In 1927, the Sears Crosstown Building opened as a Sears’ mail-order processing warehouse and retail store. Now, 90 years later, the art deco high-rise building has been turned into a vertical urban village.
Crosstown Arts, an organization dedicated to cultivating the creative community in Memphis, formed in 2010 to help redevelop the long-since abandoned building. Today, the building has already welcomed its first tenants with more to follow in the coming months.
Church Health Center, an organization that provides health services to those without medical insurance, relocated from 120,000 square feet spread across 13 buildings to 150,000 square feet in one building on March 25.
The organization gained 28 medical exam rooms and 14 dental operatories when it moved to Crosstown.
“We are increasing across all of our service lines because the need is great,’’ said Marvin Stockwell, communications director for Church Health. “We are serving more folks, and we are serving better. And quite frankly, we will ramp up to serving even more.”
The new location has a medical clinic on the first and second floor, a dental clinic, a YMCA, a physical rehabilitation clinic and a behavioral health clinic.
Church Health partnered with the YMCA of Memphis & the Mid-South to open the Church Health YMCA in their facilities. Operating like a normal YMCA, members can attend classes and use the exercise equipment along with walking the track on the second floor of Church Health’s new location.
“It’s all about partnership,” Stockwell said.
Mama Gaia, a restaurant serving organic and plant-based food, also opened on March 25.
The restaurant aims to offer vegetarian food choices without a long wait. Founder Philipp von Holtzendorff-Fehling started this business for a deeper purpose beyond making money – he wanted to help change the food system in the United States.
“It’s a completely new concept,” von Holtzendorff-Fehling said. “We invented it from scratch because we saw the need for more healthy eating that is delicious, fresh and affordable at the same time.”
When people ask von Holtzendorff-Fehling why he decided to open the first location of his restaurant in Memphis, a city known for its barbecue, he had a succinct response.
“Don’t underestimate Memphians,” he said.
So Nuts and Confections, a business specializing in roasting, flavoring and seasoning raw nuts, plans to open a store at Crosstown in middle to late May.
Terri Fleming, owner of the business, said she wants to open a place at Crosstown because it represents what Memphis will be like in the future.
“It represents a mixture of different types of people,” Fleming said.
French Truck Coffee, a coffee shop with a location on Tillman Street in Memphis and a couple of locations in New Orleans, plans to open in eight to 10 weeks, if all goes as planned.
Jimmy Lewis, director of French Truck Coffee, believes the new location at Crosstown will give them a spot to enjoy what they do in a “rare environment.”
“It is an epic repurposing of a Memphis property, the likes of which I don’t believe Memphis has ever seen,” Lewis said. “It’s such a remarkable development.”
Lewis believes the rebuild holds much promise for Memphis.
“I don’t think there’s any question that it will be a spark plug for development in the surrounding area,” he said.
Area 51 Ice Cream, which is based in Hernando, Mississippi, serves homemade ice cream made of in-house ingredients from local farmers.
“We make everything pretty much from scratch,” said Steve Cubbage, owner of Area 51 Ice Cream.
The opening date for their location at Crosstown is still to be determined, but Cubbage wanted to open a location there because the revitalization and community-centered ideas enticed him.
“I see it as something that could be a turning point for the city of Memphis,” Cubbage said. “I think that a lot of times you see a lot of blight in bigger cities.”
Cubbage thinks Crosstown’s rebuild will help both the area surrounding the building and Memphis.
“You can take things that have been left and neglected for a long time and turn that into something functional and useful and a point of pride for the city,” Cubbage said.
The first tenants of the newly-renovated Crosstown Concourse moved in on March 25. The vertical urban village will have residential, retail and office space.
