SEARS’ OLD SITE IS A HOME AT LAST
Tenants begin to move in at massive redevelopment project
Marian Greene just moved into the same giant building where her rural grandmother once bought tractor parts.
“She couldn’t believe it would be a place you could live,” the smiling Montessori school administrative assistant said from her tony Parcels at Crosstown apartment. It’s perched high within the 1.5 million-square-foot Crosstown Concourse.
The massive building finally has permanent occupants again, 89 years after the old Sears Crosstown opened, a generation after it became shuttered and blighted, and at least seven years after redevelopment efforts started.
The grand opening is not until May 13, but more than 30 organizational tenants in health, education, art, business and retail will soon start filtering into the $200 million “vertical urban village” at 135 Concourse Avenue, near North Parkway and North Watkins. The nonprofit Tech901 moves in this month; Church Health and restaurant Mama Gaia are to come aboard in February.
Residents are leading the way. Greene on Monday joined the handful of tenants to move into the 265 apartments that comprise the top four floors. Seventy percent of the units, branded Parcels at Concourse, are already claimed.
Greene’s one-bedroom unit – with an added
“It’s really the place and the history of it. I really love the concrete.”
flex room – overlooks a vast atrium from the eighth floor. She can see inside the Church Health space below and across the atrium.
Looking to move away from her old apartment in the congested Overton Square area, Greene toured Parcels in mid-September and immediately loved the architecture and sense of safety.
“It’s really the place and the history of it,” she said. “I really love the concrete.”
Greene is aware she’s not just renting an apartment. She’s buying into a lifestyle where tenants, both residential and organizational, are encouraged to interact and create community. If the ideal is achieved, the occupants won’t merely co-exist.
The socialization started on move-in day. “They had pizza and drinks in the lobby,” she said. “They were really interested in getting us all together. They’ll have a series of pizza dates when we can all get together and talk and know each other.
“I think community is a really big thing. I feel like that’s definitely a Southern thing and a Memphis thing, too. I’m excited to live in a place where that’s considered important,” she said.
Greene likes that a big, undivided room is the hub of her apartment: An open kitchen on one side, windows onto the atrium on another, sofa at the far wall and her new Ikea dining table with benches in the middle.
Moving boxes and yet-to-be-hung art cluttered the floor.
“I really loved how the light came through (from the atrium). I liked the idea of being able to look down and see the people. Don’t get me wrong, the (exterior) views of Memphis are great. But this was unique to me,” she said.
Greene embraces the quirks that come with preserving the building’s history. For example, the chipped, green and white paint on the concrete support column in the living room remains intact. The concrete floor still has its worn stains. The piping along the ceiling is exposed. And there’s a large circular line in the living room floor outlining where the old chute, down which Sears packages slid from floor to floor, was once installed.
The name, “Parcels at Concourse,” is a salute to the packages that once flowed through the former Sears mail-order building.
Parcels is the largest new apartment community to open near Midtown since The Bristol opened 220 units next to Methodist University Hospital 13 years ago.
Greene and other Parcels residents will have easy access to live musical performances, art exhibits, lectures, a performing arts theater, 25,000-square-foot YMCA, several restaurants, an art-making lab, small grocery, coffee shop, bakery, pharmacy, barbershop, an 8,000square-foot rooftop deck, a rooftop greenhouse and three acres of public plazas linked to the 1.7-mile V&E Greenline.
Developers estimate 3,000 people will inhabit Crosstown Concourse daily.
Twenty percent, or 53, of the apartments are set aside for low-income individuals or families as part of the historic tax credits the project received. An individual could make no more than $33,700 to qualify for reduced rent.
For more information, visit parcelsatconcourse.com, call 901-507-4210, or visit the leasing office at 430 N. Cleveland St.