Three weeks into Memphis’s Safer-at-Home order, the city’s commercial corridors are starting to look different. Not abandoned, exactly. The buildings are still there. The signs are still up. The parking lots are still paved and striped.
They’re just empty.
Drive down Poplar Avenue from Midtown toward Germantown and count the dark storefronts. Restaurants with chairs stacked inside the windows. Salons with handwritten closure notices. Small retailers that were barely hanging on before March 24 and have no realistic path to reopening. The Germantown Parkway strip malls tell the same story. So does Summer Avenue east of Highland. So does Winchester Road through Hickory Hill.
If you manage commercial property in Memphis right now, you already know the numbers. Tenants who stopped paying rent. Tenants who broke their lease and walked. Tenants who locked up and said they’d be back “when this is over” without defining what “over” means.
What you might not have thought through yet is the security question. Because empty buildings attract problems, and problems cost more than rent.
The Risks Are Already Here
Memphis PD’s property crime numbers for the last two weeks of March showed a dip. That makes sense. Fewer people out means fewer car break-ins, fewer shoplifting reports, fewer purse snatchings. The crimes that require foot traffic dropped with the foot traffic.
Vacant building crime is a different category. It doesn’t need foot traffic. It needs opportunity, and a shuttered strip mall on a quiet commercial stretch provides plenty.
Copper theft is the most immediate concern. A closed restaurant with rooftop HVAC units is a target, and the scrap copper market doesn’t shut down because of a pandemic. MPD has dealt with waves of copper theft before, particularly along the older commercial strips in Raleigh, Frayser, and parts of South Memphis where buildings sit vacant for months at a time. The difference now is that buildings across every neighborhood are sitting dark.
Vandalism runs a close second. Broken windows, graffiti, damaged doors. For a property owner, a single broken storefront window costs $400 to $1,200 depending on the size and type. If nobody reports the damage for two weeks because nobody’s checking the property, rain gets in. Mold starts. A $600 window replacement becomes a $6,000 remediation project.
Squatting is the third risk, and it’s the one that scares property managers most. Tennessee law makes removing unauthorized occupants more complicated than most landlords expect. If someone establishes residency in a vacant commercial unit, even briefly, the eviction process can take weeks. During a pandemic with courts operating on reduced schedules, weeks could become months.
Your Insurance Doesn’t Care About COVID
Here’s a detail that several property managers I talked to this week had overlooked: your insurance policy’s vacancy clause didn’t disappear because of a lockdown order.
Most commercial property insurance policies include a vacancy provision. If a building sits more than 60 days with less than 31% of its square footage occupied by the tenant or the owner, the policy restrictions kick in. Coverage for vandalism, water damage, glass breakage, and theft may be reduced or excluded entirely. Some policies reduce all covered losses by 15%. Others void specific coverages altogether.
The 60-day clock started when your tenant locked the door. For properties that went vacant in the last week of March, you’re looking at a potential coverage gap starting late May. That’s six weeks from now.
Call your insurance broker this week. Not next week. This week. Ask specifically about the vacancy clause, what triggers it, and what your options are. Some carriers will negotiate an endorsement or a temporary modification given the circumstances. Others won’t. You need to know which category yours falls into before you find out the hard way.
Physical Security: What Actually Works
The temptation with a vacant property is to do the minimum. Lock the doors, set the alarm, check on it when you can. For a two-week closure, that might be fine. For what looks like a two-month closure with no firm end date, minimum isn’t enough.
Here’s what works, ranked by cost and effectiveness.
Increased drive-by patrols. The simplest upgrade. Most security companies offer patrol services where a marked vehicle checks your property two to four times per night. The guard verifies that doors and windows are intact, checks for signs of forced entry, and documents the visit with a timestamped photo report. Cost runs $150 to $400 per month per property depending on frequency and location. It’s not glamorous, and it won’t stop a determined break-in, but it creates a visible deterrent and gives you documentation for insurance purposes.
On-site guard presence. More expensive, more effective. A guard physically stationed at or near the property during high-risk hours (typically 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.) provides real deterrence. This is where costs climb fast. An unarmed guard in Memphis bills at $18 to $25 per hour depending on the company. For eight hours nightly, you’re looking at $4,300 to $6,000 per month. For a single high-value property, that math might work. For a manager with twelve sites, it’s not realistic.
Remote video monitoring. Cameras with live monitoring at a central station. When motion is detected, an operator views the feed in real time and can activate on-site speakers, contact police, or dispatch a patrol. Monthly costs range from $200 to $600 per camera position. Installation costs vary wildly. If you already have cameras on the property, some monitoring companies can integrate with your existing system. If you don’t, expect $2,000 to $5,000 in setup fees.
Physical hardening. Board up ground-floor windows and secondary entrances. Install padlocks on gates. Add battery-operated motion-sensor lights. Remove anything valuable from visible areas. None of this requires a security company. A handyman with a sheet of plywood and a drill can do most of it in an afternoon. Cost: $200 to $800 per property. It’s not pretty, and it signals vacancy to anyone driving by, which is the trade-off. A boarded building says “nobody’s here” as clearly as it says “stay out.”
Choosing a Security Provider Right Now
If you’ve decided you need professional security help for your vacant properties, you have three tiers of options in the Memphis market.
National firms. Allied Universal is the biggest player in Shelby County, with offices on Nonconnah Boulevard and contracts ranging from corporate campuses to retail centers. They have the staff depth to mobilize quickly, the insurance coverage to back large contracts, and standardized reporting systems. The downside is cost. National firms carry overhead that local companies don’t, and their hourly rates reflect it. Getting a decision-maker on the phone during a pandemic, when their sales teams are juggling a surge of inbound requests, may test your patience.
Regional firms. Phelps Security, based in the Memphis area, handles commercial property contracts across Shelby County and surrounding markets. They offer the middle ground: enough staff to cover multiple sites, familiarity with local neighborhoods and crime patterns, and pricing that’s typically 10 to 20 percent below the nationals. They’ve been operating in this market long enough to have relationships with local law enforcement, which matters when you need a fast police response to an alarm activation.
Local operators. Shield of Steel is one example. Veteran-owned, operating since 1998 out of their office at 2682 Lamar Avenue. They cover Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga, which gives them statewide reach that some local firms lack. Their pricing tends to run below the nationals, and the veteran-owned angle appeals to certain clients, particularly government-adjacent properties and facilities that value that background. The trade-off is scale. A smaller firm means fewer available guards on short notice, and they don’t carry the name recognition that a property management company’s board of directors might expect to see on a security contract. You can reach them at (202) 222-2225 or shieldofsteel.com.
There’s no single right answer here. The best provider depends on how many properties you need covered, your budget, how quickly you need service to start, and whether you need armed or unarmed personnel. Get three quotes. Compare the scope of service, not just the hourly rate. A cheaper guard company that doesn’t provide incident reports or GPS-verified patrol tracking will cost you more in the long run when your insurance adjuster asks for documentation.
The Checklist Nobody Gives You
I’ve covered vacant property security in Memphis for years. Here’s the list I’d work through if I managed commercial real estate and half my tenants just left.
First, walk every property this week. Document the current condition with photos and video. Check every door, window, and access point. Note any existing damage. This baseline documentation is worth its weight in gold if you file an insurance claim later.
Second, contact your insurance broker about vacancy clauses. Do this before anything else, because the answer may determine how much you spend on security.
Third, remove or secure anything of value. HVAC copper, electronics, fixtures, inventory that tenants left behind. If you can’t remove it, photograph it for the insurance file and make sure it’s not visible from outside.
Fourth, update your alarm monitoring company. Make sure they have current emergency contacts, that the system is armed 24/7, and that the communication link (phone line or cellular) is active. Some tenants were paying for their own alarm monitoring. If they canceled their service when they left, your building might be unmonitored right now and you wouldn’t know it.
Fifth, talk to neighboring tenants and property owners. Set up a group text or email chain. If someone sees activity at your vacant unit at midnight, you want a call. The best security system in any commercial corridor is a neighbor who pays attention.
Sixth, decide on professional security coverage. Run the numbers against your insurance exposure. In many cases, spending $300 a month on patrol service is cheaper than one vandalism claim that your vacancy-restricted policy won’t fully cover.
This Won’t End in June
Mayor Strickland’s Safer-at-Home order technically runs through June 1. I’ve talked to enough people in city government and in the business community to know that nobody expects a clean reopening on that date. Some version of restricted operations will probably extend into summer, and the businesses that have already closed aren’t all coming back when the order lifts.
Memphis had a commercial vacancy problem before COVID. Older retail strips along Lamar Avenue, parts of Summer Avenue east of Perkins, and scattered stretches through Raleigh and Whitehaven have carried empty storefronts for years. The pandemic accelerated a trend that was already moving.
For property managers, that means the security question isn’t a temporary problem with a June expiration date. It’s the new baseline. The properties you’re protecting today will still need protection in July, in September, and into next year. The tenants who left may not come back, and the ones who replace them won’t sign a lease on a property that got stripped of copper and tagged with spray paint while nobody was watching.
Get ahead of it now. The cost of prevention is always cheaper than the cost of recovery, and in Memphis right now, the window for prevention is closing fast.