Living on the edge

Small business story for The Memphis Daily News

Aug. 18, 2011

In 2008, something was brewing in the area near Cleveland and Watkins streets south of Poplar Avenue in Midtown.

A developer, Tom Marsh, working with Florida-based WSG Development, had unveiled plans for a mixed-use development to include small and large retail, including a Target store, condominiums, apartments and medical offices, along with all-around improvements to the neighborhood known as Crosstown.

Those plans, along with the eventual renovation of the old Sears Crosstown tower everyone saw as inevitable, was enough of a hook for entrepreneur Frank James to hang his dreams on.

James is a Memphis businessman who has run his Edge Coffee House out of several Midtown locations. He first opened in 1994 in the phone company building that was on Madison Avenue next door to the P&H Café before moving to Cooper Street at Peabody Avenue that same year; he moved to Poplar in what is now the Hi-Tone Café in 1997, and into his current location off of Cleveland in 2008 … (read more)