By Bill Dries - The Daily News -

Cleaborn Homes, a defining part of the inner city landscape south of Downtown Memphis for decades, began to fall Tuesday morning.

Demolition of the public housing development and others began as a goal of the Herenton administration and continues with the Wharton administration.

LeMoyne Gardens was the first of the housing projects to be demolished in the late 1990s.

Cleaborn Homes, a late 1940s era project, is one of the last two large public housing developments left standing in the city. Its demolition is financed with federal HOPE VI funding, which will also be used to leverage private investment in the mixed-use, mixed-income development that is to come on the same site in South Memphis.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. and city Housing and Community Development director Robert Lipscomb have both said the city hopes to secure a sixth HOPE VI grant so the city can demolish the one remaining public housing project, Foote Homes, which stands across Lauderdale Street. Some of the Cleaborn Homes residents have been moved to Foote Homes during the demolition work.