THE SOULSVILLE TIF COV E R STORY BY JAC KS ON BAKER
B of publicity regarding the possibility of a eginning in late 2020, there was a blast
massive redevelopment of South Memphis — two different and competing redevelopments, actually. More of that anon. This is a sprawling territory — including ZIP code 38126, statistically the most impoverished area anywhere in Memphis — that unquestionably needs an economic shot in the arm. Besides containing large pockets of the most bleakly underserved parts of Memphis, South Memphis — “Soulsville,” in the larger generic sense — is also the home of some of the city’s most important landmarks: LeMoyne-Owen College, a pedigreed HBCU (historically Black college and university) that has produced no small share of the city’s influential movers and shakers; The Four Way, a venerable eatery and meeting place that has nurtured luminaries and grassroots politicians alike; and the Stax complex, source of so much of Memphis’ musical history and still functioning today as a museum and training ground for would-be musical avatars. The name “Soulsville” derives mainly from the Stax legacy, and it continues to serve as a descriptor of the South Memphis area and its citizenry at large. The people who live in this domain constitute the very textbook description of an underserved population.
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MILTON’S METHOD Reginald Milton, a member of the Shelby County Commission from the area and a community organizer for the last 22 years, has served on several boards, as commissioners tend to do. One of them was the board of the University Neighborhoods Development Corporation (UNDC), focused on the area around the University of Memphis. Not too many years ago, that area, including the lengthy Highland Street artery that borders the university on its western side, was served by a few hit-ormiss storefronts and collegiate haunts. Nothing you could call a development as such — certainly nothing that was in sync with an educational institution that was ever upgrading and expanding from its roots as a small teachers’ college into the formidable research university that it is today. But then the UNDC was granted a TIF 10 (tax incremental financing) that accelerated
SOUTH MEMPHIS NEIGHBORHOODS ORGANIZE FOR A GREAT LEAP FORWARD.
the active recruiting of new businesses to serve the area. A TIF is one of three basic financial means by which local or state governments can incentivize investment, the others being arrangements for a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) and a TDZ (tourism development zone). Usually, it is an individual business that is granted a PILOT; the recipient is freed, during a given period, from what would be the usual property tax obligations. A TDZ allows for the state sales taxes within a project area to be rerouted, during a set number of years, into the development of the project. A TIF functions more or less like the
PHOTO: JESSE DAVIS
Soulsville is home to the Stax music legacy among other landmarks. TDZ, except that it is granted not by the state but by local government, and the tax deferment applies to the incremental rise in property taxes collected within the project area during the TIF period (usually 15 years or less). Under legislation passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1998, TIFs are approved, first, by a local CRA (Community Redevelopment Agency) and then by the two basic local funding authorities, in the local case, the
city of Memphis and the Shelby County Commission. If all goes well, the tax base within the project area will rise, and the additional tax revenues arising from that will be poured back into the project area, not into the general fund of city or county. Recent TIFs have been approved in Shelby County for the Uptown area, for the Binghampton community, and, as aforementioned, for the University of Memphis area. The latter TIF, after a slow start, succeeded spectacularly, resulting in a much elongated Highland strip, replete with storefronts and upscale apartment housing from Poplar down to Southern. Reginald Milton remembers: “I was on the UNDC board when they got the TIF. And I realized the tremendous benefit the TIF would provide. I saw how you can build up Highland around the university community. And I wondered if you could do something of that magnitude here in South Memphis.” Before becoming a community organizer per se, Milton had developed his civic consciousness as a neighborhood specialist for the city of Memphis. “That’s what really got me into this. I realized that the city was really trying to help, but the reality was my job was to go and sit in community meetings, listen to the people, and go home and write it down. They would say, you know, there’s drugs in our neighborhood. Okay? Did not know that. Write that down and then go and file it in File 13.We weren’t bad people. It’s just, we weren’t doing anything.” Milton left his city job and began doing hands-on work with several small community groups in South Memphis. “My task was to work with these community groups and show them that their problems came from working individually. You’ve got maybe 10 neighborhood associations. This association has 10 members; another might have 15 members,” Milton says. “Individually, you’re all trying to work with the city. You’re powerless that way.” That effort saw the birth of the South Memphis Alliance (SMA), a grouping of such associations, which Milton founded and runs today as executive director. “My goal, as a community organizer, was to somehow convince these nonprofits that it made sense to create a larger nonprofit, where they will sit on a board and be the
