I spent a lot of time trying to understand the who and why of vacant lots downtown and eventually buying a lot just south of the Forum.

Directly south of the Forum, the city is trying to condemn the older small apt buildings to expand the MLK/'i am a man' Park. And land thats deemed best as parking lots apparently.

Below Vance and east of 3rd St. is owned by a Compton, CA firm that tried to build a drive thru restaurant along the same time the city deemed it a special development zone which didn't allow drive thrus amongst other things. So it sits empty. The old cotton gin to its south has been rehabbed as a residence which is rad.

One block east you have a barbershop and a car repair/junkyard place that dont seem to be going anywhere in the owners lifetime. The empty lots are mostly small land developers trying to consolidate contiguous lots purchased from the City's tax sales. A private equity firm in Nashville is building a large, mid rise, stick framed apartment building where it intersects GE Patterson.

Further east you have a lot of church owned property and stuff stuck in tax liens. Lots of stuff along Vance is for sale cheap or at the city land bank already. Vance gets progressively more hood as you head east even if you ignore the projects. - not even sure how you undo this. Just changing from project to low rent/subsidized apartments seems like a lateral move.

The next downtown hype, I think, will be along Carolina St just north of Crump. The federal dollars were approved last year to demolish the I-55 Bridge merger loop thing - freeing up a lot of land adjacent to the river. Most of the property here has been bought by one developer couple. The last real plots of big empty warehouses.