As we find footing in the wake of the housing market meltdown and ponder what market share multifamily should represent in this city, I would like to offer one consideration that has received little attention: multifamily living as green living.

Multifamily housing is key for any city that longs for viable, urban neighborhoods.  It brings a density that is absolutely necessary for any substantive level of pedestrian activity, which itself is the hallmark of great urban design and great cities.    (For the record, I’m not talking about multifamily built on a superblock interspersed in diagonal patterns around parking lots, but multifamily built close to the street with parking in the rear.  Think 1920s apartments, not 1970s.)

Most Memphians have historically turned away from multifamily housing as desirable living quarters, more so than their metropolitan peers around the nation.  But, a small contingency of young professionals, singles and, increasingly empty nesters have formed a reliable customer base for Memphis’ apartment owners and condominium developers.  I think these owners and developers should add a fourth group to this list as they market themselves: the “greens.”

Multifamily is green in three principal ways:

1.  Landscaping. With the exception of gardening and xeriscaping, large yards are essentially wasteful and represent a substantial environmental cost.  There’s the gasoline required to fuel the lawnmower, the plastic bags that are used to collect the clippings, the gasoline that the truck uses to get the clippings to the landfill and, of course, the landfill itself.  Then there’s the irrigation needed to keep everything living before the whole process is repeated.  While good multifamily buildings should certainly contain landscaping around them, the per-capita environmental cost is far lower.

Consider this: I live in an 18-unit building surrounded by roughly 2000 square feet of irrigated beds and 1600 square feet of irrigated lawn on a ½ acre site.  That totals to about 200 square feet of irrigated landscaping per household.  With the average size of a lot in Memphis at about ¼ acre with roughly half of that, or 5000 square feet, made up of lawns, my neighbors and I are 25 times as green as our single family counterparts.

2.  Proximity. Since multifamily typically serves as a “buffer” between single-family and commercial uses, it is in closer proximity to stores, offices and the like.  This proximity reduces drives to everyday errands and the workplace; in fact, it may even turn a drive into a walk.  Reducing drive time reduces carbon emissions, thereby making for a cleaner city.

Consider this: My building is within a 5-minute walk to two grocery stores, two pharmacies, a coffee shop, countless restaurants and bars, a church, four convenience stores, four cleaners, three hair salons, two package stores, an ice cream shop, two banks and a soon-to-be-opened yogurt shop.  With a 10-minute walk, you exponentially increase these figures and add a movie theatre and four live theaters.  One of my neighbors has no car, two share a car and I have witnessed many of the rest walk to and fro this list of establishments.  These walking and short driving trips represent a fraction of the fossil fuels that would be required of the same 18 households in single-family settings.

3.  Energy Efficiency. In addition to the energy saved from reduced landscaping and vehicular usage, multifamily units are also more efficient to heat and cool.  Since a smaller percentage of the housing unit is exposed to the elements, it is more efficient to heat and cool multiple households under one roof than under multiple roofs.  In addition, multifamily units tend to be smaller than single-family units, further increasing their energy efficiency.

With imminent passage of the Unified Development Code and consideration of the Midtown Overlay District by the City, development of good multifamily housing should become easier in Memphis.  With the City attempting to create greater density in its core, and with so many Memphians now claiming to be “green,” let’s work hard to put the two together so we can enjoy the same kind of viable urban neighborhoods that are becoming the norm in Nashville, Atlanta and many of our other peer cities.

While the Commission engages itself in the unenviable task of coming up with an ideal number for the Metropolitan Council, I thought it would be interesting to investigate the size of the municipal legislatures in the principal cities of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas.  My first post in this series focused on the size of these cities’ councils and my second post focused on their county commissions.  Since some cities have no counties and still others have merged with their counties, this post attempts to compare the 50 major cities on a level playing field.

The table below essentially combines the tables from my last two posts.  I have added the number of city council members for each city to the number of that city’s proportional share of its county commission to come up with a grand total number of local legislators.  For instance, Memphis’ 13 City Council members are added to the city’s 9 Shelby County Commissioners who represent Memphis to come up with a grant total of 22 local legislators.  This results in one local legislator for every 29,815 Memphis citizens.  This is slightly greater than half of the average for these cities, which have one local legislator for every 54,000 citizens.

Using the average for the 50 major cities, the Memphis and Shelby County Metropolitan Council would be composed of 17 members, or one member for every 54,000 citizens of Shelby County.  This may be an unfair comparison since many of the larger cities in the country have disproportionately fewer legislators per citizen.  For instance, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, San Diego and San Antonio all have more than 100,000 residents per legislator, which skews the average.  Using only those cities in metropolitan size similar to Memphis (Cities 31-50 in the table above, in which Memphis lies in the middle), the new Memphis and Shelby County Metropolitan Council would be composed of 29 members, since the average for those cities is one local legislator for every 32,000 citizens.  Interestingly, this is not far from the 26 local legislators who presently sit on the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Board of Commissioners.

In the end, whatever the Charter Commission determines is the right size of the proposed Metropolitan Council, it will be both the voters of Memphis and the voters of Shelby County outside of Memphis who determine on November 2 whether the size and the very idea of metropolitan government are right for this community.

In this post, we will focus on those cities’ county legislative bodies.  Perhaps more so than in the case of the cities, the function and complexion of county legislative bodies vary widely from state to state and from city to city.  In many states, a county legislative body, in fact the county government itself, is very weak and merely supervises the few county services that may be provided.  In other states, there is no county government at all; for instance, in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, all vestiges of the county – including the sheriff – have been removed and replaced with municipal offices.  Of course, these states are so geographically small that many regional functions that are routinely found at the county level can be efficiently achieved at the state level.

Other county governments are non-existent due to consolidation.  Philadelphia and New York are trailblazers in this regard, as both consolidated with their counties in the nineteenth century.  In fact, New York could be seen not only as a pioneer in city-county consolidation, but also its most extreme manifestation, for not only was the County of New York merged into the new municipal government, but so were the Counties of Kings, Queens, Richmond and the southern tip of Westchester (the Bronx).  In addition, all cities and villages within those counties were wiped away in favor of what promoters originally dubbed “Greater New York” (including the third largest municipality in the country at that time, the City of Brooklyn).

The third classification of non-existent counties in our list below are situations where the cities are themselves independent; that is, instead of the central city merging with its county, these cities actually seceded from it.  This odd situation is present in St. Louis, Baltimore and Richmond, where Virginia law requires all municipalities classified as “cities” to be independent of their counties.

For the purpose of this post, we will call all county legislative bodies “county commissions,” the predominant name in most states.  The county commissioner-to-resident ratio ranges from a high of one per two million in Los Angles County to a low of one per 50,000 in Milwaukee County.  Of these counties listed, the mean size is 8 members, and the mean ratio is one member per 325,000 residents.  In some counties, the county commission holds both administrative as well as legislative power; in others, there is a chief executive in charge of the administrative branch who can go by many names.  Shelby County is one of four counties in this list that has a mayor.  In my next post, I will combine both the county commission numbers to the city council numbers of the cities listed below so a better comparison may be made with the consolidated and independent cities’ legislative bodies.

* Consolidated city-county.

** No county government.

*** Independent city.

In this post, I’ll focus on city councils of the primary cities of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the nation; my next post will look at their county commissions.

The table below is ordered by metropolitan area, from largest in population to smallest (using 2009 estimates from the US Census Bureau).  Only the primary city for each metropolitan area is studied.  As is indicated in the far-right column, the percentage of the metropolitan population living in the primary city varies widely – from just 7% in Miami and Riverside (Calif.) to 65% in San Antonio.  Memphis is actually one of only four cities in this list where the majority of the metropolitan population lives within the city limits of the primary city.

The population for each city and the number of members on its legislative body (which I will hereafter uniformly refer to as “city council,” regardless of its actual name) are indicated to determine the ratio of resident-per-council seat.  Not surprisingly, the largest city councils in the country are in two of the three largest cites: New York and Chicago, with 51 and 50 members, respectively.  But the ratios range from one council person for every 255,000 residents in Los Angeles to one for every 11,000 in Providence.  At about one council person per 51,000 residents, Memphis is close to the average for these cities, which is one per 65,000.

No two city councils in these cities are alike.  For example, in some cities, the mayor is actually a member of the legislative body and not the chief of a separate executive branch.  For these cities, I did not include the mayor in the calculation of council members to allow for a clearer comparison.

Some cities still employ the city commission form of government; Portland elects four commissioners to act as heads of various municipal departments.  Some cities have at-large seats.  For example, New Orleans elects five council people from districts and its council president and vice-president at-large.  All of the council seats in Detroit and Seattle are at-large, although Detroit recently voted to end this practice in 2013 and a similar movement is afoot in Seattle.  Memphis has a unique take on at-large districts, electing six of its thirteen council members from two “super-districts.”  Kansas City has a somewhat similar approach: it elects two members from each of its six large districts.  Perhaps the most unique of all city councils was the one in Seattle from 1890-1896, where there was a bicameral council made up of a lower House of Delegates and an upper Board of Aldermen!

Cities with consolidated city-county forms of government typically have very large councils.  This is the result of the combination of two legislative bodies into one.  My next post will look at the size of the 50 primary cities’ county bodies, if one exists.

By this time, you have toured South Parkway from MLK-Riverside Park to East Parkway, twisting and turning several times around its famous “jogs.”  Once on East Parkway, you experienced an equally stimulating drive negotiating around the ever expanding and contracting East Parkway median.  Now, you’ve reached what is one of Memphis’ more complicated intersections: East Parkway/North Parkway/Trezevant/Summer.  Take a left and head downtown via North Parkway.  Part of the confusion of this intersection is due to the history of these streets: just as East Parkway was aligned along the old route of Trezevant, North Parkway was laid out along what had been Summer Avenue, but the parkway designations were only applied to the sections of the roadway that had been given medians, so Trezevant north of this intersection remained Trezevant, and Summer east of here remained Summer.

The first thing you will likely notice driving along North Parkway is its relative straightness.  The road has no twists and turns and no drastic median changes like its southern and eastern brethren, for as far as the eye can see.  To your right is one of Memphis’ classic 1920s subdivisions, Hein Park.

Hein Park, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places, was laid out in 1925 by William A. Hein and features the same curvilinear street pattern and rural cross-sections (no curbs, gutters or sidewalks) as its sisters out east that were developed at about the same time, Hedgemoor and Red Acres.  Hein Park has maintained its position among Memphis’ nicer neighborhoods over the decades thanks in large part to its close proximity to Rhodes College, which is the next landmark along North Parkway.

Rhodes College, known as Southwestern at Memphis until 1984, relocated to this site from Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1924.  The most impressive architectural feature of the campus is its adherence to Henry C. Hibbs’ master plan for the campus and its replication of the original Gothic Revival buildings he designed.  The president of the school at the time of the move to Memphis, Dr. Charles Diehl, bought an old stone quarry in Bald Knob, Arkansas, to ensure the consistency of the buildings.  If you have time to walk around campus, you will find it hard to tell which buildings date from the 20s, 50s, 70s or 2000s.

The first traffic signal you will reach on North Parkway is University Street, which was named for the abutting Southwestern University.  Note that University is one of the few streets of its vintage, besides the parkways, that features a median down the middle.  Once past University, you will come across the first of two 1960s residential towers along North Parkway, Parkway House.

Parkway House, now a condominium building, was one of the first residential buildings in the city to style itself as a luxury apartment building.  Two buildings constructed in Memphis in the 1920s were attempts at luxury apartment buildings: 1) the Forrest Park Apartments (now razed) near Forrest Park were planned to be a tenant-owned cooperative building with large units of 3 and 4 bedrooms, but the Depression struck and the building became an apartment hotel, and 2) the Parkview at Overton Park (now a retirement community), which was really more of a hotel than a true apartment building.  Luxury apartments planned for Union and East Parkway in the 1920s (see my past post) were never constructed.  Kimbrough Towers, at Union and Kimbrough, was arguably a luxury apartment building due to its 2 bedroom units, but was not marketed as such (it was completed in the 30s, a decade without too many “luxuries”).  Memphis really had to wait until the 1960s for a true luxury apartment house that was marketed that way.  The success of Parkway House set off a chain reaction in Memphis, as many more apartment towers would be built in the late 60s and 70s, especially adjacent to the Memphis and Chickasaw Country Clubs.

Immediately past Parkway House is the former headquarters of the National Cotton Council of America.

Having been at this location since 1955, the Cotton Council decided to move out to Goodlett Farms in suburban Memphis in 2008.  Plans for a mid-rise apartment building to replace the old Cotton Council building have apparently been abandoned with the current crisis in the housing and construction loan market.  Immediately past the old Cotton Council is one of Memphis’ most celebrated schools, Snowden.  Constructed in 1909, with additions in 1924, 1939 and 1979, Snowden features faux columns on its entrances along the parkway.

The traffic signal at Snowden School is McLean Blvd.  Overton Park has been on the left side of North Parkway for your entire journey up to this point, so once you pass McLean, you will be able to enjoy buildings on both sides of the street.  The blocks west of McLean are largely single-family in nature.  From bungalows to colonial to Spanish revival, some of the best houses from the 1910s and 20s in the city dot this stretch of North Parkway.  The home at the southwest corner of Parkway and Evergreen even has a name (see below).

A few blocks past the traffic signal at Evergreen, the second apartment tower rises on your right.  Formerly known as Woodmont Towers, the building is now called the Glenmary and serves as a retirement community.  Never quite as architecturally stimulating as the Parkway House, the Glenmary was recently repainted in green tones to give it a little flair.  Across the street, on your left, is Stonewall, the lone street in the very linear Stonewall Place Subdivision.  Laid out by Robert Brinkley Snowden in 1909 on the heels of his success in Annesdale Park and Annesdale-Snowden, Stonewall Place featured one of the widest residential streets in the city at the time (see below).

Just past Stonewall and the Glenmary, you will notice a behemoth of a building rising on the horizon.  This is the old Sears Crosstown building.  One of nine regional distribution warehouses constructed by Sears and Roebuck from 1910-1928, the building has nearly 1½ million square feet, making it one of the largest buildings in the city.

Memphis’ Sears building was vacated by the company almost 20 years ago and has sat empty ever since.  It was purchased a few years ago by a local entrepreneur; unfortunately, given the current state of the economy, it is unlikely that it will be redeveloped anytime in the near future.  Other cities’ Sears buildings have experienced a variety of fates: Philadelphia’s and Kansas City’s have been demolished.  The one in Dallas is now condos.  The City of Atlanta purchased the one in that city for various municipal functions (it came to be known as “City Hall East”); it, too, is currently being converted to condos.  The buildings in Minneapolis and Boston have been renovated into celebrated mixed-use centers.  The one in Los Angeles is still used for various commercial uses and the one in Seattle is now the world headquarters of Starbucks Coffee.  Interestingly, Sears’ massive main offices and warehouses in Chicago have largely been demolished, with the exception of the old clock tower, which now stands alone surrounded by recreation fields.

Of course, North Parkway is purely residential and institutional for most of its length, and Sears does not actually abut it.  Instead, there is a narrow row of bungalows separating the building from the parkway, but its enormity cannot be missed as you drive past it.  Sears is located on Watkins Street, which North Parkway dips under.  This underpass also avoids a now defunct railroad line (which presently acts as the terminus of the Vollintine and Evergreen Greenline, a pedestrian and bicycle pathway).  The underpass did not always exist.  In fact, up until the 50s, the North Parkway-Watkins-L&N RR intersection functioned in a somewhat dysfunctional manner (see below).

While you are driving through the underpass, take a quick look up at the railroad bridge: an old “L&N” sign still adorns the side.  This is somewhat remarkable considering the Louisville and Nashville was absorbed into CSX some 30 years ago.  Once you emerge from the underpass, a long row of neat bungalows greets you on both sides of the parkway.  This long stretch of bungalows facing a slightly wider parkway median west of Watkins is over a mile long.  Indeed, you may note that the North Parkway median stays intact much further into town than did the South Parkway median.  The last stretch of median lies between Decatur and Dunlap.  Interestingly, the subdivision that lies between these streets was originally laid out in 1871, more than 30 years before the parkway system was established.  Nevertheless, the plat from 1871 (see below) clearly shows a very wide Summer Avenue (160 feet wide, to be exact), so this clearly indicates that Summer was at a very early stage contemplated to be a wide, median-ed boulevard.

Given its 1871 pedigree, this stretch of North Parkway can also be considered the oldest stretch of parkway in the entire city.  Once you reach Dunlap, not only will you find the median disappearing, but you will get your first glimpse of the Pyramid, that great municipal experiment that seems to create perpetual conjecture on its rightful place among the City’s venues.

The next big intersection is Danny Thomas.  This is the end of North Parkway, and as such, your tour of Memphis’ parkways.  Although the roadway will run straight through Danny Thomas into the Pinch District and across the Wolf River to Mud Island, the name of the roadway becomes AW Willis Avenue, so it is not technically part of the parkways.  At any rate, the roadway has no median and is largely commercial and institutional in nature, so it certainly does not feel like one of Memphis’ parkways.  Up until about a year ago, North Parkway did actually cross Danny Thomas: it traversed through what is now the St. Jude campus and terminated at the foot of the Pyramid.  The City abandoned its right-of-way in the vicinity of St. Jude and the section west of Third Street is now known as Shadyac Avenue, named for Richard Shadyac, the longtime and recently retired CEO of the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, the fund-raising arm of St. Jude.  There was no outcry from the community due to this reduction in the parkway system’s mileage because that stretch of roadway was also very un-parkway like.

This concludes your tour of the Memphis parkway system, now over 100 years old.  There are other stretches of roadway that can be considered spurs of the parkway system, including Mississippi Blvd, particularly the section around Booker T. Washington High School, and Riverside Drive, but these were not part of the master plan created by George Kessler more than a century ago.  By the way, there is a movement afoot to install medians along some of the median-less stretches of the parkways, so you may find it useful to take this tour sometime again in the near future and enjoy the changes…

Once you’ve reached the bottom of a bridge that traverses both Southern Avenue and the Norfolk-Southern tracks, the leafy median picks back up and you’ll notice something different about East Parkway as compared to South Parkway – it has six lanes, three in each direction, rather than four.  Indeed, East Parkway, along with its sisters Airways Blvd. and Trezevant, is one of only a very few north-south roadways that runs a considerable distance in this east-west oriented city, so the additional lanes are certainly warranted.  To your right is the former Mid-South Fairgrounds, which is currently awaiting redevelopment under a variety of scenarios.  Perhaps the single-most historically significant feature of the fairgrounds that remains is its entrance gates, just past Young Avenue.  Built in the early 20^th century, the gates retain both their elegance and muscular proportions, having greeted visitors of fairs, flea markets, wrestling matches and roller derbies for over 100 years.

To your left is the eastern edge of the Cooper Young neighborhood, with neat bungalows facing this tree-lined section of the parkway.  Through this section of East Parkway, the road has a 145-foot right-of-way, a width that puts today’s 114-foot standard for major arterials to shame.  This wide right-of-way provides for not only an adequate verge between sidewalk and curb to allow for mature oaks, but also a generous 30-foot median.  The size of this right-of-way is graphically shown in a subdivision plat below; compare the width of the parkway to the width of the lots.

Just before you reach the next traffic signal at Central, you will find on your right Fairview Junior High, which is considered by many local architects to be the Art Deco gem of the city.  A quick glance at its front façade reveals fanciful tile work, vertical pylons containing sculptures and other elements that are indicative of the Art Deco style.

The Central-East Parkway intersection was once much more cumbersome to traverse due to the Union Railway’s unfortunate alignment that happened to cross right through the heart of this intersection.  When the Union Railway was laid out, East Parkway was little old 2-lane Trezevant Avenue, so I’m sure there wasn’t much of a problem crossing this intersection diagonally.  But not too long after the 2-lane Trezevant became the multi-lane East Parkway, a trestle was constructed by the railroad to ease the traffic boondoggle that resulted in a diagonal railroad crossing.  The solution, as seen in the photo below, was not much of an improvement (you can spot Fairview Junior High in the background).

The trestle was finally removed in the early 50s once Missouri Pacific (Union Railway’s parent) was granted access on the railroad line immediately to the north.  The old tracks were pulled up and the railroad right-of-way abandoned.  The old right-of-way to the northeast of the intersection was deeded to Christian Brothers College, which owned the adjacent property.  The old right-of-way to the southwest of the intersection was deeded to the City, which turned the oddly shaped piece of property into the Spanish War Memorial Park.  Some have alleged that it was no mere coincidence that the City placed a memorial to a war in which America defeated a Catholic nation directly across and facing one of the city’s most prominent Catholic institutions, but I digress…

The East Parkway median makes a decided change as you pass Central.  You will find that the constantly changing width of East Parkway’s median, particularly at major intersections, is the quirk that differentiates this parkway from her sisters, similar to South Parkway and her jogs.  For instance, the median is more than 50 feet wider north of Central than it is south of Central!  Christian Brothers is on your right as you negotiate the median expansion, and has been at this same location since the early 40s.  The school sold their former property on Adams to the City, which in turn tore the old school building down and constructed Juvenile Court in its place.  Christian Brothers College, which at various times in its history included both a high school and a college, later became purely a four-year post-secondary institution when the high school moved to Walnut Grove in the early 60s.  The school achieved university status in 1990.

Across the parkway from Christian Brothers is the Parkway Arms Apartment complex, which was built as one of the largest apartment developments up to that time in the early 1920s.  The apartment units themselves, which feature sunken living rooms, remain some of the largest of their era to this day.  Traveling further north, East Parkway makes another famous twist to get under a three-track railroad line that is currently co-owned by CSX Transportation and Union Pacific.  The overpass is of 1940s vintage, and your journey under it not only involves a dip in topography, but also a complete disappearance of the median.  Not to worry, though, the median re-emerges on the other side of the overpass.

On the north side of the overpass, you will find a few interesting things about this block of East Parkway: first, there are interstate-grade overhead signs that advertise the upcoming interchange with Union Avenue.  These signs were presumably constructed since Union and the blocks of East Parkway north of Union are US Highways 64, 70 and 79.  Also, the interchange with Union is exactly that – an intersection with on- and off-ramps.  What makes these interstate-like ramps and oversized signs so unusual is that they co-exist with large mansions, mansions of the size we have not seen since we were on the “Cooper Parkway” section of East Parkway on our last tour.  Perhaps in part because East Parkway has become such a high-traveled area along with its interstate signs and ramps, many of the owners of these mansions have constructed large masonry and wrought iron walls, which adds to the exclusive nature of this stretch of roadway.

As I’ve indicated above, East Parkway avoids our next major cross-street altogether.  With one of the three lanes giving way to an on-ramp to Union, you will find the median disappears again as the parkway travels under the overpass in an hourglass formation.  But once you come out from under Union, the median expands to its largest dimension in the entire Memphis parkway system.  For the next half-mile or so, the median is an astounding 140 feet wide, with the right-of-way an inconceivable 250 feet.  To see is to believe, so I have provided an excerpt from the subdivision plat at the northeast corner of East Parkway and Union, the area in which you will find Lindenwood Christian Church (which, by the way, is a fantastic piece of mid-20^th century architecture).

The next major roadway is Madison, but you will not deal with a traffic signal here, as only the southbound lanes of East Parkway deal with a signal at Madison.  Historically, the Madison and East Parkway intersection was regulated by much more rudimentary traffic devices (see below).

Just past Madison, you will see the famous “M” inside the median, which is typically adorned with flowers of the season.  The “M” reminds me that the median throughout this section of East Parkway is wide enough to essentially be considered a park unto itself.  On the east side of the street, you will find one of Memphis’ earliest suburban-style subdivisions, Morningside Heights. Morningside Heights proudly exhibits the second oldest subdivision entrance feature in the city (the oldest is at the entrance of Overton Park Place subdivision at Overton Park Avenue and McLean).

An examination of the plat of this subdivision reveals that, as was the case with South Parkway, the name “East Parkway” was not necessarily this roadway’s original name (see below).  The plat, which dates from 1911, indicates the western boundary of Morningside Heights as “Public Parkway,” with a parenthetical “Trezevant Avenue.”  Trezevant Avenue, of course, had recently been in that location before it was widened and converted to a parkway.

Halfway between Madison and Poplar, you will find an odd median for traffic to and from Jefferson Avenue.  As Jefferson is two blocks north of Madison and two blocks south of Poplar, I can only assume that the parkway’s designer wished this to be some sort of focus point.  Today, sadly, this median is little more than a patch of grass.   Also between Madison and Poplar, you will find an eclectic array of architectural styles, ranging from Tudor to Mediterranean to Colonial.  As most of the homes were constructed in the 1910s and 20s, these were typical styles for the period.

The next signaled intersection is Poplar Avenue, whose suburban sections were formerly known as Poplar Blvd. (again, see the plat for Morningside Heights above).  This intersection is often cited as one of the most confusing and dangerous in the city.  Part of what makes this so is the fact that the median inside East Parkway shrinks from 140 feet to a little less than 40 feet almost instantaneously as you cross Poplar.  This 100-foot reduction may have been due to the City’s inability to secure the necessary right-of-way from the adjoining property owners north of Poplar.  However, another theory is that the City had little interest in creating a large park-like median north of Poplar since Overton Park, itself the gem of the Memphis park system, fronts this portion of the parkway.  As I stated in my last post, George Kessler, the architect of the Memphis parkways, also designed Overton Park.

A major landmark of the city lies at the northeast corner of Poplar and Parkway, First Baptist Church, a church that has probably fathered more suburban churches throughout West Tennessee than any church of any denomination in Memphis.  Just past First Baptist is Strathmore, a 1920s subdivision that is unique in the number of Spanish-style houses it contains.  The next subdivision after that is Eastwood Place, which also has an architectural claim to fame – it is home to one of the largest unaltered collections of large bungalows in the city.  A couple of 1950s apartments buildings are next, which are in the location of an apartment building that was planned for that area in 1922, but never built.

Suddenly, the houses and trees disappear as we approach Sam Cooper Blvd.  As any native Memphian can attest, this was the location of the doomed Interstate 40 through the heart of Memphis.  While a non-expressway Sam Cooper was finally extended from Holmes to East Parkway a few decades after all of the structures and trees were felled, a few remnant vacant properties remain around the new Sam Cooper.  Past Sam Cooper, you approach the location of another failed apartment building planned for the NE corner of East Parkway and Parkway Place: an eight-story showpiece that was even grander than the failed building above.

An article in the June 9, 1929, Commercial Appeal, read that this apartment building, which would have been one of the city’s largest, required a height variance from the Memphis Board of Adjustment in order to be built as planned.  Whether that variance was rejected or the stock market crash that occurred later that year killed it, East Parkway never got its high-rise apartment building.  North Parkway, on the other hand, is a different story.

In my next post: the third and final installment of the tour of the Memphis parkway system, a drive towards downtown on North Parkway.

South Parkway.  South Parkway is the one parkway that begins at the river. Well, at least it used to.  

Back when my grandfather was in high school, he used to take girls to the end of South Parkway to “look for German U-boats in the Mississippi.”  That was before the creation of President’s Island, which involved cutting off the Tennessee Chute and turning it into McKellar Lake.  Unfortunately, you cannot even see McKellar Lake from the end of South Parkway due to the abandonment of the westernmost 1000 feet of the parkway’s right-of-way to the adjacent property owners.  If you look on the south side of the street, you’ll see the purpose of this westerly outpost of the parkway system, Martin Luther King Riverside Park.  A drive through the park gives you a rare opportunity to see and feel turn-of-the-20^th-century landscape architecture at its finest.  The golf course in the park recently experienced a major overhaul, similar to the renovations made at Galloway Park.  On the north side of South Parkway, you’ll find the rubble of one of Memphis’ great industrial buildings, the sprawling 1924 Ford Motors plant.  

Although Ford had left decades ago, the building survived for many years as a warehouse.

Once you cross over I-55, you’ll see the historic neighborhood of Fordhurst to the right.  Fordhurst Subdivision, which derives its name from the nearby Ford plant, was designed on a clean grid system and its homes have held up well through the years. 

On the opposite side of the parkway from Fordhurst is a series of great industrial buildings from the early decades of the 20^th century.  The Dixie Wax Paper Company emblazoned their name on their old headquarters.  The first traffic signal on South Parkway is Florida Street, where another “Ford” institution lies on your left – the Ford Funeral Home.  Once you get past Third Street, the parkway takes on a decidedly residential feel.  The verge between the curb and sidewalk is a generous width, which allows mature oak trees to canopy the street.  To your right is Shadowlawn Blvd., the main artery of historic Shadowlawn Subdivision.  Tidy brick and stone bungalows with massive front porches line both sides of the streets in this area.  Shadowlawn Subdivision holds the distinction of being one of the first subdivisions in the city to sport masonry entry features (other early entry features welcome visitors to the Overton Park Place Subdivision on McLean, Belle Air Subdivision on Poplar, Glenview and Morningside Place, the last two of which you will drive by soon).

A light awaits you at Lauderdale Street.  Just past Lauderdale, at McMillan, you will find an imposing two-story building standing on the right side of the street; this was the home of the renowned Ellen’s Soul Food Restaurant.   Unfortunately, Ellen’s closed a couple of years ago for renovations and temporarily relocated to Elvis Presley Blvd. (just south of Alcy).  Hopefully, she will return her culinary delights to the parkway soon.  Of interest, before this building housed Ellen’s, it was home to Brady and Lil’s’s Restuarant, which was purchased by Frank Vernon in the early 1980s, who later moved the restaurant to Madison Avenue and gave it a new name – The Bar-B-Q Shop.  Traveling further east, there are several more blocks of churches, shops and homes before you will stumble upon the first of many jogs, which make South Parkway unique among its parkway brethren.

The South Parkway jogs.  When George Kessler proposed the parkway system to the Memphis Parks Commission in 1901, the South Parkway alignment made it the one parkway that involved substantial right-of-way acquisition since there were few existing roadways in this part of town (East Parkway was largely proposed along Trezevant Street and North Parkway along Summer Avenue).  As such, the roadway was laid out as closely to an east-west straight line as possible, but to avoid excessive right-of-way acquisition costs, the parkway had to “jog” around a few large parcels whose owners were probably unwilling to see their property split in half.  For the section you have already toured, Kerr Avenue existed for some of the stretch when South Parkway was laid out.  Hence, some old maps indicate this section of South Parkway as “Kerr Avenue Speedway.” 

Traveling east, the first jog is Douglass Parkway (yes, for address purposes, each of these jogs has their own names, typically continuing the name of the adjacent roadways).

As you approach the next signal, Mississippi Blvd., look to your left.  That BP station is one of the oldest continually operated service stations in the city.  Its small size and clean, modern lines reveal its early vintage.  Of course, even older filling stations from the teens and 20s line Mississippi just north of the parkway, but none of those are still in use.   South Parkway represents the southern end for Mississippi Blvd., which at one time was the preeminent commercial arterial of South Memphis.  Just south of the parkway, the last block of Mississippi Blvd. is surprisingly urban in nature, with several brick buildings lining both sides of the street.  This urbanity is no doubt the result of the streetcar that ran down Mississippi Blvd. from downtown.

Once you pass Mississippi Blvd., note the well maintained, large brick bungalows on your left, no doubt sustained in part by the anchor of this area, St. Andrew AME Church across the street.  Just as you pass St. Andrews, the next famous South Parkway jog occurs.  Gaither Parkway, as it is known, can proudly proclaim to be the first location of a median along South Parkway.  Similar to the Douglass Parkway jog, Gaither is short and sweet, with landscaped islands separating the travels lanes and the approaches to Gaither Street on either end.  When South Parkway returns to its eastward projection, you come across I-240.  The cloverleaf at I-240 and South Parkway is one of only two full four-leaf cloverleafs in Shelby County, the other being at Riverside/Crump/I-55.  As traffic engineers look less favorably at the effectiveness of cloverleafs, this interchange will likely be altered when this section of I-240 is widened to accommodate the expressway’s duplexing to I-240/I-69.

Immediately after I-240 on your right is one of Memphis’ most venerable restaurants, Coletta’s.  Coletta’s has been cooking great Italian favorites at this location for more fifty years.  The metal flags that fly over the sign, the Cadillac “V” that frames the sign and the building itself all scream the 1950s.  Past Coletta’s, you will come across a wide green area running diagonally on both sides of the parkway.  This is the old route of Union Railway, a Missouri Pacific subsidiary built entirely inside the city of Memphis as a belt line.  Most sections of the old Union Railway remain, with this section and the section along Chelsea between Thomas and Hollywood being the notable exceptions.

The next traffic signal is Bellevue Blvd.  Actually, Bellevue turns into Elvis Presley Blvd. at this very intersection.  Look to the right down Elvis Presley Blvd. and you’ll see some good early suburban retail structures.  Similar to retail structures along Union Avenue between Kimbrough and Belvedere, these structures were meant to accommodate both the burgeoning automobile clientele, but also be close enough to the street to accommodate pedestrians.  Once you cross Bellevue, South Parkway takes a decidedly upper-middle class turn.  Long blocks with large bungalows face a median that seems to have gotten wider.  Just as you start getting used to things, suddenly, the median disappears.  Look to your left, and you’ll see why – the Zion Christian Cemetery, the oldest African-American cemetery in Memphis.  Established in 1876 by the United Sons of Zion, a black fraternal organization, the cemetery is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Once you pass Zion Christian Cemetery, the westbound lanes bump back behind a newly emerged median.  You then cross over BNSF RR’s main tracks through Tennessee, and then the lots become much bigger, with the houses duly keeping pace.  As with the old Kerr Avenue section of the parkway, a preexisting street existed along this latitude, as well.  One early map revealed this section as “Austin Avenue Speedway.” 

By the way, whether the names “Austin Avenue Speedway” and “Kerr Avenue Speedway” were ever really used is questionable.  By 1913, these names were not indicated on a map of the city, but “South Parkway” had not yet been accepted either.  “South Park Driveway Speedway” was apparently the preferred name at the time (now that’s a mouthful!).

Back to the tour, on your left is the Glenview Subdivision, the gem of South Memphis, which comes with a nice masonry entrance feature.  Glenview was platted in the early teens, and has remained one of the better addresses within the parkways.    To the right are much newer subdivisions, which is evidenced by the ranch homes from the 50s and 60s punctuating that side of the street.  Keep a watch out for the attractive stone bridges inside the median at LaPaloma and Castalia Streets.  These stone bridges date to the 20s when the culvert was built inside the median.  The median through this section of South Parkway is perhaps wider than any other section up to this point in our journey; the parkway has a 200-foot right-of-way in this area (!).  South Parkway is about to make its biggest jog yet – and its most exciting.

East Parkway, briefly.  As you approach Lamar, South Parkway starts to point northward.  A U-turn lane allows you to turn back westward onto the parkway right before you hit Lamar, a feature that is unique on any of the city’s divided roadways.  Once you cross Lamar, the roadway has fully transitioned from an east-west to a north-south orientation.  And, as with the case with Douglass and Gaither Parkways, you can probably sense a name change is coming.  But here’s the kicker: South Parkway East (Florida Street separates East and West addresses) becomes East Parkway South.  And if you are accustomed to what images “East Parkway” conjures in your mind, this section of the parkway will not disappoint.  Manses from the 20s and 30s line a beautifully landscaped street.  From a traffic engineering standpoint, this stretch of roadway is special in that it is one of the few streets in Memphis where lane demarcations are done entirely in those little round reflectors (a la US 101 in California.   And just as you start enjoying your surroundings, you come up to yet another jog.  Go straight and the road becomes Cooper Street.  The Cooper-Young neighborhood is just one block to the north.  The parkway, which officially returns to the name “South Parkway,” shoots off to the right.   By the way, in the middle of this most unique of jogs is a great traffic circle funneling traffic between Cooper, McLemore, South Parkway East and East Parkway South.  The nomenclature of these roadways apparently was a little easier in the past, with the section of South Parkway lining up with McLemore using the name “McLemore Parkway” and the section lining up with Cooper using the name “Cooper Parkway.” 

Back to the journey, you have now arrived on the final block of South Parkway.  This east-west block has housing very similar to, but not quite as grandiose, the north-south block you just left.  One particular house on the left is worth noting: 2170 South Parkway East, which was featured in Johnson and Russell’s Memphis: An Architectural Guide due to its unusual “razzle-dazzle Arts and Crafts” styling.  Before South Parkway completely runs out of steam, you will pass by New Salem Missionary Baptist Church on your right, one of the largest congregations in the city of any denomination.  The traffic light ahead of you represents the end of South Parkway and the southeast corner of the great parkway system.  This intersection between Airways to the right, Spottswood straight and East Parkway to the left, appears to be just like any other intersection in the city at first blush.  Traffic whizzes by in all directions.  An old plat reveals it used to look muchmore like the corner of a beltway – most traffic traveled from South Parkway to East Parkway and vice versa. 

My next post will delve into that roadway to the left, the legendary East Parkway.

In my last post, I discussed the fallacy of a city – any city – approving new developments at its periphery when all available evidence shows that said developments, be they residential or retail, are simply cannibalizing existing neighborhoods and businesses elsewhere in that city.  This is precisely what is occurring in Fisherville, the large swath of land from Wolf River north to Grays Creek and from Houston Levee east to the county line (see map).

While the Poplar Avenue corridor may be the gold coast of Memphis real estate, it does not provide the kind of large lots and rural atmosphere for which there is a substantial demand in this market.  With its close proximity to urban services and conveniences, Fisherville stands tall above its competition in the surrounding counties for the large lot market.  What makes Fisherville unique among its competitors is that it lies within the City of Memphis annexation reserve area.  As such, Memphis and Shelby County have control over land use decisions made in the area.

In 2005, a step in the right direction was taken by the Shelby County Commission when that body placed a moratorium on all new developments within the Memphis annexation reserve areas.  While this move affected many parts of Shelby County, it was primarily felt in (and perhaps aimed at) Fisherville.  Some in the development community howled.  Such a move, they said, would artificially push residents and tax revenue into surrounding counties, particularly western Fayette County.

But their protestations were based largely on a presumption that has been rigorously debated in many fora, including this blog: that new development pays for itself.  Now, I must admit, in many situations, new development does in fact pay for itself.  Examples include infill developments that are surrounded by existing water, sanitary sewer and stormwater infrastructure and school, park, fire and police facilities.

But when these services are being stretched out in the exurban hinterland, the cost benefit analysis changes dramatically.  While the developer may pay for the infrastructure within the development, it is the taxpayer – both City and County – that underwrites the bill to extend services to the site and build new schools, parks and police and fire stations.  It’s what happened in Frayser in the ‘50s, Whitehaven in the ‘60s, Raleigh in the ‘70s, Cordova in the ‘90s and it’s exactly what is happening in Fisherville today.

So, to the question of a renewed development moratorium in Fisherville: should Memphis care about development leap-frogging into Fayette County?  Is it happening anyway?  Obviously, there are people who are leaving the City, and the reasons are not unique to Memphis.  In fact, you hear the same refrain all across the country: central cities mean higher crime, higher taxes, uncomfortable proximity to whatever breakdowns may occur in civil society, etc.  Does this mean the City should roll out the red carpet and fund these residents’ emigration (only to re-annex them when the time comes)?  I say no.  If people want to move from the City, that is their prerogative.  But it should be on their nickel, and on the nickel of whatever jurisdiction that are fleeing to.

I think the City should seriously consider establishing a strict rural, large lot policy in Fisherville and stick to it.  This may be difficult when Interstate 269 opens with its fabulous new interchanges, but it will probably be the best way to not only put a tourniquet on the bleeding that’s occurring inside the present City limits, but also maintain Fisherville as an area looked favorably by the market.

Fisherville was actually one of the most vocal and active of the “tiny towns” a decade ago.  Back when the tiny town debate was the focus of front-page headlines, Memphis and other member cities of the Tennessee Municipal League argued that allowing these tiny towns to choke off their annexation areas would kill the expansion of their tax bases.  They would wither and die, presumably, because the flight from old places to new places was inevitable.  Eventually, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the tiny towns law on procedural grounds, and Fisherville again became the domain of the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission.

Had Fisherville become a town unto itself, it would have likely zoned itself as a purely residential, large lot district (think Wildwood, Missouri, outside of St. Louis or Indian Hill, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati).  I only say this because I actually attended a pre-incorporation rally in Fisherville back in 1997 and it was the preservation of the rural character that was a major driver behind their town-making efforts.  The irony here, of course, is that Memphis may  just had been better off with an independent, rural Fisherville at its border than underwriting a “city-building” project that will suck the money and resources away from all existing Memphis neighborhoods.

I am by no means a large lot snob.  Nor do I believe in the inequities presented by large populations living in unincorporated areas while utilizing municipal services that are paid by others.  However, in the case of Fisherville, I believe Memphis would be better off by retaining its large lot, rural atmosphere.  If development wants to leap-frog to Fayette, so be it.  At least Memphis and Shelby County taxpayers won’t be paying for it.  If Memphis feels the need to annex Fisherville, so be it, so long as the City establishes some sort of rural taxing district so the City will not be obligated to provide the urban services that will bring the density that is required by law with full taxation.  With the imminent passage of the Uniform Development Code and the construction of Interstate 269, all eyes will be on Fisherville to see if it remains the preeminent large-lot enclave in Memphis or simply implode as the next “it” neighborhood.

This is not only true for retail, where a Poplar address can provide a landlord some of the highest occupancy rates in the city, but also for office and residential uses, as well.  If you were to place the locations of Class A office space on a map, you would find a cluster downtown, a few in the medical district and a long, linear pattern along Poplar stretching from Perkins Ext. to Kirby.  Since executives prefer to live close to where they work, the Class A office space downtown and the medical district helps buoy the Harbor Town, downtown, Evergreen and Central Gardens home appraisals, while the Perkins-to-Kirby Class A office space helps buoy everything from Chickasaw Gardens on out to Piperton.

With the supremacy of the Poplar corridor, where does that leave the rest of the Memphis metropolitan area that is not within close proximity to good old State Route 57?

History

History shows us that developments that are too far-flung from Poplar have not been the epitome of success.

One of the earliest residential examples of this phenomenon is the Kerr Avenue Subdivision (the neighborhood around Marjorie Street), platted way back in 1891.  Despite the fact that the subdivision featured the first curvilinear streets in the city, the subdivision remained essentially vacant for nearly 20 years and was not substantially built out until the 1930s.

A similar fate befell the Rugby Subdivision in Frayser (the neighborhood along Overton Crossing).  It was platted in 1910, and despite heavy advertising and similarly bucolic design as the Kerr Ave. Sub’d., it took some forty years to be substantially complete.  Once these two subdivisions were finally finished, their home values did not necessarily take off.

Winners and Losers

These neighborhoods may represent the extreme, but even subdivisions that had the benefit of being completed in relatively short order have been subject of being forgotten by the market.  Today, we see large swaths of the region go from brand new to bad and then to worse within a matter of a few years.  While every city has their areas that appreciate in property values more than others, it seems that metropolitan Memphis has more than its fair share of failing neighborhoods.

So, with our very few winners who own and rent along Poplar, we have many, many more losers who are not so lucky.  So, how do we help the losers?

One possible solution is to address the mismatch between supply and demand in the Memphis market.  We currently have far too many houses and storefronts for a region that is attracting fewer and fewer folks from other areas.  Nothing short of a regional land use authority (I’ll discuss that in a subsequent post) can be done about Tipton, DeSoto and Fayette Counties’ propensity to approve each and every subdivision and shopping center that comes across their desks for approval.

2 + 2 = 0

Likewise, the suburban cities within Shelby County will continue to attend to their own economic needs by approving developments within their borders.  After all, under our current tax structure, all municipalities are engaged in a highly competitive, zero-sum game to increase and sustain their individual tax bases.

With that said, Memphis-Shelby County still has land use control over large undeveloped tracts, especially in the area east of Houston Levee between the Wolf River and US 64.  While not quite as hot as the Poplar Corridor, the Walnut Grove/Cordova Corridor is arguably second in holding its values.  By adhering to the imminent uniform development code and other land use plans approved for that area and resisting the urge to approve sprawling new developments, some of the overdevelopment in the region will cease, and maybe – just maybe – demand will catch up to supply and the Poplar corridor will be joined by other successful corridors throughout our city and region.

In my next post: What about the argument that turning down developments in the Walnut Grove/Cordova corridor will just move that growth to Fayette County?