For residents of the Greenlaw/Manassas neighborhood, the Uptown Memphis project means a shot at a better community where vacant lots are replaced by businesses and dilapidated houses are restored to their once stately conditions.
For Stan Hyland, head of The U of M’s School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy (SUAPP), the project is a living laboratory where his students can get hands-on experience.
The Uptown Memphis project is an attempt to revitalize one of Memphis’s oldest neighborhoods through a partnership of both public and private interests.
It began when the city received $35 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the form of a HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) grant to replace the housing projects in the neighborhood with mixed income housing.
Hyland said leaders quickly realized it would take four times that amount to get a revitalization effort with real muscle underway. For further assistance, the city created partnerships with agencies and businesses that have vested interests in seeing the project succeed.
The University of Memphis signed on with the promise to help in several ways. The University will be in charge of evaluating the project to see if the original goals established are met. Also, The U of M will oversee the operation of a computer lab residents can use as an information hub to learn about the changes their neighborhood is undergoing.
On any one of the 10 computers The University has procured for the Uptown Recourse Center, residents will have access to a website where SUAPP will post the results of data collection in the neighborhood, opportunities for residents and a community calendar.
“This is a tool the residents can use to empower themselves,” Hyland said. “For example, if a woman who has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years is scared she’ll be displaced, she can go to the lab and get on the web page and find out about how she can get her taxes frozen on her property or other such helpful programs.”
Hyland said his students will benefit from the center in that they will be involved in a portion of the data collection for the web pages and some of the lab’s activities.
“This gives the students different venues to learn about critical issues in our society like public housing, job training and crime prevention,” Hyland said. Rob Brimhall, senior anthropology undergraduate, worked on mapping vacant lots for the project. He said that for him the project was not only an application of anthropology principles he learned in class but also real work experience he can list on his resume.
“It’s definitely a chance to get experience that’s so hard to come by as an undergrad,” Brimhall said.
Hyland pointed out that the information he and the students will be collecting will be valuable to other cities that might be trying to pilot similar neighborhood revitalization programs as well.
“We’re building knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work,” he said. “That’s the basis for comparing and sharing with other cities.”
The Uptown Recourse Center, on the corner of 7th and Auction, is slated to open by the end of February.
