Summit updates University District work

The University District is on the cusp of great things with redevelopment along Highland Street and a concerted effort to improve the connectivity among the neighborhoods, not to mention what is a nearly 50 percent blight reduction since 2012.

University District Inc. is a community development corporation that focuses on the area around the University of Memphis with nine neighborhoods, a number of organizations and commercial areas.

The University District Summit that took place earlier this year is an annual gathering that brings the various organizations and neighborhoods of the district together. This was an opportunity for attendees to meet new leadership of the Memphis Police Department as well as various developers involved in the neighborhood.

Tk Buchanan is Community Safety Liaison for the University District. She said it’s important that the community leaders connect to the commanders of the police precincts that cover the neighborhoods.

“We talked about strategy, crime reduction and communication between the community and police department,” she said. “The police are using social media more than ever and doing what they can. This was an opportunity to convey that personally.”

There has been a bump in burglaries in the district that several recent key arrests should curtail, Buchanan said.
There are a number of goals for the coming year that all the organizations and agencies of the University District share, Buchanan said.

“We’d like to brand our gateways,” she said. “The first tenant of securing an area – and the military says this – you have to define your boundaries and defend them. The best bang for our buck this year will be defining our boundary.”

The plan is to erect signs that identify the district that give a nod to the individual neighborhoods while connecting them as one.