A plan for the revitalization of Klondike is encountering a lot of doubts and skepticism from decades worth of revitalizations and similar proposed transformations of other blighted areas.

Those doubts have surfaced just as the Memphis City Council and County Commission take key votes on the planned revitalization of Klondike.

Both bodies vote this week on a tax increment financing — or TIF — district for the redevelopment of the area of North Memphis after each body delayed final votes in November and earlier this month.

Klondike TIF delayed to last city council meeting of year

The decisions come at the last meeting of the year for both bodies starting with the Monday County Commission session followed by a Tuesday City Council session.

The commission meets at 3 p.m. Watch a livestream of the meeting. Here is the agenda. Click on an item to see documents offering more detail on that item. Follow @bdriesdm for live coverage of the meeting.

The previous delays on third and final reading of the joint city-county ordinance culminated in a Thursday, Dec. 15, public meeting with Klondike residents, including homeowners, at Friendship Baptist Church.

The City Council-sponsored meeting in the church basement at 1355 Vollintine Ave. drew a group of 60.

And many who spoke voiced concerns that the combination of home rehabs and new home construction planned would raise their property taxes, pricing them out of the neighborhood as it improves.

The TIF is an increment of increased city and county property tax revenue within the area that is generated by the increased value of the property. It pays for public infrastructure like roads and sidewalks.

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The use of the TIF funding will be overseen by the Community Redevelopment Agency.

CRA President Andrew Murray compared it to a TIF used in the recent development of the Uptown area.

But the recent delays reflect similar concerns about the redevelopment of Uptown and other areas from the city’s large public housing developments to areas with similar levels of disinvestment and resulting blight.

Kevin Jenkins, a home rehab contractor and the grandson of James Parker — one of the original homebuilders when Klondike was conceived as a Black subdivision — said his attempts to buy homes to rehab has been stopped.

“All of the houses were bought up,” he said. “Is this really about people in Klondike? Nobody’s being invited to the table. We’ve been invited to meetings.”

Jenkins owns several properties including a house on Jackson Avenue near Stonewall that he said saw its property taxes triple in the ripple effect from the reuse of Crosstown Concourse.

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Corey Davis, an attorney with The Works Inc., the community development corporation that is part of the Klondike Partnership, said the taxes on the parcels owned by the partnership have gone up an average of $38 as some redevelopment has begun in Klondike.

Jenkins doubted it would be that modest of a jump in tax bills.

“What do you think is going to happen?” he said of tax bills increasing as Davis touted the growth in value of the properties now owned by longtime Klondike residents.

Natalie McKinney, executive director of Whole Child Strategies, the nonprofit working in Klondike with families living in poverty, said the concern is valid. “As their properties increase in value and the taxes increase that’s going to put a burden on some of the homeowners,” she said.

Davis said most of the property tax increment will come from developing vacant lots and not existing homes.

McKinney said the effort should do more to raise the $29,000 median annual income in Klondike and also help existing homeowners blunt the effect of taxes on higher property values.

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Davis said most of those homeowners may be eligible for property tax freezes The Works is helping them apply for and be aware of. There are also workshops on properties inherited by other family members.

“All I can tell you is that’s part of progress,” he said of an increase in taxes for some.

“And we hope we can support the homeowners as best we can,” Davis said. “People lose properties because of taxes or as heirs to the property.” McKinney said she wasn’t questioning intentions.

“I think everyone wants Klondike to be successful and revitalized,” she told Davis. “But I don’t think anybody wants to be left out of that inadvertently.”

County commissioner Britney Thornton cited Uptown earlier in the week as an example where the results haven’t matched the goal of avoiding displacement of homeowners and renters there before the redevelopment.

“The impact of our interests can be beyond what we interpret,” she said in Wednesday county commission committee sessions of Uptown’s legacy.

Financing for Klondike redevelopment clears first hurdle

Commissioner Henri Brooks, who has sought several delays and who represents part of the Klondike area, didn’t drop any specific names.

“The history, the past practices, the former investments in our community has not been with the benefit of the residents in the impacted area in mind,” she said during Dec. 14 committee sessions. “That’s all I want to see in that area.”

Brooks and Roshun Austin, CEO of The Works Inc. clashed in November when Brooks sought to delay the matter.

Brooks didn’t come out against the undertaking but said she wanted to become more familiar with it and gauge how many Klondike residents were aware of it.

Austin was out of town during last week’s committee discussion but Brooks was critical of Austin’s uneasiness with the delay.

Austin has said getting the TIF approved by the end of the year is essential to moving ahead with the project and that she had provided Brooks and other commissioners with lots of information.

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The current commission, with six new members — including Brooks — took office this past September.

“Don’t publicly disparage our process,” Brooks told Archie Willis, another of the Klondike partners, as she said the warning wasn’t specifically directed at him.

“Know how we work at what we do before you publicly disparage the process,” she said. “The only thing I wanted to do was make sure there was a public meeting so all of the residents would have an opportunity to hear about what you are talking about.”

The city council then delayed its final vote on the joint city-county TIF ordinance after council member Michalyn Easter-Thomas, whose district also included Klondike, said her grandmother — who lives in the area — was not familiar with the TIF or the renovation plan.

That’s when the council scheduled its own public meeting in Klondike.

What gave Brooks pause was Klondike homeowner Cathy Gray who has been the most vocal critic of the TIF and the redevelopment plan.

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And Gray has tapped into the distrust that has built up with past promises of ending blight that ignored what happens when developers see new construction and similar activity in an area they otherwise wouldn’t be interested in.

“Maybe you are here to help us,” she said at Friendship Baptist Church. “But tell us how you are here to help legacy homeowners.”

Gray has questioned the general partnership’s purchase of 400 properties out of 1,600 parcels in Klondike.

“GPs are formed so that we don’t know who they are,” she said.

But Austin and Willis have each been vocal about the need for control of some significant block of residential property in order to blunt the market forces that would raise rents and property values and property taxes — and displace those currently living in an area with a median income of $29,000 a year.

“The market is a powerful force,” Willis said in the committee discussion. “We were trying to acquire as much property as we could before the market knew there was an entity acquiring property. We can hold and maintain affordability in those 400 units.”

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Willis also expressed concern that the attention on the adaptive reuse of Northside High School could have the same effect among “people who may not have the interests of the people at heart.”

The $72-million mixed-use remake of the old school that is the largest structure in the Klondike area is not part of the TIF funding.

Davis referred to the Northside project as a “mini-Crosstown” — a reference to the mixed use remake of the old Sears Crosstown building just a few blocks from Klondike.

One Klondike resident quickly told Davis she wasn’t interested in a “mini-Crosstown” where “most of those who live in Crosstown cannot afford to buy a latte there.”

“Frankly, I hate the comparison to Crosstown. I wish we could stop saying that because the big difference between that and Crosstown is the people behind Crosstown don’t look like me,” Willis replied. “And we are in it because we are committed to trying to make the neighborhood better. Nobody is going to get rich at Northside — absolutely nobody.”

Willis said the Northside redesign with affordable housing will open in August 2024.

“You will be proud of the building,” he told those at the church. “Most of the folks coming in and out of it will look like us and there will be services for them as well as opportunities for them.”

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Roshun Austin, who leads The Works Inc., is a board member of Memphis Fourth Estate Inc., the nonprofit that owns and oversee The Daily Memphian. She did not participate in the writing or editing of this story.