MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Business owners along one of Memphis’ busiest street refused to wait for Washington to make changes.
The Lamar Corridor is always busy because it’s where several distribution centers send their products in and out of the city.
A standoff on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. has held up funding to deal with these traffic problems, which could bring more business and jobs into Memphis.
Now business owners said they were joining forces to turn this area around.
After months of sitting in disrepair, the new owner of this motel on Lamar said it was getting fixed up.
A fire nearly burnt it to the ground last year, and it’s been one of the many eyesores along this road.
Businesses told us it’s time Lamar got a second chance.
“It’s worth it, it’s going to work,” Mahmoud Nahraid said.
Nahraid managed one of the newest businesses along Lamar, called Fire Plate.
They took over an abandoned restaurant and turned it into their own.
“There’s a lot of business’s around. A lot of commercial, I think it’s a good idea to open a business on Lamar,” he added.
Earlier this month transportation officials from Washington came to Memphis to explain the hold up with federal dollars to rework this jammed up road.
They pointed their fingers to the gridlock in Congress.
Chamber of Commerce officials said this 6-mile stretch between I-240 and the Mississippi line was their top priority.
Cleaning it up was step one.
“Each one of us has to take responsibility, and take care of our neighborhood that includes the business community,” Phil Trenary with the Chamber of Commerce explained.
While it’s out of sight and out of mind for a lot of people, Trenary said this corridor served as the heartbeat of our distribution based economy.
If more businesses don’t take the initiative like Fire Plate did, we could lose that.
He said we have to find the balance between taking care of what we have, and planning for more in the future.
