By John Martin / MicroMemphis Reporter

There is a disturbing trend developing in the University District.

Pretending to be lawn crews, burglars are infiltrating neighborhoods in the University District, and residents are growing nervous.

The crews do light weed-whacking and lawn upkeep around houses while identifying access points within the house. By doing so, they become familiar with the residential home for a later burglary. 
 
Details about the scam, including the name the burglars use for their fake business, were not available, but their modus operandi is the same throughout each instance reported.

While it is hard to pin down specific numbers of burglaries that have happened directly as a result, it is certain that there is a new sense of caution when it comes to hiring yard crews and anyone looking for odd job work.

By John Martin / MicroMemphis Reporter

The Memphis Grizzlies disposed of the Oklahoma City Thunder in five games earlier this month in rather easy fashion.

But, after the tornadoes that demolished the surrounding areas in Oklahoma City, there’s no lingering bad blood from the City of Memphis toward their neighbors to the west.

Many businesses around the University District, including Newby’s Memphis at 539 S. Highland St. organized food and donation drives to assist the residents of Moore, Okla., where dozens of people were killed and thousands of homes destroyed by a tornado outbreak that swept through the state.

Newby’s, a prominent stable of the University District, conducted the drive May 23, and the turnout was promising. Though official numbers haven’t been tallied, organizers and nearby residents were encouraged by how many people showed up.
 

A new Kroger grocery store located at 3444 Plaza Ave. near the University District is a much larger and more modern version of its counterpart next door. The new store opened March 20, and it is in total 90,000 square feet compared to just 55,000 to the old store. The new Kroger emphasizes a larger natural and organic foods section for healthier eating and also is more of a family ‘take the kids along’ type of grocery due to the build-your-own cupcake section. The sheer size of the Kroger may be overwhelming at first, but everything is conveniently placed and properly labeled to make shopping as easy as possible for seasoned grocery shoppers to college students newly acclimated to feeding themselves. The only down side of the new Kroger is parking, which should be a little easy later this spring when the old Kroger is torn down to open up more parking.  

Sherwood Forest subdivision is located in East Memphis and is a neighborhood inside the University District. Its boundaries are Park Avenue to the north, Rhodes Avenue to the south, South Highland Street, Radford Road and South Prescott Street to the west and Getwell Road to the east. The neighboorhood was developed in eight phases which originally contained 642 houses. Developers for the various phases were William L. Taylor and H. Price Curd and the Boyle Investment Company, doing business as the Sherwood Building Corporation. The cost of the new homes in the 1940s ranged from $6,400 to $10,500.  The neighborhood contains three churches, one of which is for sale, and is home to Sherwood Elementary School, which is a Memphis city school. Sherwood Forest is known for having street names from the fictional tale Robin Hood. The neighborhood contains street names such as Robin Hood Lane, Friar Tuck Road, Nottingham Place, Maid Marion Lane, Little John Road, Allendale Lane and Will Scarlet Road.

A car was totaled early on the morning of May 5 at the intersection of Highland Street and Southern Avenue when the vehicle got stuck on the tracks and then was hit by an oncoming train.

The car was owned by University of Memphis student Angela Clark, who said her car was totaled in the incident.

“I’ve already got my ticket. I just want to get my keys so I can go home,” Clark said.

Clark said she was driving through the intersection at about 2 a.m. that Sunday morning when her car tires got stuck on the railroad tracks.

“My car got stuck five minutes before the train came," Clark said.

A new Checkers drive in opened late April at the corner of Park and Getwell next to the Bank of America.

The Checkers and Rally’s franchise has been in the restaurant business since 1986. The first Checkers opened 1986 in Mobile, Ala., and Rally’s opened in 1985 in Louisville, Ky. The two restaurants merged in 1999 after maintaining more than 200 locations across the Southeastern and Midwestern states.  

The merger made Checkers and Rally’s the largest double drive-thru restaurant chain in the country. The franchise now has an established network of more than 800 restaurants across the United States.

“In saving Overton Park for the city, against its wishes at the time, (Citizens to Preserve Overton Park) may have saved Memphis from itself,” he said.