“Behind The Headlines,” hosted by Eric Barnes, CEO of The Daily Memphian, airs on WKNO Fridays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 8:30 a.m. Watch the show now via the video link at the top of this article or listen to the podcast version of the show here as well, which includes extended conversation not in the television version.

The redevelopment of Whitehaven as a self-sufficient, sustainable place to live, work and play has a different plan than the formula used in other parts of the city.

Michael Harris — director of the Greater Whitehaven Economic Redevelopment Corp., or GWERC — says the conventional redevelopment plan is usually to start with housing and then move to business development, whether it’s small business or large employers.

“GWERC chose to start with economic development and that’s primarily because of the infrastructure we already have in place,” Harris said on the WKNO Channel 10 show Behind The Headlines.

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Harris is referring to FedEx Corp., biomedical manufacturers Smith Nephew and numerous trucking and logistics companies around Memphis International Airport that are part of Whitehaven along with Graceland and its campus, which includes a 450-room resort hotel, and the residential community behind the commercial corridors dominated by homes on large lots.

“We’ve got business and tourism that other communities — they just can’t celebrate that at this time,” Harris said. “If you’ve ever driven from the airport down Winchester going from Airways (Boulevard) to Elvis Presley (Boulevard), you will see what that looks like now.”

“And it’s just not helpful when we’re talking about revitalizing a community or you are talking about adding economic investment,” he said.

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The condition of the streetscape — specifically, business facades — along Elvis Presley Boulevard has long been an issue pressed by Graceland in particular over several decades.

The boulevard is undergoing a streetscape upgrade from Brooks Road to Shelby Drive designed to modernize parts of the street that haven’t been renovated since the boulevard was a country highway.

Pearl “Eva” Walker, the founder of the I Love Whitehaven Neighborhood and Business Association, says her focus is on smaller home-grown businesses that will allow Whitehaven homeowners to shop where they live and also draw Memphians from outside the area.

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“We specifically target businesses and different activities that are taking place in Whitehaven,” she said during the BTH discussion. “We do really hard, really strategic guerrilla marketing to get people to come to Whitehaven.”

GWERC is helping with small business exterior improvement grants of $5,000 each with a 20% match from the business owner. That, in turn, can be used to leverage an additional $12,000 in exterior improvement grants or forgivable loans by the Memphis-Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine, or EDGE.

“When we start making the community look better and actually feel that sense of community and pride, more patrons will now come and shop in our businesses when it doesn’t look scary from the outside,” Harris said. “And also, we can then attract bigger business opportunities to the community to strengthen that and shore that up, which creates jobs.”

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Walker says restaurants are probably the most visible part of that effort so far.

“We’re known for the restaurants but we also have shopping,” she said. “I can manage every holiday in Whitehaven if I choose to. You have to be creative and strategic and just know those specialty shops are there.”

The effort is a long way from the days when Whitehaven’s elected and neighborhood leaders tried to keep a Red Lobster chain restaurant from leaving Elvis Presley Boulevard.

Harris says beyond economic development is what could be a sea change in the suburban housing pattern of Whitehaven just beyond those major thoroughfares.

“I think long gone are the days of people truly wanting to move to Whitehaven for the large ranch-style home with the two-acre lot,” he said. “I think there’s an opportunity for us to build new homes — $250,000 and up — and really start to transform our residential layout.”

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That includes senior housing, denser single-family subdivisions and apartments.

“We want the homes,” Walker said. “But a lot of people in Whitehaven — they want to rent but there’s not an option for new and modern apartments and condos. That is something that is lacking as well.”

Homeowners in the area have been vocal in their opposition to “manufactured” or prefabricated housing proposals in the past as well as plans for apartment complexes, citing older complexes from the 1960s and 1970s that have not aged well.

A recent proposed affordable housing conversion of a motel for “workforce housing” was pulled by developers after neighborhood opposition translated into opposition on the Memphis City Council.

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Harris acknowledges new apartments and condos come with higher rents in an area where 31% of the population makes less than $25,000 a year and 11% have no high school diploma.

“That’s why we’ve taken this long road approach to not start with residential,” he said. “There are some pieces we have to connect first. … Even in a perfect world, how am I supposed to get those folks employed to be able to turn that key on these new apartments?”

Harris says momentum has to give way to investment — public as well as private.

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“Our corporate partners do their great corporate social responsibility. That’s awesome and the support they lean in and provide — that just can’t cover the numbers of what we need,” he said. “This is going to take some good government partnership and philanthropic partnership to make this work.”

That starts, Harris said, with stopping routine street flooding on Shelby Drive and Millbranch Road.