Community fights to save ‘forgotten’ New Chicago
Carnita Atwater isn’t exactly sure how many residents in her neighborhood will show up for Thanksgiving dinner this year at the New Chicago Community Development Corporation.
“Maybe 300,” Atwater guesses. “Probably more than that. We’ll serve until we run out.”
If Atwater seems at all irreverent about serving Thanksgiving dinner for hundreds out of the community development corporation she operates, it’s likely because Thanksgiving is just another day of the year when the banquet hall in the community center is arranged to feeds hundreds at a time.
“We probably serve about 10,000 meals here every year,” Atwater said, “and that might be a conservative figure.”
Atwater also partners with Grace Missionary Baptist Church for food and clothing distribution.
Another reason why Atwater might not pause too much to consider the gravity of feeding that many people — it’s just one of the many functions of the center.
Feeding that many residents, according to Atwater, “brings a humanization to a forgotten part of the city.”
When Atwater says “forgotten,” she’s referring to a mix of businesses and resources that have slowly left the New Chicago area. The smokeless smokestack that reads “Firestone” and towers over a vacant field where one of the largest Firestone factories once stood is a visceral reminder of those resources lost.
The good news for New Chicago is that when Atwater isn’t feeding the community, she’s constantly plotting on its holistic resurrection. This year, Atwater released a community development plan for the New Chicago area that was designed with community stakeholders at the table.
Along with community stakeholders, Atwater will be courting funding from banks and philanthropic partners to implement New Chicago’s redevelopment plan. And as she’s done in the past, she’ll also be pressing the City of Memphis, Shelby County and the state of Tennessee to invest in New Chicago.
“I do not feel, I know, that New Chicago is a forgotten area of Memphis,” Atwater said. “And I see investors buying property in this area. And this is part of a gentrification process going on in New Chicago as we speak.”
For Atwater, New Chicago land parcels being sold to investors hints that resident displacement will shortly follow investments. It’s why she pulled every community stakeholder she could to the table to design a neighborhood strategy that could stymie potential blow-back from gentrification.
But, first, there’s still Thanksgiving to be had, even if it’s not Atwater’s most pressing concern at the moment. Because transforming the modest cinder-block meeting room into a purple velvet and silver-laced banquet for her community is something Atwater can do in her sleep at this point.