Five South Main area buildings slated for combined $95M investment
JACOB STEIMER | MEMPHIS BUSINESS JOURNAL
Tax break applications released Thursday reveal timelines, renderings, and costs for the string of redevelopments Tom Intrator is planning on South Main Street.
As the Memphis Business Journal previously reported, Intrator — a New York-based developer who built his wealth primarily through buying and managing suburban apartment complexes in Kansas and Tennessee — is planning to redevelop 386 S. Main St., 311 S. Main St., and 122 S. Main St. Applications filed with the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) revealed he is also planning to redevelop 107 S. Main. St. and 324 S. Front St.
Including acquisition costs, Intrator is set to invest $95 million in the projects. The PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) property tax breaks he is applying for are set to be worth nearly $20 million.
According to the applications, Intrator is hoping to start construction on all the buildings in November 2020, except 386 S. Main St., which he hopes to start in April 2020.
With this multi-building approach, Intrator is hoping to turn South Main into a "showcase" neighborhood for Memphis, the way The Gulch is a showcase for Nashville.
“When somebody from Los Angeles, New York, or San Diego [goes to Nashville], they … [see] The Gulch, maybe the West End — a very small area,” Intrator told MBJ in April. “[But], they say Nashville is a very cool city and they go back and tell all their friends … and some end up moving.”
At 324 S. Front, Intrator is planning 165 apartments and 10,000 square feet of retail. The project would include a new, five-story building on the vacant lot that sits between the 21,000-square-foot existing building and Gus’s Fried Chicken. Construction is set to be completed by August 2022.
Intrator plans to transform the long-vacant 107 S. Main St. into office space above retail. The skinny four-story building, located catty-corner from Royal Furniture, contains 30,000 square feet. Construction could be finished by June 2021, the application said.
As was previously announced, the Royal Furniture building at 122 S. Main St. is set to become a 178-key hotel, with a restaurant, coffee shop, and rooftop bar. The 157,000-square-foot building could be completed by August 2022.
In its application, Intrator's firm said 311 S. Main St. “may include F&B [food and beverage], office, and lifestyle space” that would capitalize on the building’s location as “an opportune site for business and lifestyle hub programs that could support small businesses, creatives, and entrepreneurs.”
Examples of lifestyle uses include workout facilities and entertainment. Construction could be substantially completed by August 2021.
Intrator has a zero-lot-line, urban infill, multifamily outlook for a vacant lot and empty building at 386-390 S. Main St. A renovation would produce 24 upscale multifamily units above 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and office. This project would be the first to be completed, the application said, as work would be finished by June 2021.
None of Intrator's South Main projects would succeed on their own, he previously told MBJ. While South Main is already a hot spot for tourists and locals alike, Intrator believes making the street more dense — from Madison Avenue south past the National Civil Rights Museum — will be huge for his properties and the city as a whole.
“If you create the coolest space but as soon as you walk out of it … everything is dark and vacant, [it won’t work],” he said. “But, if you create a corridor … that starts to draw people into various usages.”
Intrator is also renovating 18 S. Main and has accumulated $14.23 million of land in the Pinch District this year. He has yet to announce plans in the Pinch, as he expects to turn his attention there after his South Main projects get underway.
The projects for 122, 311, and 386 S. Main St. and 107 and 324 S. Front St. are all scheduled to be heard at the next DMC meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 12.