MEMPHIS, Tenn. — In the same spot where there was once Raleigh Springs Mall, crews are hard at work on the roughly $40 million Raleigh Springs Town Center.
The project has been a long time coming. Now that buildings are up and the ponds are full, organizers are excited for the final product.
“The design process and the meetings with community folks lasted maybe six years,” said Mary Claire Borys, manager of Strategic Initiatives for the City of Memphis Housing and Community Development.
The Raleigh Town Center has an 11-acre pond that also serves as a detention basin to help surrounding neighborhoods that usually flood, a skate park they hope will attract people from all over the city, green space and walking trails.
FIRST LOOK! Skate park at Raleigh Springs Town Center. In the distance are ponds, police precinct & library @3onyourside pic.twitter.com/F6IBK2pXGj
— Shay Arthur (@ShayA_WREG3) September 6, 2019
The Old Allen Road police precinct will also move into the development to be more visible. The traffic division of the department will also move to the Raleigh location. There will also be a new library.
“This brings two great community assets up front and center where everyone in Raleigh can see them,” Borys said. “This is not your typical rectangular box police station or library. (It’s) a more complicated design not just by how it looks (but) by how it constructs.”
The development is aesthetically different, too. Some of the tiles on the police precinct are a different color depending on where a person stands and how the light hits the tiles.
It will also be a place to showcase public art, with sculptures and murals on the surrounding walls around the town center.
“And he has devised a mural that has symbols from all sorts of things from Raleigh’s past, school mascots, a reference to the Springs that actually first brought people to the area,” Borys said.
Construction started in March 2018, but there were delays with all the rain. They hope to have the police precinct complete by around the start of next year and the library by late spring or early summer of 2020.
