Henry Turley's world revolves around downtown Memphis, where the main office of the Henry Turley Company occupies a fashionably functional space on Union Avenue--and where he seems to have his finger in every pie. He's a walking compendium of knowledge of the area, its history, and its people--people who all seem to know Henry.

Cruising along slowly in his BMW, he points to saved, renovated, and revitalized buildings. An interruption finds Henry on one end of a challenge to drag race. The challenger: a woman in a Jaguar pulled alongside him.

"I'm not going to race," Henry jokes as he leans out his window and turns on the charm. "I'm not interested in going anywhere. I'm just happy to be here."

Everywhere he goes, people greet Henry. A loft manager shares plans for his upcoming trip to Hawaii. Employees of Miss Cordelia's Grocery update Henry on their daily happenings.

He pauses on a tour of revitalized downtown buildings to point out the spot where James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr., from a building Henry subleased to Ray's landlord. It's a tragic fragment in Henry's long, and otherwise mostly happy, relationship with the area.

He seems to know every nook and cranny, from where the cobblestones came from to what businesses once occupied the enduring brick buildings now converted into homes. That's appropriate, because Henry's company renovated a good portion of the old structures that give downtown Memphis its urban character.

No single structure, however, commands the attention or improves the area more than Harbor Town, the Turley Company's development on a sandbar in the Mississippi River.

Homes in Town
Developed on Mud Island in the late 1980s, Harbor Town became part of a movement known as New Urbanism. Developers of Harbor Town wanted to combat sprawl and isolation. It grew out of a "tension between that empty piece of pristine ground and the urban setting in the background," Henry says.

His company built the houses with spacious porches that are close enough to sidewalks to encourage neighborly communication. The landscaping and the architectural design of the houses create shade that is much needed under the Memphis sun. Tree-lined sidewalks run parallel to streets that bear names such as River Mist Lane and Harbor Bend Road. The narrow streets require traffic to go slow, which enhances Harbor Town's desirability as a homesite. "You really feel like your child can walk to school and not be run over in the area," Henry says.

The community includes about 500 single-family residences and about an equal number of apartments integrated seamlessly into the neighborhood. "We try to treat the apartment residents with as much respect as the homeowners," the developer says.

Harbor Town boasts a Montessori school, a daycare center, and, coming soon, a retail base in the town square. Right now, residents can find available what Henry refers to as the basics: a bistro and a grocery store with outdoor seating ("I'm big on sidewalk cafes"), a coffee shop, a hair salon, and a spa. At the opposite end of the block, Henry envisions both a restaurant and a bed-and-breakfast on a grassy triangle. "That will create a lot of nice energy right there," he says.

Henry also expects the development of another set of residential condominiums at Harbor Town's southeastern edge. That part of the project comes later. Even without it, Harbor Town thrives. "It seems to live quite like we hoped it would," he says.

A Radical Idea
Harbor Town started as an unusual development, Henry says. It took the public a while to embrace the idea of living in a community of new homes so different from the typical suburban subdivision and so close to one of the less desirable areas of downtown. "I have found that in buying a home, people are very cautious," Henry says. "It takes an unusual person to do something different in terms of architecture and location."

Apparently, that problem no longer exists. Harbor Town residents happily stroll with their babies, walk their dogs, ride bikes, walk for exercise, skate, and sit and talk outside the bistro. Miss Cordelia's Grocery (named for Henry's mother) remains the community market, a place where a steady flow of Memphis rhythm and blues greets you before you even enter the door. The grocery sits directly across the street from The Maria Montessori, the neighborhood school founded by its headmistress, Maria Cole. Not far away, daycare-aged children learn Spanish at the Foreign Language Immersion Childcare Center, where no conversation occurs in English.

Views of Harbor Town
Ellen Allanic, who visits Harbor Town to take walks, last lived in San Francisco. She says the Memphis community is appealing "because of the house variations within a neighborhood. Many houses are unique." Pausing by the purple martin house at Purple Martin Pond and watching water from a fountain spray gently, she praises the way the design of Harbor Town reinforces its name. "You get a real sense of being on the water," Ellen says. "The viaducts are suggestive of other places."

As part of Henry's overall efforts to better the community, Harbor Town holds a significant place in his vision--but not the only place. His agenda includes a project with the potential to dramatically improve the nearby community called Uptown, which includes the historical district of Greenlaw. The long-term HOPE VI project, pursued in partnership with the city and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, calls for fixing old but salvageable houses and buildings, replacing dilapidated structures with bright new dwellings, sprucing up the landscaping, and making the neighborhood a place for people in different income brackets to call home.

The Future
The HOPE VI project came about as a result of Henry's relationship with the late Civil Rights activist and attorney A. W. Willis, Jr., whose name adorns the bridge that leads from Greenlaw to Harbor Town. Henry remembers Willis as a mentor, and he believes the activist attorney would want him to do something important and good for less fortunate Memphians. Toward that end, Henry and the city hope a new designation catches on in Greenlaw, one already appearing on signs: Uptown.

Henry figures the transformation of the Greenlaw community will complete his legacy in urban Memphis. "I'm 61," he says as he drives along, surveying the vast area and contemplating the future. "This ought to do me." But you wonder whether Henry will ever really be done with downtown Memphis, an area he knows like the back of his hand, and in a substantial way, by heart.

This article is from the February 2003 issue of Tennessee Living, which runs in select issues of Southern Living.