More activity comes to Broad Avenue

A couple years ago, Broad Avenue hosted an experiment. Called A New Face for a New Broad, the experimental event consisted of pop-up businesses occupying empty spaces in buildings. Broad is a pretty small, walkable stretch near Overton Park, East Parkway, etc.

• “It’s a two-day realization of a vision held, among others, by the Historic Broad Business District, Livable Memphis and Memphis Regional Design Center. It’s an attempt to show how neighborhood business districts can be made comfortable, human and real again. How they can provide the architecture where people can bump into old friends by chance and make accidental connections with new ones.”

It was proud, but a little dilapidated. Apparently, the experiment to revive Broad succeeded:

Eight new businesses have arrived, with two others perhaps pending. The successful creation and expansion of bike lanes through the Greenline, the greenbelt, the Main Streets grant will also touch Broad:

• “Nu is the eighth new business to come to the district since New Face For An Old Broad was staged there two years ago. That grass roots event filled empty retail spaces with pop-up businesses, and added temporary landscaping, on-street parking and bike lanes to model place-making urban design could energize the district.”
• “The other new businesses attracted to Broad since New Face are: Found Studio, Muddy’s Kitchen, Collage Dance, Victory Bicycle, Jack Magoo’s, Ronin Studios, and Karen Adams Design, according to David Wayne Brown, president of Historic Broad Business Association.”

Midtown Memphis is quickly establishing four distinct, complementary districts: a revived Broad Avenue, a humming Cooper-Young/Central Avenue, an unofficial theater district at Overton Square, and a cultural smorgasborg at Overton Park. Hopefully the Fairgrounds area will not be far behind.



As it is right now, the activity and complementary nature of these four areas seem to be a prime target for a shuttle circuit.