Ashley Cash, comprehensive planning director for the City of Memphis, is Mayor Jim Strickland’s choice to become the new director of the division of Housing and Community Development.

Strickland announced her nomination Thursday, April 8, to succeed HCD director Paul Young, who is leaving the post to become president and CEO of the Downtown Memphis Commission.

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The nomination goes to the Memphis City Council for approval.

Strickland anticipates she would take the helm sometime in June in the division that oversees the city’s role in numerous public-private development projects.

Those projects include the conversion of the Fairgrounds to Liberty Park and the South City development encompassing two former public housing projects south of Downtown, as well as incentives for more affordable housing across the city.

Most of the division’s funding is federal.

Housing and Community Development also is central to carrying out the administration’s goals of directing development to areas of the city that private capital and development might otherwise not approach.

Cash led the planning team that developed the Memphis 3.0 — a 20-year plan of land use and development guidelines covering the entire city. It includes residential and commercial development goals as well as public infrastructure designed to promote either kind of development.

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Memphis 3.0 is the city’s first comprehensive plan of its kind since 1981.

While Cash awaits confirmation, HCD deputy director Mairi Albertson serves as interim director of the division.