Memphis' inner suburbs

[flamingomonkey]

I visited Memphis about 8 years ago, and was pretty impressed. A very cool city with a lot of great stuff to see. As I always do on vacation, I spent some time driving around, looking at all the different areas of the city. Recently, I was curious to see how Memphis had developed over the past decade, or nearly so. I took a look around online to see what I could find about new developments.

Imagine my shock to see that the huge Mall of Memphis was gone, despite it's location right on the beltway. Raleigh Springs Mall is nearly empty. Hickory Ridge is doing ok, but almost all the big box stores on Winchester Rd. have closed, after moving out along the new parkway. This is quite a contrast to Chicago, and many other cities, where the inner suburbs are booming. Any thoughts on what the future holds for the inner suburban areas of Memphis. I'm particularly fascinated by the Hickory Ridge area. I can't imagine what they're going to do to fill all those empty big boxes. It seems as if Memphis can't support much retail. When a new development opens farther out, anything remotely close has to close.

[ricky_the_great]

Its going to happen to wolfchase too. Memphis is always annexing. even though the people in the area(like my house which recently got annexed) oppose it. They wonder why everyone leaves when the value of the house drops nearly 20 percent and taxes rise the same.

[sleepy]

I visited Memphis about 8 years ago, and was pretty impressed. A very cool city with a lot of great stuff to see. As I always do on vacation, I spent some time driving around, looking at all the different areas of the city. Recently, I was curious to see how Memphis had developed over the past decade, or nearly so. I took a look around online to see what I could find about new developments.

Imagine my shock to see that the huge Mall of Memphis was gone, despite it's location right on the beltway. Raleigh Springs Mall is nearly empty. Hickory Ridge is doing ok, but almost all the big box stores on Winchester Rd. have closed, after moving out along the new parkway. This is quite a contrast to Chicago, and many other cities, where the inner suburbs are booming. Any thoughts on what the future holds for the inner suburban areas of Memphis. I'm particularly fascinated by the Hickory Ridge area. I can't imagine what they're going to do to fill all those empty big boxes. It seems as if Memphis can't support much retail. When a new development opens farther out, anything remotely close has to close.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not sure hiow the analogy of Memphis with inner-suburban Chicago works. Chicago has great inner-suburban areas--Evanston, Oak Park, etc.--and not so great ones--Cicero, Berwyn, etc. The affluent inner-suburban towns around Memphis would be Bartlett, Germantown, Olive Branch, and Southaven, as well as East Memphis inside the loop Those places are doing fine. Hickory Ridge was never an independent city and never considered particularly affluent.

The Hickory Ridge area was built up about 20 yr. ago. A few years later, crime went up and many of the original residents left. It was then annexed by Memphis and you had white flight, similar to what took place on Chicago's Southwest Side. Hickory Ridge became a local case study in that sort of thing.

There was an article in the Memphis newspaper yesterday about the changing demographics of that area. It referred to the old Seesel's grocery store on Winchester which has turned into a farmer's market for Hispanics and Asians. Seesel's was a locally owned, upscale grocery.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/busine...3990138,00.html

The Hickory Ridge Mall still has a Macy's and a Sears as anchors, and according to the article is doing ok.

Why Winchester lost its big boxes--I guess Wolfchase Galleria, Germantown Road, and the new malls, Carriage Crossing in Collierville and Southaven Town Center. And in the past 5 years, a new freeway to Collierville was built that bypasses Winchester as a major artery.

I think Memphis came to sprawl a little later than most cities, and the idea that subdivisions/strip centers are disposable is something new.

The Mall of Memphis is just one of those closed, 30 yr. old dead malls that litter the urban landscape. There's a website for those. deadmalls.com

[sleepy]

Its going to happen to wolfchase too. Memphis is always annexing. even though the people in the area(like my house which recently got annexed) oppose it. They wonder why everyone leaves when the value of the house drops nearly 20 percent and taxes rise the same.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Housing values drop when everyone leaves, not the other way around.