A rendering by Looney Ricks Kiss submitted to the Memphis Center City Revenue Finance Corp. shows the proposed $43 million development by Belz Enterprises and Harbor Retail Partners.

SHARE

By Thomas Bailey Jr. of The Commercial Appeal

The southwest corner of Union Avenue and McLean Boulevard sold Thursday to the developer that wants to raze the vacant office and hotel buildings there and replace them with a $43 million development of apartments, retail and parking structure.

The Shelby County Register's Office website shows that the old Towery Office Building on the corner at 1835 Union sold for $870,000, and the hotel building behind it sold for $1.25 million.

The purchaser is HRP Union-McLean LLC of Marietta, Georgia.

The Marietta-based Harbour Retail Partners is joining with Memphis-based Belz Enterprises to develop the property.

The plan is to build 188 apartments, 513 parking spaces and up to 41,000 square feet of retail.

About three weeks ago, the project cleared a legal hurdle when a bankruptcy judge in Nevada approved the sale of the bankrupt property.

Harbour Retail Partners had been trying to buy the attached, blighted buildings on 1.7 acres since signing a purchase agreement in September 2012.

Harbour Retail later formed a partnership with Belz Enterprises, which will add an adjoining 1.5 acres it owns along Union. The buildings there housing tenant Methodist Healthcare clinics would also be demolished for the new project.

The hotel at 1837 Union has been $715,608 in arrears on local property taxes, and another $509,279 in local property taxes has been owed on the office building. The taxes will be repaid out of the purchase price, court documents show.

The Center City Revenue Finance Corp. has approved property tax breaks for the new mixed-use development that total $10.5 million over 15 years.

But the project will still generate an additional $1.7 million in local tax revenue over the same period, the Downtown Memphis Commission staff has calcualted.

The project partners had been working to recruit an anchor tenant, including a national gourmet grocery.



