sort of auto-centered business there previously. It will be quite the downtown development once it's done but right now it is quite jarring to go from the pedestrian heavy part of Union Ave a block or two to the west to see this:
Memphis has a lot of same tailwinds going for it as Nashville. As one city grows more crowded and unaffordable, Memphis has a real opportunity to capitalize on that momentum.
Cool project, hopefully it helps get that other giant lot on Beale developed
Memphis has a lot of same tailwinds going for it as Nashville. As one city grows more crowded and unaffordable, Memphis has a real opportunity to capitalize on that momentum.
Cool project, hopefully it helps get that other giant lot on Beale developed
I disagree.
-not the state capital
-big difference with all the wealth Nashville has in-city and in the suburbs
-demographic differences. Nashville metro is supposedly 61% white while Memphis metro is 43%.
I want to see Memphis prosper, but they've got a really tough uphill to climb.
A few updates to some projects mentioned in the thread.
First, it looks like the riverfront-adjacent One Beale at the top of the thread had some hiccups along the way and the two hi-rise towers were scrapped; however, there's a couple mid-rise hotels (a new Hyatt Centric with modern design and what looks like a pretty neat combo of adaptive reuse and new construction for a Hyatt Caption) and some mid-rise residential. Certainly not a wow factor by any stretch but a very nice improvement over the parking etc that the project replaced.
Second, there seems to be no movement on the Memphis Walk planned project by the AutoZone Park and Fed Ex Forum.... boy is that ever needed as it's a massive fenced in vacant lot. (At least its seeded and green.)
Overall with development, it didn't appear that there has been any new hi-rises built or underway in downtown since this thread began in 2015 (happy to be corrected) but again a fair amount of mid-rises. I saw one crane, down by the riverfront/convention center area, but I think it may be a replacement for a demolished parking garage, Also looking at past google streetview, what they have done with the riverfront parks/trail in the past decade or so seems quite nice. It was my first time down there so I'm hesitant to make too much of my impressions, but it felt like downtown was no exception to the retail struggle most cities have faced since the pandemic. But it is very walkable, a lot of fun, and definitely a town you want to root for.
Finally, the trolley system was mentioned up thread, it had closed since and has not yet re-opened.
