Jones Urban

Projects

Built, not theoretical.

Every home here went through Memphis and Shelby County permitting and was financed as a small project. This is what missing middle housing looks like when it leaves the diagram.

Anchor project · Uptown Memphis

Malone Park Commons

A full city block in the Greenlaw Addition, developed as a small, walkable neighborhood of cottages, fourplex homes, and live-work buildings around shared green space.

Homes
35
Building types
Cottages, fourplexes, live-work
Site
One city block
Neighborhood
Uptown, Memphis

Malone Park Commons started with a simple question: what would a Memphis block look like if it were built for the households that actually live here today? The answer was not one building type but several, sized to the street. One- and two-bedroom cottages face a shared court. Fourplexes hold the corners at the scale of a large house. Live-work buildings put a shop or studio at the sidewalk with a home above.

The whole block is designed around walking: front porches near the street, homes facing each other across a green, and downtown, the Pinch District, and the riverfront within reach on foot or by bike. Homes are held and managed as rentals so the neighborhood stays whole.

The block was also a learning lab. Building three building types under one set of codes exposed, one permit at a time, where Memphis and Tennessee rules treated a fourplex like a high-rise. Shared with city and county planners, code officials, and fellow builders, those lessons helped inform Memphis and Shelby County's 2021 Large Home Amendment, Tennessee House Bill 2787, and the 2025 Appendix M. The block is the case study in John Zeanah's white paper Beyond Zoning (Center for Building in North America, 2025). Read about the code reform work.

Looking to live at Malone Park Commons? Visit maloneparkcommons.com to see available homes.

Two-bedroom cottage with a front porch and lamp post at Malone Park Commons Evening in the cottage courtyard at Malone Park Commons Aerial view of Malone Park Commons with the Memphis skyline and Pyramid

Completed · Uptown Memphis

Uptown Cottages

Small, energy-efficient cottage homes on infill lots a few blocks from Malone Park Commons.

Uptown Cottages took what we learned on the block and applied it lot by lot: raised floor foundations, all-electric systems, efficient envelopes, and floor plans that trade formal rooms for a good porch and a room that gets used every day. The homes are complete and occupied, adding gentle density to streets that already had sidewalks, utilities, and history.

Why Uptown

Memphis' first suburb, rebuilt for walking.

The Greenlaw Addition was laid out in the 1800s as Memphis' first suburb. In the twentieth century it became the site of the Hurt Village public housing project, and at the turn of this century it was rebuilt through a HOPE VI grant with the City of Memphis partnering with the Belz and Henry Turley companies, and rebranded Uptown.

What that history left behind is exactly what small infill needs: a real street grid, sidewalks, utilities already in the ground, and a location that is walkable to Harbor Town, the Pinch District, St. Jude, and downtown. We build here because the neighborhood's bones are good.

Street corner at Malone Park Commons with young street trees and cottages

Single-family infill · South Memphis / Soulsville

1546 Humber

Our first single-family home in a while, near the Shadowlawn Historic District.

Size
1,260 sq ft
Layout
3 bed, 2 bath
Lot
50' × 165'
Owner
Memphis Metropolitan Land Bank

We searched long and hard for a plan that fit the block, and landed on a hip roof, a center dormer, and a full front porch deep enough to sit on. Infill that fits.

Front of 1546 Humber, a new blue house with a hip roof, center dormer, and full front porch Looking down the front porch of 1546 Humber toward the street 1546 Humber from the driveway, showing the porch wrapping the front of the house

Earlier work

Cottages, small homes, and backyard cottages.

Jones Urban's early work focused on cottages, small single-family homes, and accessory dwelling units, including some of the first backyard cottages permitted after Memphis and Shelby County legalized ADUs in 2011. Those small projects are where our building systems and our code experience were worked out one house at a time.

How that experience became policy work