Ten Months on One Memphis Corridor: 1,183 Tires, 98 Vacant Lots, 50 Court Cases and a 21-Day Mowing Rotation.

MEMPHIS CITY COUNCIL

Community enhancement gave the council its first full accounting of the Lamar Avenue revitalization on August 4. The numbers are specific and the maintenance schedule is checkable. The chairwoman who requested the item said what she wanted to see was not the update but the consistency of the upkeep, and pointed at litter still visible in an after photograph.

MEMPHIS, August 4, 2026 - The City of Memphis has removed 1,183 tires, mitigated 98 vacant lots, cleared 328 environmental enforcement violations and opened 50 priority commercial code cases along the Lamar Avenue corridor since October 2025.

The community enhancement director presented those figures to the Public Works, Solid Waste and General Services Committee on August 4, on an item requested by Chairwoman Jana Swearengen-Washington.

The scope

The initiative launched in October 2025. The first phase ran from Winchester to Park, where the Lamar Airways Shopping Center sits. The second phase ran from that intersection to Riverside.

The director described Lamar as a major gateway extending southeast from the urban core to the Mississippi state line, with long-standing problems of illegal dumping, overgrowth, litter and deteriorated commercial buildings. She said the reason the department started there was the number of large vacant blighted commercial structures on the corridor, parcels that were vacant and open to casual entry, and named the former headquarters of a hospitality company among them.

The approach began with an assessment to find where the department could get the most out of its resources, and with contacting property owners to ensure they were not simply sitting on the properties.

The numbers

Since October 2025:

• 50 priority commercial court cases launched.

• 98 vacant lots mitigated.

• 1,183 tires removed.

• 256 illegal signs removed.

• 328 environmental enforcement violations mitigated, covering both larger and smaller dump sites.

• More than 1,700 bags of debris removed by the public services corps.

• 15,000 pounds of material removed by the ground services team.

On the code enforcement side she reported 17 rehabilitation cases, 16 properties with active nuisance abatement cases, seven nonstructural cases, three cases in environmental court, three properties going through condemnation and expected to lead to demolition, and three pending referrals that will start a court process.

She showed before and after photographs of one commercial property where the department contacted the owner, issued notices of violation, took the property to court, and saw change to the building facade.

The maintenance schedule

The part of the presentation that can be checked later is the rotation.

The director said a 21-day maintenance schedule is in place. Properties the department knows it will be responsible for mitigating are on a rotation and have been assigned to at least eight vendors, each covering a section of the corridor. Every 21 days, she said, grass along the corridor is mitigated. The ground services team handles tires, mattresses, discarded debris, signs and overgrowth on the same 21-day cycle.

Separately, through a partnership with Memphis City Beautiful, the department has identified eight intersections where trash receptacles will be placed. The receptacles are on order. The public services corps picks up litter along the corridor once a month and will empty the new cans when they are installed.

The public works division reported its own side. Lamar is a state route, so public works is responsible for the medians, weed control on concrete islands, and overpasses and underpasses. There are two grass medians on Lamar between Crump and American Way, one near Mississippi Boulevard and one near Interstate 240 North. Both are cut twice a month. One tree knocked down by a vehicle had died and was removed.

The department also gave citywide figures for its proactive maintenance program, which began in July 2025 and covers striped streets rather than every neighborhood street. As of roughly three weeks before the meeting: more than 6,000 drain inlets cleaned, 7,400 potholes filled and 3,400 miles swept. The city has 56,000 drain inlets in total.

In the Mallory Heights area, bounded by South Parkway, Florida, the interstate and Mallory, public works inspected 152 inlets, cleaned and maintained 113 of them, and found 39 that did not need maintenance.

What the chairwoman said

Chairwoman Swearengen-Washington had asked for the item and set the terms before the presentation began. She said Lamar runs from American Way to the interstate to Midtown to downtown, that there were many pockets on it needing attention on litter, grass, blight, code enforcement support and gas stations, and that she was anxious to see the update but more anxious to see the consistency of the upkeep.

During the public works slides she stopped on an after photograph of Lamar and Prescott and asked whether the litter was still visible on the curb side on the right. The public works director said yes, ma'am.

Later in the same meeting, after an extended discussion on other subjects had consumed most of the time allotted, she said she still had not heard anything about the grass and that the departments were not prepared to talk about it.

Councilwoman Pearl Eva Walker asked, on behalf of District 3, for the city's role in the corridor renovation past Interstate 240 and where the public could get the status of the overall project. The public works director said the Tennessee Department of Transportation would be before the committee on August 18 to discuss state routes and their maintenance program generally, and that TDOT would be asked to add the Lamar corridor to that presentation.

The community enhancement director said her assignment covered work completed in house, from Winchester down to Riverside, and that she did not have information for the stretch from Interstate 240 to the state line.

The department said it will apply the same approach to other corridors, naming Elvis Presley, Austin Peay, Riverdale and Winchester, and said it is gathering drone footage to show corridor-wide impact.

What happens next

The department said the 21-day maintenance rotation continues on the Lamar corridor and that the same approach will extend to other corridors across the city. The trash receptacles for eight intersections are on order, and the department committed to notify the council when they arrive and are installed. The Tennessee Department of Transportation is scheduled before the same committee on August 18 to discuss state-maintained streets within Memphis, and was to be asked to include the Lamar corridor beyond Interstate 240. Before and after photographs for each mitigated location, along with overall project metrics, were distributed to committee members in hard copy.

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