Jones Urban

Projects

Built, not theoretical.

Every home here went through Memphis and Shelby County permitting, was financed as a small project, and is lived in today. 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. Those lessons became Memphis and Shelby County's Appendix M and Tennessee House Bill 2787. Read how one block changed the code.

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

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