A set of 34 new homes where McLean Boulevard dead ends at James Road didn’t have many real estate comparables in Frayser, and the home appraisals are still less than what it cost to build them.

But the City of Memphis, the developers that built them and the banks that financed them marked a milestone Thursday, Nov. 10, with the formal opening of the $8.6 million Wolf River Bluffs subdivision.

All but four of the homes have sold and one of those four has an offer, according to city Housing and Community Development director Ashley Cash.

COGIC unveils 20 new affordable housing units, a symbol of its return

Plans originally called for 300 homes, but that was 18 years ago, before the worst national economic downturn since the Great Depression. Those plans were orchestrated by the late Tim Bolding, the founder of the nonprofit United Housing Inc.

“The foreclosure crisis was in full swing,” said Amy Schaftlein, director of United Housing. “And we could no longer support the building of 300 new homes. We actually were wondering if we could get the first 34 done.”

“Frayser was the hardest hit ZIP code during the foreclosure crisis, and there were no new homes built here for decades,” she said.

In 2007 the city completed the streets, sewer work and other public infrastructure necessary to build on what had been a muddy, dead-end field favored by riders of four-wheel, all-terrain vehicles. Construction started on the first of the 34 homes in 2010.

It was just eight to 10 months ago that the funding was secured to build the last of them. They’ve been constructed to “eco-build” standards that include environmentally friendly building materials, solar capability and tankless water heaters.

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A block to the east of the homes, site preparation is underway for a new Frayser branch library. On the other side of James Road, the latest trailhead for the Wolf River Greenway at Rodney Baber Park is beginning to look less like the baseball fields it was and more like part of the countywide trail system.

“We’re not Germantown yet,” Pastor Ricky Floyd told several dozen people gathered at the home at 2083 Adderley Lane. “But we’re better than that Frayser we were 15 years ago.”

Floyd’s Pursuit of God Church also is involved in affordable housing efforts in Frayser.

For Wolf River Bluffs, the city put up $1.75 million in capital funding as well as funding of a partnership on the eco-build measures.

Schaftlein said grants and philanthropy from the Assisi Foundation and Plough Foundation also filled in some financial holes along with working mortgage lenders at Patriot Bank.

“It’s going to cost more than probably what a family can afford that is low and moderate income,” she told The Daily Memphian. “And it’s probably going to cost more than it can get appraised for anyway.”

She said changing that means building a community that includes the greenway and a new 20,000-square-foot public library. Frayser currently has a 60-year-old, 6,400-square-foot library, the smallest branch in the Memphis Public Libraries system.

Family Fun Friday returns to Frayser’s Ed Rice Community Center

“It’s an area where in the past I think some developers maybe were hesitant to build new homes,” Cash said. “It’s a neighborhood where the amenities are being built for you literally as you come by. It makes it a more holistic community.”

Memphis City Council member Michalyn Easter-Thomas, whose district includes Frayser, remembers her family moving into a home in the Georgian Hills area of Frayser in the mid 1990s.

Her mother still lives there.

“When she moved in, although the houses weren’t new, they were quality and they were affordable for middle-income families,” she told those at the ribbon cutting.

Later she said the greenway and library projects as well as the new Ed Rice Community Center should encourage more homebuilders and developers to build new.

“A lot of people don’t want to be the first person to gamble or put their money in,” she said. “They want to see what is going to happen.”

Easter-Thomas also said affordable housing has evolved from spartan structures built to match the appraisal.

“Affordable isn’t the house,” she said. “It’s the people that are moving in. You want to make sure the income level can support the mortgage or the rental rate. But the houses should still be quality no matter who is moving in.”