Downtown Memphis is still on the rise. At the Downtown Memphis Commission’s State of Downtown address on October 26 at the Halloran Centre, DMC President Chandell Ryan and Mayor Paul Young laid out a neighborhood with real momentum: a development pipeline worth $6.4 billion, falling crime, and a growing list of people choosing to call the heart of the city home.
The investment is already on the ground. Since 2017, the DMC has backed $1.9 billion through grants and incentives, and since the start of 2024, 43 DMC-supported projects have opened. More are on the way, including Meharry Medical College’s new downtown campus, the Memphis Art Museum opening downtown in December, and the 4,500-capacity Grind City Amp, which opened in April.
Housing is a centerpiece of the plan. Downtown now has 30% more living units than it did in 2017, and Mayor Young called his goal of 10,000 new downtown housing units “really, really important.” New faces are arriving too, with 39% of residents who moved in over the past year coming from outside the Memphis area.
Safety is trending the right way. Crime of all types fell 28.4% in 2025, a steeper drop than the city overall, which Ryan and Young credited in part to the 24/7 Downtown Command Center. A $74 million investment in keeping Downtown clean and cared for has the Blue Suede Brigade and Downtown Ambassadors logging thousands of litter cleanups and welfare checks across the core.
Read more on the numbers in the Downtown Memphis Commission’s State of Downtown report, with reporting from The Commercial Appeal.
Photo: The Commercial Appeal.
