Legends Park West Redevelopment Retains Sense of Community

Legends Park West Redevelopment Retains Sense of Community

Legends Park West, a 100-unit mixed-income community, offers garden-style apartments and townhouses to households earning 50 and 60 percent of area media income. Image courtesy of McCormack Baron and Salazar. One of Memphis’ first public housing projects, and the first federally funded housing for African Americans in the city when it was built in 1938, Dixie Homes once housed many prominent community leaders, including musicians and entrepreneurs. By 2005, however, poor maintenance, increased poverty, and high crime rates had caused the community to deteriorate. With 19 percent of Dixie Homes’ 600 apartments vacant, the Memphis Housing Authority (MHA) decided to redevelop the project. Legends Park, whose name pays tribute to the notable residents of Dixie Homes, is a 339-unit, $83 million redevelopment of the older housing. Legends Park West is the most recent mixed-income phase of the development.

HOPE VI in Memphis

Since 1998, when it was placed on HUD’s troubled agency list, MHA has undertaken an extensive improvement program that earned the housing authority a High Performer rating from HUD in 2012. MHA has been awarded more than $144 million in 5 HOPE VI revitalization grants and 7 HOPE VI demolition grants for the redevelopment of Legends Park and 4 other properties: College Park, Uptown, University Place, and Cleaborn Pointe. Deborah Payne, HOPE VI coordinator at MHA, notes that the HOPE VI funds have “served a vital role in transforming Memphis’ severely distressed public housing developments into vibrant, revitalized mixed-income communities and reducing crime, poverty, and feelings of isolation.”

Joining MHA and the city in these revitalization efforts, the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis (WFGM) helped raise the funds to initiate Comprehensive Community Supportive Services, which was critical to MHA’s successful application for HOPE VI funding. The three partners, along with the St. Louis-based nonprofit Urban Strategies, also created Memphis HOPE, which redevelops dilapidated public housing and offers employment training, health care, transportation, legal services, and education. With the goal of helping families break out of poverty and achieve housing self-sufficiency within 5 years, Memphis HOPE has assisted more than 1,200 current and former public housing residents, including those of Legends Park.

Legends Park

Local residents and community stakeholders, who were solicited through meetings, training sessions, and focus groups, were instrumental in developing the physical design and human capital plans for Legends Park. The first phase to be completed, Legends Park East, consists of 134 residential units. The second phase, Quimby Plaza, is a 14,200-square-foot building where Le Bonheur Children’s Rehabilitation Outpatient Center shares space with 24 market-rate residential units; that phase also includes facilities shared by all of Legends Park’s residents, such as an outdoor pool, exercise facilities, computer labs, and community meeting spaces. Legends Park West, completed in December 2012, is a mixed-income development of 100 residences. An additional phase, Legends Park North, contains 81 units for very low- and low-income seniors.

During the redevelopment, Dixie Homes residents were relocated to other public housing or were provided with housing choice vouchers. Regardless of whether they chose to return to the revitalized site, all of the former residents were offered supportive services before relocation. WFGM and Memphis HOPE were instrumental in this process, helping to find a new location for a daycare center previously housed at the site, working with partners to secure employment opportunities, and providing resources to ease the transition. Shante Avant, deputy director of WFGM, says, “It was important to us that the community remained intact. Even though the physical community may look different, we wanted to make sure the sense of community remained strong.”

Legends Park West

Legends Park West, an Enterprise Green Community, features units with solar electricity, Energy Star-compliant roof shingles, and a building envelope that minimizes air infiltration. Image courtesy of McCormack Baron and Salazar. Legends Park West includes 32 garden apartments and 68 townhouses, each containing from 1 to 5 bedrooms. The garden apartments range from 692 to 911 square feet, and the townhouses range from 958 to 1,292 square feet. With 48 public housing units, 39 low-income housing tax credit units, and 13 market-rate units, Legends Park West is open to those earning a range of incomes. Housing choice vouchers are accepted for the public housing and affordable units, which are available to households earning up to 50 percent and 60 percent of the area median income, respectively. Legends Park West boasts a variety of amenities including secure parking, ample closet space, ceiling fans, full-size washers and dryers, private balconies and patios for the garden apartments, and an onsite management team.

In developing Legends Park West, McCormack Baron Salazar followed Enterprise Green Communities criteria and ENERGY STAR® for Homes standards. A solar electric system provides 10 percent of the development’s annual electricity supply. The buildings were designed to minimize air infiltration, improving energy efficiency and reducing indoor air moisture; and ENERGY STAR-compliant roof shingles reduce the heat island effect. The residential units include certified ENERGY STAR lighting, appliances, and heating, air conditioning, and hot water systems.

Financial and Community Support

Much of the funding for the $25 million Legends Park West project came from a $3.8 million HOPE VI grant and $7 million in federal low-income housing tax credits. Other federal funds, a contribution from the city of Memphis, and a private loan completed the financing package.

At Legends Park West as well as at the other subsidized housing developments in the city, Memphis HOPE provides housing stabilization services, develops programs and events to create a sense of community, and involves other organizations in providing family services. The programs include the Technology and Community Youth Employment Project, a technology-rich summer camp for teens; Partnership for Women’s Prosperity, a Walmart Foundation-funded workforce program; and the Parent Ambassador Program, which provides new choices for early childhood education. Memphis HOPE’s programs employ a two-generation approach, which addresses the needs of both vulnerable parents and children. To ensure that these support services continue to be effective, Memphis HOPE conducts annual assessments of the activities and partnerships and of residents’ needs.

Recognized Success

In recognition of the partnerships that were instrumental in creating Legends Park, the redevelopment project received the 2013 Excellence in Partnership award as part of Tennessee’s Best Awards, which showcases developers, local governments, community organizations, and other partners that have improved housing and neighborhoods in the state. Esther Shin, executive vice president of Urban Strategies, notes that Legends Park is “a model for how you can provide comprehensive supportive services to all families in subsidized housing in a way that is intentional and builds on the strength of high-impact partners.”

For its efforts at Legends Park and other HOPE VI properties, WFGM won the 2013 HUD Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships. The success of its HOPE VI work has encouraged Memphis HOPE to expand its operations to provide support services to residents of all subsidized housing, not just HOPE VI communities.