Newly annexed areas of Memphis like Hickory Hill are more than 20 miles from City Hall. Size creates problems for city and county governments. By the same token, however, the mayors cooperated to put together a landmark deal to extend city sewer service far into the eastern reaches of Shelby County, insuring that development will spread that way for decades to come. A good bet is the funding of school construction, now governed by a complicated formula based on average daily attendance in the city and county systems. Under the leadership of CEO Marc Jordan and automobile dealer Russell Gwatney, the Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce has put forward an alternative plan calling for a tax increase and single-source funding.
Growth means opportunity for developers.
Along Germantown Parkway, nobody has been more active than Jackie Welch, head of Welch Realty, a firm specializing in land sales and assembling large parcels for county schools and churches. The big growth corridors in southeast Shelby County are Bill Morris Parkway and Winchester Road. On the western edge of Memphis, developers Jack Belz and Henry Turley have brought new life to downtown and the Mississippi River with projects like Peabody Place, Harbor Town, and the South Bluffs residential community. At a time when businesses and hospitals are moving out of downtown, residential development has been an unqualified success story. The planned expansion of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital on the north edge of downtown should bring thousands more residents and workers to the central city.