By Richard Alley -  The Daily News

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Community Capital and Architecture Inc. have teamed up again, this time to build Community Capital’s new headquarters at 1708 Monroe Ave. between South Belvedere Boulevard and South Evergreen Street.

Located just behind Outdoors Inc. and half a block from Idlewild Presbyterian Church, the area is zoned commercial, although the new office space of Community Capital is designed to look like homes in the area and will keep the integrity and feel of the Midtown neighborhood.

“It’s primarily commercial use in there, but many of the buildings are converted residential structures, so in talking to OPD (the city-county Office of Planning and Development), they felt that going into that area with an office-type building would be inappropriate and they asked us to design a building that would be more residential in appearance, so that’s what we did,” said David Schuermann, lead architect on the project and co-owner of Architecture Inc.

Community Capital, whose president is Archie Willis III, is a boutique firm offering real estate financing, development prospectus packages, financial and affordable housing advising to municipalities and private companies alike. The firm also develops real estate.

Currently located at 88 Union Ave., Community Capital was looking to stay Downtown, but Willis couldn’t find anything in the immediate area that fit his needs in a reasonable price point.

The process went on for several years with Architecture Inc. involved in the search until Community Capital finally bought the Midtown property, with a contingency toward modifying its zoning for $85,000.

At just less than 3,500 square feet, the structure is being built for about $270,000, not including development costs.

The new headquarters is not the first development project for the pair. In the early 1980s, when Schuermann worked for the architecture firm Bologna & Associates, he and Willis developed The Adler apartments on South Main Street for Willis’ father, A.W. Willis, a prominent Memphis attorney and real estate developer, and the namesake of an Uptown Street and the Auction Street bridge onto Mud Island.

“That’s when our relationship started and we’ve been working together over that period of time,” Schuermann said.

The pair would go on to purchase 350-356 S. Main St. for development, not an easy task before the historic district’s turnaround.

“As it turns out, we were just a bit early,” Schuermann said with a laugh. “It was a struggle. South Main in the ’80s was not what it is today.”

The professional relationship has grown over the years and the two men are currently working together on two comprehensive neighborhood redevelopment HOPE VI projects – University Place and Legends Park.

Community Capital also is the local partner for developer McCormack Baron Salazar and the Memphis Housing Authority on the projects.