Murfreesboro, a Middle Tennessee town of about 20,000 population, is showing small cities across the nation (and large ones too) how urban renewal can be used to clear slums and revitalize a community. While towns and cities elsewhere have been talking about urban renewal and planning for it, Murfreesboro has practically completed a $1,750,000 project since 1952. With federal aid, the one-time Tennessee capital has acquired 55 acres of slums, cleared the land and improved the site with new streets and utilities. Acting as the redevelopment agency, the Murfreesboro Housing Authority is now ready to sell the land for commercial expansion. This will be done as soon as Housing and Home Finance Agency approval is obtained for a re-use appraisal of the improved property.

Within a matter of months new shopping centers and light industrial plants are expected to begin rising in the 20-block "Bottoms" area where 135 slum shacks formerly hemmed in business expansion in a frequently flooded lowland. A portion of the 20-block area near downtown Murfreesboro will be used for a $92,000 municipal off-street parking facility designed to accommodate 400 cars. Meanwhile, all residents of the 135 slum shacks cleared from the area have been relocated either in low-rent public housing projects or in private housing, including many new homes. All of this is being accomplished at relatively little cost to the local government. And whereas the old slum area formerly produced only $2,000 a year in taxes, the redeveloped section is expected to produce $20,000 annually in tax revenues. Edward Seddon, director of the Murfreesboro Housing Authority, says the net project cost is not expected to exceed $500,000, two-thirds of which will be paid by the Federal Government.

The net project cost is the cost of the entire program after the land has been resold for private development. "We hope the net cost will be substantially less than $500,000 as a result of the upgrading of the property values from slums to prime commercial use," Seddon says. "In fact, we have hopes that the project will pay itself out." After planning in 1952, the city entered into a federal loan and grant contract with HHFA in 1953, receiving a U. S. loan of $1,720,000 and a grant of $320,000. The city made arrangements to share a possible $160,000 of the cost, but will have to pay only about $15,000 or $16,000 in cash. The municipality will get credit for the $92,000 parking facility development, a $30,000 credit for expansion of its water system into the area and a $26,000 credit for electrical distribution system extensions. Since the new parking facility will be a revenue-producing venture itself, the city will be able to pay its share of the urban renewal cost out of general funds without a bond issue.

For 25 years the "Bottoms" area, bisected by a major highway, had blocked southward expansion of the congested business district. The slums, often flooded by Town Creek, had forced commercial expansion eastward into the city's best residential district. Within a block and a half of the Rutherford County courthouse square, the unsightly slum stumbling block to Murfreesboro's progress has now been cleared away. A new street pattern has been established, the land elevated and measures taken to control Town Creek. The way is now open for handsome, new commercial expansion and for new service plants Murfreesboro is seeking in its campaign for new industry. About 40 Negro families and six white families who once lived in the slums now have decent housing in Murfreesboro's 200-unit low-rent public facilities. Many of the other erstwhile slum dwellers now have better homes of their own, bought with the money paid them by the city for their old shacks.

Thus has urban renewal made it possible for Murfreesboro to solve what has been termed its "most pressing sociological, economic and aesthetic problem." "It's the best investment a town could make," Seddon declared. There was no opposition to the project when it was proposed in 1952, the director adds, because for years the community had wanted to do something about "the Bottoms." From the beginning, the mayor and council and community leaders swung in wholeheartedly behind the project. A few thought it was only "a pipe dream," Seddon says, but they are convinced now.

§ AMA Municipal News

* This article was carried in the Atlanta Constitution.