“I’ve been painting murals for a while. Right now I’m doing one at the corner of Kyle and Netherwood, on the side of an abandoned building that the city owns. There was graffiti all over it. I take my kids to school down that way, and I’m thinking, ‘No kid should have to see that in the morning. They should see something positive.’ So I just took it upon myself to get some paint and get busy. When it’s finished, it will be called 'Our Children Matter.' The hands are representative of the community, the parents, and the schools. What everybody puts into children really does affect them. It’s kind of like the village thing. All those hands go into forming children in this world. I’m trying to work with a nonprofit so we can do more of that around Memphis in areas where there are abandoned businesses. Those kinds of things just make neighborhoods look run down. I’d like to see somebody buy the building on that corner, put a store or a business in, and bring something positive to the community.”
In our conversation, Gerard referred to the Shelby County Land Bank and its mission of making county-owned real estate (such as the abandoned property pictured above) available for purchase at a nominal price. For more information about how this works and the conditions for purchasing such property, go to https://landbank.shelbycountytn.gov/. From the website:
Making County owned real estate available for acquisition by individuals, companies and organizations in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors through sales and nominal consideration conveyances is a job that keeps the Shelby County Land Bank very busy. Currently, the Land Bank has available over 4,509 properties of which 462 have residential or commercial improvements thereon. The majority of these properties were acquired by the County through delinquent taxes. The rest of the properties were initially purchased by the County for a particular public purpose but have now become surplus.
It is the Land Bank's mission to get these properties back into productive use by responsible owners as quickly as possible in an effort to preserve property values, encourage redevelopment in the older communities, revitalize neighborhoods, minimize blight, maximize our tax base and reduce tax-supported expenses.
Making County owned real estate available for acquisition by individuals, companies and organizations in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors through sales and nominal consideration conveyances is a job that keeps the Shelby County Land Bank very busy. Currently, the Land Bank has available over 4,509 properties of which 462 have residential or commercial improvements thereon. The majority of these properties were acquired by the County through delinquent taxes. The rest of the properties were initially purchased by the County for a particular public purpose but have now become surplus.
It is the Land Bank's mission to get these properties back into productive use by responsible owners as quickly as possible in an effort to preserve property values, encourage redevelopment in the older communities, revitalize neighborhoods, minimize blight, maximize our tax base and reduce tax-supported expenses.
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