The Commercial Appeal letter to the editor:
If Memphians can’t make our riverfront a signature gathering place, what are we capable of doing?
Your Dec. 5 editorial, “Land bridge going nowhere,” misses the fact that the riverfront master plan detailed an integrated set of key pieces, all having a purpose that serves the greater whole. Completing the master plan as Cooper Robertson proposed it would give us a riverfront unrivaled in the nation. Instead, it has been picked and parsed and seems destined to be at best a piecemeal version of the original vision. What a lost opportunity for our city.
Before it is forgotten, and just to set the record straight, no one ever proposed building the land bridge or promenade without the commensurate private development to pay for them. The plan always anticipated a long-term time frame for the market demand to develop. To assert anything else is simply wrong.
Although you call for improved “access” to the riverfront, anyone who takes a thoughtful look at the site realizes that the only way you get access is with continuous, ample pedestrian connections along the riverfront, such as those provided by Beale Landing, the promenade and, yes, the land bridge.
To reduce our ambitions for our riverfront to better maintenance and a few new “features” is to throw away transformative potential that can be realized in no other way. What a shame.
Carol Coletta
