Education

Art, Health, Learning In Community: A Vertical Urban Village In Memphis


Between the World Wars, Sears built 10 giant centers around the country. The one-to-three million square foot fortresses served as department store, regional office and fulfillment center for the catalog business. As Sears’ business dwindled in the early 1990s, the centers were closed. Most sat idle for years. Three were eventually demolished. The one in Seattle became the headquarters of Starbucks. Some turned into condos. The one in Memphis turned into the most interesting adapted use project in America.  

Just before the Great Recession, in 2007, Staley Cates bought the vacant Sears Crosstown 1.5 million-square-foot building for $3 million—a steal on a square foot basis, but a disaster of a building in a blighted and forgotten neighborhood.  

In 2010, art history professor Todd Richardson and video artist Christopher Miner formed Crosstown Arts to work with Cates to both inspire the redevelopment of the old Sears building and invigorate Memphis’ creative community. Along with development and design professionals, they worked on a feasibility plan during the day; with the help of additional grants, Miner and Richardson hosted art, music and maker events at night. A plan for a contemporary arts center ermerged—maybe a portion of the building could be an arts and music mecca with performance and gallery spaces. 

The feasibility study made two things clear: funding would have to come from multiple sources (city, county, state, federal, philanthropic, and private), and most of the building would need to be pre-leased to get it off the ground. These conclusions, amid growing community interest, led to a new vision of a ‘vertical urban village’ with a mixture of residences, restaurants, health, education, art and cultural venues. By the end of 2012, eight local organizations including Church Health, Memphis Teacher Residency, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital had committed to lease over 400,000 square feet of space in the building. A host of highly regarded organizations saw the value of being “better together” with Crosstown Arts in what became Crosstown Concourse.

Church Health sponsors a huge YMCA facility on the second floor (below) 

Construction began in winter 2015. Huge squares were cut out of floor plates to create three ten-story atriums that let natural light stream into every space in the building. Live music and dance performances celebrated the grand opening in August 2017, with more than 13,000 people in attendance. 

From the early days, the Concourse plan included a high school as well as college classrooms. Christian Brothers University (whose main campus is a mile away) opened an MBA in Healthcare Management program in the Concourse. 

Initial plans for a school fell through, but In 2015, Ginger Spickler saw a billboard advertising big grants for innovative new high schools. She pulled together a team, created a proposal for Crosstown High and applied for a grant. In 2017, the team was awarded a $2.5 million XQ grant. In 2018, the diverse-by-design project-based school opened on the fourth and fifth floors of the Concourse and takes advantage of cultural and work-based learning opportunities in the complex. (My next post details the journey of innovative Crosstown High.)

The upper floors of the Concourse include 265 residential apartments that house over 500 residents. Many are rented by commercial tenants in the building. St. Jude rents 40 apartments for families who are in town for treatment and Ph.D. residents. Memphis Teacher Residency rents 40 for teachers in training. Crosstown Arts rents 15 for artists working as Fellows. Eight units are available for short-term rental, similar to a hotel. 

Stairways, rather than elevators, are prominent in each lobby. A red spiral staircase (below) was inspired by the dozens of spiral chutes that ran through the building delivering parcels from upper floors to waiting trucks and trains. 

Crosstown Arts, which grew from a team of two to a staff of 50 today, moved into the second floor of the Concourse. They developed and operate contemporary art galleries, two music venues, a cafe and bar, artist residency program and apartments, a shared art-making facility, and a 420-seat black-box theater. The lobbies are full of art and frequently have live music. Guest speakers and performers visit the Big Stairs (pictured above) at lunchtime.

Thirty sources of funding were bundled together to pull off the spectacular renovation. Tax credits were a critical part of the funding formula for Crosstown (and the other successful Sears renovations). Early commitments from major tenants like Church Health were key—as was their shared vision of a thriving community.

Crosstown Concourse is a spectacular place to come to work, learn, exercise, eat, or enjoy the arts. It’s the thriving center of a community on the rise. It is not gentrification; it is a community-led adapted use project. The combination of putting art, learning, and health at the core and incorporating a creative mix of public, private and philanthropic funding made the vertical village far more vibrant than would have been possible for a traditional developer.

In a wonderful improbability, a venture-backed robotics company will open next to the high school next month. That probably wouldn’t have happened in Memphis three years ago—it certainly would not have been in Crosstown. The new urban village is enticing programmers from California and artists from the East Coast to consider a new kind of Memphis lifestyle—one imagined into being by a professor and an artist. 

With retail facilities closing nationwide, Crosstown Concourse illustrates the positive community development that can be accomplished through public-private partnerships and inspired leadership.



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