Northside Square, the long-awaited redevelopment of the former Northside High School in the Klondike neighborhood, officially opened its first phase on Jan. 16 with a pair of ribbon cuttings. The celebration marked the debut of both commercial space and newly converted residences inside the mid-century building at 1212 Vollintine Ave., giving the long-shuttered campus a fresh identity as a mixed-use community hub.
The project is an $81 million renovation of the roughly 270,000-square-foot campus, and organizers said the opening featured separate ribbon cuttings for the commercial and residential sections, as reported by Daily Memphian. The restoration follows years of planning and community organizing around the site, according to project material from ComCap Partners.
The conversion includes 42 affordable apartments set aside for households at or below 80% of the area's median income, organizers said, as reported by Action News 5. The building had been shuttered since 2016 after decades as a neighborhood high school, according to Wikipedia.
What’s inside Northside Square
The restored facility will host nonprofit offices, training programs, a food-hall-style space, and small-business suites. Tenants named at the opening include Code Crew, the Greater Memphis Chamber, Literacy Mid-South, Moore Tech, and Collective Blue Print, as reported by the Daily Memphian. Organizers say those groups are intended to provide workforce training, literacy services, and office capacity for neighborhood nonprofits.
The Memphis Symphony Orchestra confirmed plans to use Northside Square as a hub for community-facing work and to move administrative staff into the building in the months ahead, according tothe Memphis Symphony. That arts presence is being billed as a way to weave cultural programming into daily neighborhood life.
Why this matters for Klondike
Northside Square is the anchor project for the "Moving Klondike Forward" effort, which developers say combines property acquisition, community-led planning, and deed-based affordability tools to limit displacement as the neighborhood changes, according to reporting by Economic Architecture. Supporters have framed the redevelopment as one of the largest private-sector investments aimed specifically at a low-income Black neighborhood in Memphis, according to Memphis Flyer.
Organizers say tenant move-ins and public programming will roll out through 2026, with several partners beginning operations in stages as spaces are finished. The Memphis Symphony is targeting a summer 2026 transition of administrative offices, per Memphis Symphony. City and neighborhood leaders say the hope is that the hub will stitch services back into Klondike while preserving long-term resident access to housing and opportunity.
