Freelance Reporter
37 recent articles by Michael Waddell:
As is the case throughout Collierville, home sales within the Villages at Porter Farms planned development have been on fire for the past several years, with builders taking advantage of one of the hottest homebuilding markets in the Mid-South.
Town icon and veteran Collierville Municipal Judge William Craig Hall died Sunday evening following heart complications that put him in intensive care more than two weeks ago.
After more than five years in the development pipeline, the CarreFour at the Gateway planned development near Germantown’s western border received preliminary outline plan approval from the suburb’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen this week.
Incumbent Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo will serve another term after the Shelby County Election Commission certified him the winner of the Nov. 6 mayoral race by a 120-vote margin over challenger John Barzizza.
After more than a decade with only one hotel on the south side of Tenn. 385 near the Carriage Crossing center in Collierville, two new limited-service hotels are in various stages of development and a third hotel is under consideration.
As Collierville High School students prepare to wrap up their first semester in the $94 million new facility, one area of the school celebrated its formal dedication Monday night.
New management of The Shops at Carriage Crossing wants to enhance the pedestrian-friendly shopping center’s customer experience – a shifting of direction for the business district.
An interest in law enforcement that began with participation in a Boy Scouts Explorer program has led to Kenneth Rowlett reaching the rank of captain in the Collierville Police Department.
Students in the Collierville Schools district may not have gotten a day off for the earlier-than-normal dusting of snow Wednesday, but the possibility opened the social media door for some good-natured lobbying of Superintendent John Aitken to postpone classes.
With visions of making Germantown’s central business district and surrounding areas more walkable, inviting and safe, several streetscape improvement projects are in progress or envisioned for the suburb.
No matter how close the race between incumbent Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo and challenger John Barzizza, there is nothing in state law that requires an automatic recount.
Based on the Shelby County Election Commission's number of provisional ballots from Germantown precincts, it appears unlikely challenger John Barzizza can overcome the 127-vote lead of incumbent mayor Mike Palazzolo.
The Election Commission may have posted the final unofficial numbers, but Germantown mayoral challenger John Barzizza was unwilling to concede the election Wednesday given the close finish with incumbent Mike Palazzolo.
The new Collierville High School – with its price tag in the neighborhood of $100 million – was recognized Saturday night for its design, crowned “School of the Year” by the Tennessee School Boards Association (TSBA).
Over the next year the Germantown Municipal School District (GMSD) Board of Education will create a new five-year strategic plan, so the races for board seats in this year’s election carry extra weight.
Incumbent Collierville aldermen Tom Allen and Maureen Fraser are hoping their leadership experience will push them to victory on Election Day. Challengers Gregory Cotton and William Boone want to sway voters looking for a change.
Business partners Chad Foreman and Kirk Cotham, the creative minds behind Pyro’s Fire Fresh Pizza, The Levee Coffee and Creamery, and Wolf River Brisket, have had a very busy year.
Despite a steady rain, more than 100 vendors and an estimated 1,500 attendees turned out for the annual Collierville Business Expo and Holiday Market at the H.W. Cox Community Center on Wednesday.
With an increasing demand of for muscular and skeletal services, Campbell Clinic is expanding its Germantown campus, almost tripling the current 60,000-square-foot location.
With early voting underway, candidates for two at-large Germantown aldermanic positions are doing their last-minute campaigning to sway voters – one side standing on continuing the city’s direction and leadership, the other seeking a new approach for the suburb.
Budding entrepreneurs and local business owners looking for a little insight came out Wednesday for the annual SCORE Memphis Small Business Boot Camp: Roadmap to Success held in Germantown.
Education and future development are the most significant issues in the Germantown mayoral race between challenger John Barzizza and incumbent Mike Palazzolo.
Things are about to get a whole lot sweeter in Collierville as Dinstuhl’s Fine Candy Company returns to town with the opening of a new store in the Poplar Square retail center.
From fully assisted living to semi-assisted to unassisted in age-restricted communities with amenities, five projects with senior living components are in various stages of development in Collierville.
The Collierville Planning Commission last week agreed to a little give-and-take with developer Regency Homebuilders, the body approving a planned development for nearly 300 new homes on 95 acres near Carriage Crossing Marketplace.
After a delay in construction, the ambitious $90 million TraVure mixed-use development on Germantown’s western border is moving to completion.
Redevelopment of CarreFour at Kirby Woods near Germantown’s western gateway received its initial blessing from the suburb’s Planning Commission this week, setting in motion a possible new look to the city’s border along Poplar.
Southeast Shelby County families hoping to break the cycle of poverty have new support in the community as nonprofit Neighborhood Christian Centers (NCC) Inc. has opened a satellite branch at St. Patrick Presbyterian Church in Collierville.
Michael Robinson has traveled to a lot of places in his life – journeys that have brought a fresh perspective and a unique vision to his social studies classes at Houston High in Germantown.
Following steady growth over the past decade, including a successful location in East Memphis, Lost Pizza Co. is bringing its unique style and fresh, homemade food to the Collierville Town Square.
With children in the Germantown Municipal School District, a leadership role in two of the suburb’s churches and a background of education in her family, the Rev. Rebecca Luter believes she brings the necessary traits to her new role on the suburb’s school board.
As part of new elementary school plans in Germantown, the suburb is turning the tree-lined, two-lane out-in-the-country-style Forest Hill-Irene Road into a four-lane thoroughfare with a landscaped median between Poplar Pike and Winchester.
Not very many people have spent a month on a working ranch sleeping under the stars, feeding cowboys three meals a day as they prepared the spring herd. Germantown resident and longtime FedEx employee Steve Gibson is one of those people, cooking from a chuck wagon in an atmosphere far removed from suburbia. “I love being out there and thinking about how it once was like – what were people doing back then and what was it like to eat back then?” said Gibson. “It’s quite interesting studying U.S. history. Everything cowboys are doing now is what vaqueros, descendants from Spain, were doing back then in Mexico.
Work is underway in Collierville on a new Center Connect streetscape project that promises to transform Center Street leading to the historic Town Square, establishing a new gateway to Downtown Collierville.
Germantown's self-imposed 18-month mixed-use multifamily moratorium just passed its halfway point, and only two of the four projects approved before the action took effect are still alive.
Collierville development should continue its optimistic trend with anticipated growth expected for residential, office, industrial, hotels and retail, according to town leaders.
Neighborhood leaders and concerned citizens met at the Carrefour shopping center on Monday, Sept. 17 to discuss a proposed mixed-use redevelopment of the property at Germantown’s western border. The outline plans from property owners Cannon, Austin and Cannon were submitted to the Germantown Planning Commission earlier this month.
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