Midtown’s hot real estate development may soon stretch south to embrace an entire block of Lamar Avenue, which has experienced disinvestment over the decades.

About $4,000 is the projected, monthly rent for each of the two units. But the apartments – if that’s how a buyer uses them – are more than 3,000 square feet each, have luxury finishes, and are nestled in one of the city’s leafiest neighborhoods.

The council approved the larger Crosstown overlay district without the 9-acre mound Tuesday, May 4, in the first of several votes on the blueprint for control of design standards by the Memphis Landmarks Commission.

Work has begun on the nearly $90 million Opus East Memphis at 1029 Cherry Road, which developer Kevin Adams says will take about two years to complete. The 240-unit facility will offer independent living, assisted living and dementia care.

A $6.5 million project to install along the Highland Strip five crosswalks, medians, better sidewalks, more lighting, lusher landscaping and improved drainage is set to be complete by June 2022.

Since 2003, the Fogelman-DRA partnership has purchased 34 apartment communities totaling more than 11,000 units, with an aggregate value of more than $1.5 billion.

The Board of Adjustment approved zoning exceptions for the nearly 10-acre, mixed-use Orleans Station on the campus of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Other cases included the rejection of illegal business signs on Summer and a compromise for a nonconforming hotel sign on Lamar.

The Lululemon Pop Up store in Midtown, which opened last year as the pandemic spread, has closed.

Two building owners are asking for variances so they can offer boarding rooms or apartments in areas zoned for employment.

Some business leaders are expressing concern that an ordinance intended to block the controversial Byhalia Connection oil pipeline could hinder their businesses and hurt economic recruitment efforts in the city.

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Byhalia Pipeline spokesman says group interested in talking

For the first time in 33 years, no new car dealerships named “Gwatney” are operating in Memphis. 

The Germantown Board of Mayor and Aldermen voted against David Skinner’s rezoning request, which was an appeal of a denial by the Planning Commission.

The Yoakums’ new house creates more electricity than it consumes. And it’s uber-chic, complete with a pneumatic elevator tube. Plus, the home stays snug in the winter and just as comfortable in the summer.

On a Wednesday afternoon, March 10, someone without permission cut down scores of trees on the publicly owned Mississippi River bank below Martyrs Park, a parks official says.

Executives of the printing paper-making company that is spinning off from International Paper expect to decide by October where to put their global headquarters.

The Design Review Board will meet in a special-called meeting Thursday, April 22, to judge whether a revised design for the 7 Vance Building fits in South Main’s historic warehouse district.

Can a private oil pipeline company force private property owners to provide access to their land? The eminent domain case involving the Byhalia Connection project will attempt to answer that question.

The Citizens to Preserve Overton Park took its fight to stop a highway all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Playwright Virginia Ralph saw an imaginative children’s musical in that real-life story.

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Activists saved Overton Park; now they just may stop a pipeline

Two women are leading the effort to stop Byhalia Pipeline from running its crude oil through South Memphis neighborhoods. The fight is reminiscent of the battle won decades ago by women who stopped a freeway from running through Overton Park.

A Mississippi tree service owner says Steve Harvey’s wife, Marjorie Harvey, told him she had permission to remove the two large magnolias, even though they were on public land.

Owner Dara Vongphrachanh said the Paycheck Protection Program loan and Our Beautiful Comeback Grant were “lifelines” for her business.

The Hyatt Centric is the city’s first hotel with a Beale Street address. It’s intended to be a mix of the old and the new, as well as a mix of the familiar and the unique.

WLOK seeks a $50,000 grant to beautify its buildings at 363 S. Second. And the owner of the planned Big River Market, a small food/coffee store, seeks a $60,000 grant to help prepare space at the corner of Tennessee and G.E. Patterson.

Ubiquiti, a communications technology company, has completed a lease for 161,000 square feet of warehouse space in the Southeast Memphis industrial district.

Bill Townsend feels he didn’t so much buy a building as a 107-year-old time capsule. He’s already got short-term plans and has discussed long-term possibilities with brg3s architects.