Midtown market to transform neglected corner

A proposed Midtown market could help transform the corner of Union Avenue and McLean Boulevard in Midtown Memphis.

Memphis’ Belz Enterprises and Georgia-based Harbour Retail Partners have formed the joint venture, Belz HRP Partners that has proposed a project that will create a four-story apartment building and grocery store.

The Center City Revenue Finance Corp. approved a 15-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes in mid-October.

The project will remove blight and over 176,000 square feet of vacant buildings from two parcels of land and assemble a third parcel to create 3.3 acres of mixed-use multifamily residential and retail.

The apartment component will feature 188 units, including 141 one bedrooms and 47 two-bedroom units. The retail component will have 10,521 square feet of small shop retail and restaurant space as well as a 30,500-square-foot anchor tenant.

The anchor tenant hasn’t been confirmed, but hints are that it will be a grocery store that doesn’t already exist in the core of Memphis. Fresh Market has a store at Union and Cooper Street. Whole Foods is located east of the Parkways.

“The development is working to bring a national gourmet grocery store into the anchor tenant position of the retail,” the PILOT application states. “The grocery operator will be able to serve the needs of Midtown as well as Downtown and will be a unique offering currently not offered anywhere west of the Parkway.”

The project will go in the place of the former eight-story Artisan Hotel and the adjacent four-story office building that went into bankruptcy and vacated in 2010, according to the PILOT application with the Downtown Memphis Commission’s Center City Revenue Finance Corp.

The two parcels at Union and McLean are set to be acquired in December. The parcels are owned by a debtor in possession under two bankruptcy actions, according to the PILOT application.

Demolition of the property is set to begin in June with an anticipated completion date of October 2017.