A job well done, an improved development process in the Grays Creek Area saves resources for needs throughout ShelbyCounty.

The nonprofit Gray's Creek Association has been planting the white, red, green and blue signs along the borders of a 64-square-mile area in unincorporated Shelby County. The signs are aimed at warding off irresponsible development and reassuring residents that the group is fighting to maintain the area's tranquil rural qualities and middle- to high-end property values.
The area is governed by the Gray's Creek Plan, a set of guidelines that Memphis and Shelby County adopted to preserve the area's property values and to protect it from intense commercial and tightly packed residential developments.
Since the group formed in 2004, it has worked with developers and government officials to ensure adherence to the plan.
Overall, the group is trying to nurture a more controlled development process in its community similar to processes in Germantown and Collierville, said board member Jimmy Reed, also president of Marx & Bensdorf Realtors.
"We are a pro-development group. But the haphazard way things have been handled in the past, case by case, has produced a hodgepodge of development both commercial and residential," Reed said, referring to areas such as Hickory Hill and other parts of Cordova. "And the public as a whole has lost confidence in knowing what will come into their neighborhoods."
The signs are a way to help rebuild that confidence. During the past six months the group has erected them at the area's borders at U.S. 64 and Reed Hooker Road, Houston Levee Road near the Wolf River, Macon Road near Pisgah Road and most recently at Walnut Grove Road near Houston Levee.
With board members such as Reed and local architect Carson Looney, Reed says the group has an advantage that comes from experience in real estate development.
"I think one of the things that's unusual about it is they have developed that kind of communication with our office and the rest of the system so that they're able to function more effectively," said Mary Baker, deputy director of the city-county Office of Planning and Development.
"We can still do better. But I'm pleased with what we've been able to accomplish there. They've been reasonable enough to let it be accomplished, because they haven't taken this posture of no change and against all development. The city and county have to be able to continue to grow and develop. If they don't, then they will just become stagnant," she said.