The following article is taken from the September 2009 issue of the Main Street Journal. Click “Subscribe Online” above to start your subscription.

Momentum: Can the Center City Commission keep Downtown moving ahead?
By: Michael Roy Hollihan

Walk into the offices of the Center City Commission downtown and the first thing you will notice is the steady flow of traffic. People move in from the street into the main conference room, even as another meeting is organizing in a side office and people cross the mezzanine above engrossed in their own conversation.

Even in the current recession, business doesn’t slow down at the Center City Commission. It’s all about building on the momentum that has turned the Downtown around over the past decade to continue through these down times, then resuming full speed ahead when the economy rights itself.

A new confounding force has entered this picture, though. There’s also political uncertainty in local government this Summer and Fall. With the resignation of former mayor Dr. Willie W. Herenton, Memphis could see four mayors in quick succession in the next two years. And if Shelby County Mayor AC Wharton becomes the Memphis mayor, there could be three County mayors in the same time frame.

But CCC President Jeff Sanford isn’t letting that bother him. At least not yet. Initially, in a recent interview, he’s unflappable. “When you ask me who my bosses are, I have more bosses than most. In the end, I work for the downtown stakeholders, the downtown commercial property owners who pay the special assessment, who pay my salary and the CCC operating budget. I work for all of the 27,000 residents of downtown, the 65,000 employees of the downtown area, all of the business owners. That’s who I work for.”

When asked about how the turmoil of local government will affect the Center City Commission, he’s sanguine at first. “It took decades for downtown to get in this shape; it will take decades to turn it around.” After more than a decade himself at the head of the CCC, he can afford a long view.

But as he talks, he allows his concerns to show and an apprehension emerges. “Downtown is at a turning point and I am concerned that unless we are willing to set a higher standard and commit the funds to achieve that standard that we are going to be losing ground, particularly as it relates to the care and maintenance of the public realm downtown. So we’ll be looking to the new mayor to work with us to pay closer attention to details.”

This may sound familiar to some readers, as it parallels comments he made earlier this year at the Center City Commission’s annual luncheon. While it was his unscripted remarks about Memphis’ racial difficulties that drew media notice, the body of his talk was a warning about Downtown losing the luster that draws residents and tourists and a solid plea for a commitment of resources to the Downtown. He repeated many of those same points in a recent interview.

When pressed, he expands on a central driving principle: keeping the “experience” of being Downtown as attractive as possible. “Let me give you some concrete examples that I didn’t give in my speech. The Main Street Mall, which is a nine-block pedestrian and public transportation mall, is framed by a lot of metal infrastructure in the form of trolley stations, catenary poles that carry the electricity for the trolleys, utility poles, traffic sign poles and metal infrastructure. It might surprise you to know that, after making that investment in 1992, none of the metal infrastructure has been painted in 17 years.”

“In some cases it is rusting, deteriorating. If we are to protect the business we’ve built, the billions in investments that have been made, we have to be prepared moving forward. And I certainly hope we would have the support of whoever is the Mayor of Memphis for taking care of the public realm.”

There’s another area he’s concerned with and that is policing, which Memphians share with him. “We have a problem in Downtown Memphis with aggressive panhandlers. Downtown attracts a homeless population, as downtowns do. Seventy percent of the aggressive panhandlers are not homeless and cops walking the beat will go a long way in deterring that kind of off-putting street behavior. In the absence of that, the CCC has had to hire its own private security and it’s made a great difference.”

“We have known for years by looking at the best practices in other cities from New York to Fort Worth, that the best kind of policing, the most effective kind of policing in the density of a downtown area, is community policing. Cops walking the beat, in the old-fashioned sense. We haven’t had that here; we don’t have it, because as five police directors have told me, we don’t have the resources.”

But such things aren’t a part of the CCC’s box of tools nor their budget. “Having said what I’ve said, which in sum total is arguing for the understanding and support of whoever is the next city mayor, I realise that the city government is short of resources, does have a much larger community to support in terms of providing services. So I recognize that, in order to bring about a greater level of service for downtown, it will have to be in the form, as everything we’ve done downtown has been, of a partnership.” For example, a recent Commercial Appeal story noted that it took a Main Street Mall task force, the CCC, MATA, the City Divisions of General Services and Community Enhancement, and the City Engineer’s office just to get trees planted or pruned, street grates replaced or maintained. A general agreement to get derelict property owners to step up is still being pulled together, another victim of the recession’s draining of funds. It’s a lot of coordination and cooperation just to get years of neglect addressed once and Sanford is talking about making it an ongoing concern.

The resources to do this kind of maintenance will only come from a mayor willing to budget and allocate them, and a City Council willing to approve those expenses. “Even during this interim mayorship we’ve already started sitting down with representatives of City government, and talking about doing a better job of maintaining public space.” Imagine having to do this two more times in short order, and hoping to keep the same priorities throughout the process!

He sees one way to bolster demand to keep Downtown attractive. “The challenge for us is to redefine downtown as an asset.” Sanford notes that $3 billion worth of public and private development is reaching completion. Once the recession wanes, current projects in slow-motion holding patterns will ramp up. New projects will emerge.

Like SoFo, the area east and south of the FedEx Forum. To most Memphians, SoFo appears to have sprung up recently but, in fact, it has been brewing since the decision to build the Forum was finalised. “The FedEx Forum represents the single largest public capital project in the history of Memphis and Shelby County. We said it doesn’t make much sense to make that kind of public investment and leave the neighborhoods adjoining it in substandard and deteriorating condition. And so we led a planning effort covering about 150 acres, to try to create a path for revitalisation of that area.”

“There were about 1000 people living in those neighborhoods, and most of them were in public housing. Foote Homes and Cleaborn Homes, they had to be replaced with mixed-income residential, much like the Uptown neighborhood. And, as we have learned over the years since the recommendation was made, the current economy notwithstanding, the replacement of public housing in the area really needs to take place before much other development will happen. That will open the door to much more development, particularly as the economy improves.”

Of course, Uptown is one example of that outlook in action. But Uptown has been mired with the loss of activity in the Pyramid and the explosion of interest in the South Main area on the opposite side of Downtown, both of which depressed redevelopment there. Another, better example might be the former Dixie Homes on Poplar, soon to become Legends Park when redevelopment work is finished. Already, the entire axis of Poplar from Legends back to Third is seeing a surge of cleanup and growth. Even the hospital zone across the street, the Veteran’s Hospital complex, is seeing its own new growth and expansion.

This anchoring came about from one thing: the dedication of a mayor to making it happen. And former Mayor Willie Herenton earns kudos from Sanford on that count. “Certainly, to me, his legacy will be that he led an effort which will result in the replacement of all stereotypical public housing projects in Memphis — not just in downtown — with low-rise, mixed income housing. And it is a legacy for sure because it not only is changing the face of neighborhoods but it’s changing people’s lives. We can talk about how wonderful arenas and ballparks and condominiums and office buildings are, but in the end I truly believe, under the direction of the City and Mayor Herenton, what we have achieved will outlast a lot of the other things we’ve done. So, I tip my hat to him in that regard.”

Jeff Sanford demonstrates that same steadfastness and comprehensive attitude. With so much under his purview and so many things dependent on others, he’ll need it. And he’ll need a City mayor who will also give him the coordination and resources to continue the job. That’s why the choice of mayors facing voters over the next two years is crucial.

“Interesting thing that’s maybe an indication that there’s light at the end of this tunnel regarding the recession. We are suddenly very busy talking to developers about hotels. I think it’s an indication that serious developers believe the recession will end one of these days and they know full well major hotel projects can take two, three or four years to move from an idea to a drawing board to the street. Developers are short of funding, that’s for sure, but they’re not short of ideas for the future.”

The future is always coming. Jeff Sanford and the Center City Commission are counting on a team able and willing to meet it.