100 North Main Redevelopment Restarts Memphis’s Tallest Tower

Memphis’s tallest building has been empty since 2015. The 37-story tower at 100 North Main went up in 1965, went dark fifty years later, and became the most visible vacancy downtown. It is now a $309 million mixed-use conversion covering the whole block.

Project Scope

The program is 200 apartments, a 200-room hotel, 60,000 square feet of office, 38,000 square feet of restaurant, 3,000 square feet of retail and 406 parking spaces across 792,873 square feet. It combines a gut adaptive reuse of the listed tower with new infill construction on the south half of the block and a second parking facility. Cleveland Construction is the general contractor and HBG Design is the architect. Snyder Environmental handled abatement. The developer is 100 N. Main Development Partners, led by Kevin Woods and Billy Orgel, with Block Real Estate Services taking a 50/50 stake in December 2024. The tower’s revolving rooftop restaurant, a Memphis landmark, comes back.

Why It Matters

The Downtown Memphis Commission bought the tower for $12 million in March 2021 after a 550-room Loews scheme collapsed, and that is the part worth noting. A public entity took title to a failed private project, held it, and re-tendered a smaller and more financeable program. Three separate incentives followed in 2024: a tourism development zone surcharge approved in February, CCRFC bond financing in March, and City of Memphis bond financing in October.

The scale reset is the lesson. Two hundred hotel keys and two hundred apartments is a different bet than 550 rooms in a market that could not absorb them, and it is the reason there is work on site now instead of another rendering. Phase 1 started in 2024, Phase 2 was scheduled into construction this year, and completion is targeted for 2030.

Project Team & Details