There will be boats docked at Beale Street Landing, but whether there is ever a single one moored there, it needs to be completed.
That some people would rather put winning first – in this case, that means stopping Beale Street Landing in its $17 million tracks – even if it means leaving an incomplete downtown blemish speaks to the obstructionist attitudes that drive some people who profess to be passionate about a revived, reimagined riverfront.
If left uncompleted, Beale Street Landing will indeed become our city’s symbol – one for a dysfunctional city where fighting poses as civic involvement and accusations as civic debate – and it will come at the time when new hope has been bred by the election of a new Memphis mayor.
There’s little doubt that if the Riverfront Development Corporation said up, Friends of our Riverfront would say down, but on this one, we’re baffled that there should be any difference of opinion on whether to finish the project as envisioned since doing otherwise, leaves a scar on our front door.
Something Better
In the 10-year history of the RDC, it has been a lightning rod for criticism, some which it brought it on itself, as some of its members acknowledge. But the regular misstatements of the facts and the personal innuendoes by opponents of all things RDC-related has fatigued some early supporters and marginalized their influence in places where they needed friends.
Here’s the thing: most Memphians don’t care about the false choices of taking sides with either the RDC or Friends for our Riverfront. They’d just like a riverfront that’s more animated and interesting than the stuck in time persona that grips it now.
We understand the need for something better more than most. Located as we are near the foot of Union Avenue, we have a front row seat for the frustration and incredulity of visitors who stroll to the riverfront in search of the kinds of experiences they find in most any other river city in the world. Here, they can’t even buy a soda or a cone of ice cream.
Back to Beale Street Landing, it is of course tempting to plug the $8.9 million needed to complete Beale Street Landing into the framework of convention center cost overruns, to FedExForum’s misappropriated millions and to The Pyramid’s $39 million price tag that ended up at $62 million (although lost in the retelling is the fact that the increases were caused by changes in the scope, not overruns). It is equally tempting to develop conspiracy theories that suggest that the RDC knew that it low-balled the amount needed from the beginning.
Cause and Effect
It’s disingenuous for opponents to vilify the RDC for the increases when part of it stemmed from the two year stoppage caused by a Section 106 review by State Historic Preservation Office aimed as much about delaying the project as anything. Then there was the $1.3 million in additional costs for architects and project managers for redesign of the project as a result of that review.
Part of the shortfall resulted from the federal government promising one amount and then reducing it without any discussion or warning, creating $1.4 million gap. Then there was the problem of the river’s record high water marks that prevented the foundational work by the contractor.
Despite the reasons, we can appreciate the frustration of Memphis City Council when, in the most difficult budget year in recent memory, it is asked for the almost $9 million needed to wrap up construction. And yet, they need to do it, because there is no reasonable alternative from a place-making standpoint but to do what we set out to do – create a distinctive place where people can experience the river, enjoy some food, explore the unique pod parks and walk to the water’s edge.
The design contract for Beale Street Landing was awarded in 2004 with the schedule calling for construction to begin in late 2006 with a completion in late 2008. Because of the Section 106 review and other delays, completion is now scheduled for 18 months from now.
Better Options
If things were freeze framed as they are, there would be no connection to the water’s edge and none of the terraces and islands.
We hope that in time, once Beale Street Landing is completed, it will lead to new thinking about Tom Lee Park, built as a festival park for Memphis in May International Festival and a couple of other weekend events. Because its purpose is seen as the location for these special events, it remains largely without landscaping, conveniences or charm.
We still think that the area on the south side of The Pyramid, including the unsightly parking and fencing near the Visitor Center, should be converted into green space where these large-scale events could be relocated, clearing the way for Tom Lee Park to become a real park, one with shade, human scale and food.
At the request of City of Memphis, one of the ubiquitous Younger and Associates economic impact studies was completed for Beale Street Landing, but for us, it’s beside the point. As we’ve mentioned before, we tire of improvements to quality life and arts and culture being evaluated based on dollars and cents when the real impact on aesthetics and livability are immeasurable.
Pride after the Fact
Nothing sparks more divergent opinions than the design of the public realm and public art. We’ve made no secret of our support for the winning design that was chosen from the 171 entries from 20 countries and 27 states. RTN Architects of Buenos Aires envisioned a sense of arrival for the riverfront and a sense of connection between water and city, creating new vistas, a grand civic plaza and a few small businesses, hopefully responding to the desire for food and refreshment by the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the riverfront every year.
That said, we do believe that the project was improved by the addition of the green roof to the Beale Street Landing building that connects the park pods to Tom Lee Park, and questions about the architectural firm were answered when it was chosen to create a more fitting setting for Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Balbao.
Remember all those people who ripped into FedEx Forum and said they would never darken its doors. It’s hard to find any of them today, because once it was built, we finally understood what a first-class arena looked like and that The Pyramid was a poor excuse for one.
In Chicago, the same was said about Millennium Park, a spectacular park just off the lake in Chicago. It’s hard today to find anyone who’s not proud of the park and recognizes what it has done for Chicago’s image and quality of life.
Getting the Symbolism Right
We predict that Beale Street Landing will become our signature project, like Millennium Park, and at a fraction of the cost of the Chicago landmark. For that matter, it’s being built for a fraction of the cost of the riverfront redevelopment in Chattanooga.
When completed, Beale Street Landing will become the symbol for our city, and if the opponents are allowed their wishes, the symbol will be for a moribund, dull riverfront at a time when all river cities are reinventing their front doors and sparking an urban design ethos.
An incredibly fact-free article, composed entirely of spin and talking points, virtually all of which we have heard so many times before from the RDC’s own marketing department.
Click here for ten truths about B.S. Landing.
Also, readers of this SCM blog should be sure to pick up a copy of Memphis Magazine, February issue, and read “Frozen” by John Branston.
Perhaps we can learn from history, move on and get something done. Can we agree to disagree, come together, put our difference aside and show that we have the capacity to execute? Group hug!
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=6740
What amazes me is that, whenever they write about this topic, Smart City Memphis never fails to attack and demonize Friends for Our Riverfront, a small, grass-roots organization who is essentially the “David” versus the “Goliath” of Memphis developers, power-players, and downtown elite. SCM does the dirty work, so Goliath can keep his hands clean?
And yet, FfOR has survived and has saved this City from making huge, costly and stupid mistakes. How is that possible? Could it be that FfOR has had the truth on its side from the very beginning?
Mike:
If that’s demonizing Friends, we did a piss poor job of it. In fact, we don’t think you should associate opponents with Friends automatically. When we talk about opponents, we are not always thinking of Friends.
Here, we think that we need dramatic improvements to downtown and riverfront and nobody corners the market on wisdom in that regard. We just need to do something and quit talking about it. We’ve talked about it longer than the projects in other cities that actually turned their riverfronts around.
Oops, Mike, didn’t see your first comment. We read your 10 truths and find several errors of fact. It’s always easy to be dismissive of someone’s opinion as talking points and spin but it’s more possible to see this charge as an instance of projection by you, to call up a psychological term. And if we thought Beale Street Landing wasn’t crucial, we’d gladly say so, and at the risk of sending you into apoplexy, we think some of the master plan recommendations were jettisoned too soon by RDC which belies the talking point about downtown elites and developers and power players ramming the ideas down our throats.
And John Branston is a good friend of ours so any reference to his work is appreciated. We thought his recommendations in the article were especially worth reading.
Aaron: I wish there was a way to move on, and if you can figure out how to do it, count us in.
Mike’s response illustrates the problem with any discussion of the riverfront. SCM puts together a post that argues, pretty mildly and effectively, for its position that the landing is a good thing and Mike goes on the attack. The “david” side of the argument tends to overreact to anyone who suggests that we should change something about the riverfront. Same goes, by the way, for the Heritage Memphis folks. And is one of the anti landing arguments really, as it says on Mike’s link, that bad guys could find nooks and crannies to hide behind and rob people? Really?
Mike Cromer: Speaking of fact-free, how come Branston didn’t consult the RDC when he wrote that Memphis Magazine article? Input from them is mysteriously absent from the article. And since you and FfOR are so keen on that article, I hope that you absorb the messages directed at YOU!
In fact, opponents to Beale Street Landing believe, just as much as you do, that we need improvements on the riverfront. The RDC is the problem.
It’s in their DNA. They are stuck on doing the grandiose and expensive, and that’s why they come up utterly foolish ideas like the “Dean Jernigan Land Bridge” (as I heard a City official jokingly call it). But because the RDC is the anointed, exclusive developer for the riverfront, they get first rights to frame all the questions, and they get the money to promote their ideas.
We could have had a much-improved riverfront long ago, if the RDC had listened to the more modest and incremental ideas and approaches that the public has been suggesting to them all along, since the fisrt Waterfront Center meeting in 1999. But no, they wanted to build a “prestigious new downtown” in direct competition with the real downtown. They wanted to build luxury condos on the historic Promenade, leaving a sidewalk for us.
Their idea of improving the riverfront is really what you on this blog would call urban sprawl. The RDC is all about massive development, not about the enhancing public’s use and enjoyment of our riverfront. For the RDC, getting public input means: “Finding out how much massive development the public can tolerate without yelling.”
Beale Street Landing is another idea whose time has come and GONE. It’s a dock for riverboats that are out of business. It’s a restaurant without an operator, where only a snack bar might be needed. It’s a playground inside of huge monoliths of urban art that have no connection to Memphis. It’s a Disney-fied replacement for our historic Cobblestone Landing, which has long been a tourist attraction to thousands each year.
We could do a lot better for a lot less, if we weren’t trying to save the faces of all luminaries who have lent their names to this 10-year fiasco, and if the RDC weren’t trying to save their own jobs.
The RDC itself is the obstacle. Move these wannabe developer-tycoons out of the way, clean up the mess they made, and then maybe the City can make some progress. You of all people should have figured all this out — and I thought you had, until this morning.
SCM, please DO respond to my ten truths article. Respond to anything on my blog. I welcome it! Just don’t waste people’s time with regurgitations of RDC marketing spin and talking-points. Ten years of it is enough.
Mike:
As the post said, this is not about choosing sides between RDC and Friends. Most people in this city aren’t interested in that. It’s about finishing what we started and the need for Beale Street Landing to bring some vitality to a riverfront that can be so much more.
Opponents that are friends of ours want to treat the riverfront like it’s a stage set from another age. It’s not about doing what’s needed to be competitive with cities who have real visions about what their riverfronts can be.
And there’s no one who says that the Landing is a replacement for the cobblestones but it’s pretty hard to argue that they should be the first priority. Even if they were preserved, which we support, it does little to make the riverfront experience more interesting and enjoyable.
We weren’t aware we were regurgitating RDC spin, but again, we think this may be a case of projection on your part.
One thing that I’ve notice about Friends is how unfriendly they are, like here where he misses the whole point and immediately attacks, attacks, attacks. He never answered the question. Are we supposed to leave a half-finished project for the world to see. Doesn’t sound like you’re a friend of the riverfront. These guys would cut off their nose to spite their face. They haven’t just drunk the koolaid, they’re mainlining it.
We hasten to say again that in reading this post, you should not substitute Friends of our Riverfront every time we say opponents.
Anonymous 2:49: I did answer the question weeks ago in a letter to the editor of the CA. Click to read it here. Nobody has ever suggested leaving a hole down there. It’s Smart City that is creating the “straw man” by making such suggestions.
SCM, re-read the first four paragraphs of own blog article. After patronizingly dismissing the opponents and making up straw man positions they supposedly hold, in the fourth paragraph you make it crystal clear whom you mean:
“There’s little doubt that if the Riverfront Development Corporation said up, Friends of our Riverfront would say down, but on this one, we’re baffled…”
Furthermore, you paint FfOR (and other unnamed opponents) as ideological obstructionists who would reflexively do nothing other than to say no when the RDC says yes, black when they say white. That is an out-and-out falsehood.
(Although this is the same falsehood the RDC likes to propagate, I won’t accuse you of taking your talking points from them.)
I’ve followed your blog for years. In almost every article about the riverfront after the first two or three, you mention FfOR by name and you make essentially that same claim.
Your passion for attacking FfOR and anything they might say or do goes so far, that you rushed to pre-emptively attack Project for Public Spaces (invited to Memphis at FfOR’s expense) days before PPS even arrived. And once they had come and gone, you had another post ready saying “I told you so.”
You should refresh your memory on this point. Do a search on your own blog and re-read some of the things you’ve written.
I will grant you this: You do avoid mentioning a certain person’s name, who is the head of that organization. That would be too un-genteel. I’ll try to follow your lead, by avoiding mention of your name or those of certain RDC officials.
The histrionics are really out of place, Mike, with all due respect. If this is the attitude that meets the RDC when they try to deal with you, no wonder they stopped listening. There is nothing “Disney-fied” about BSL, you just don’t like it. Fine. SCM and others do. We have to be able to rationally discuss these issues without lapsing into hostle ad hominem every time someone disagrees with you.
As to your article, are you serious when you say one drawback to DSL is that robbers will be able to find places to hide? If so, do you honestly believe that robbers can’t find a place to hide just about anywhere else downtown too? Whats more attractive to robbers, a dark park or an illuminated “boat dock”? And where do you get the stats for your claim that “thousands” come to see the cobblestones? I run down there frequently and I have never seen tourists walking around the stones.
Actually, Mike, you are wrong. We were at a meeting recently where it was directly proposed that we level it all out and move on. We don’t consider that a solution.
For some people (which is why we never said Friends), this seems to be about winning rather than making the best choice for downtown.
PS: Anonymous, We know Mike and he’s as friendly as they come.
Mike:
“There’s little doubt that if the Riverfront Development Corporation said up, Friends of our Riverfront would say down, but on this one, we’re baffled…”
We said that as a fact, but we then didn’t segue that into saying that opponents was tantamount to saying Friends.
And Good Lord, Mike, you’d think we were always pounding on Friends. We haven’t mentioned their name in two years.
Although I hate that the Beale Street Landing will cost more than projected, I think it’s necessary to complete it. I can walk to that part of the river and would like to be able to continue through to Tom Lee Park, walk around those pick-shaped islands or along the floating pier. As far as boats, I’m no expert, but I would think the Memphis-based steamboats could use the dock pretty well. I also think it would be more ADA compliant than the current cobblestones. I also read the RDC was going to add some walkways through the cobblestones, which would add connectivity and secure the remaining ones. While I think their initial plans for Mud Island were off-base, I think the current BSL plans aren’t so bad.
As for me, I rest my case about the friendly Friends. You can’t even talk to them without them screaming.
I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but I have always found the FfOR folks to be kind, engaging, and determined. Unfortunately, ‘determined’ is the new ‘screaming’ in the eyes of some.
By the way, if you’re not backed by millions of tax dollars and the City’s political machinery, sometimes you have to be a little loud and ‘determined’ to get your message across.
I do not speak for Friends. I left their board almost two years ago, about the time I started MemphisCobblestones.com. The reason? I wanted to speak in my own voice, without my words reflecting on Friends.
But it’s real hard to keep from stepping forward to defend them when Friends are dismissed as obstructionists and naysayers, and it is subtly implied that they are just tree-hugging preservationists, or women with too much time on their hands. That is absolutely not true. With its limited resources, Friends has all along spoken of what ought to be done on our riverfront, suggested positive changes that would animate the area and make it a better public space. Friends doesn’t have the $7M budget RDC has.
What’s more, Memphis may not realize it but it owes Friends a debt of gratitude for almost single-handedly stopping this City from proceeding with that profoundly stupid land bridge that the RDC came up with. They stopped it by telling the truths about it, though many people didn’t want to hear it. The truths forced the RDC to withdraw.
How stupid was the land bridge? Read my blog. [Link] Even the Urban Land Institute saw the problems.
Like Friends and many others, I didn’t try to fight BSL some years ago, though we had our doubts. Coming on the heels of the land bridge, and by then being attacked for negativism and obstructionism, I’m sure most of us didn’t have the energy. Plus, some of us thought, “Just let them build their BSL and then maybe they’ll move on.”
What provoked me to start MemphisCobblestones.com (and to have to leave Friends’ board) was the realization in early 2008 of what many of us had been fearing: BSL wasn’t intended to be anything like the Master Plan. It was to be a replacement for the Cobblestone Landing. I and others realized this when we first saw the RDC’s plan for the cobblestone area, something they had held off talking about until BSL approvals were locked into place and it was presumably thought to be unstoppable.
If the RDC had sincerely tried to carry out what Coopers and Robertson had planned [link] (and other consultants through the years had recommended) for the Cobblestone Landing, we wouldn’t be having these “yelling matches”. But someone at the RDC had their own ideas about the Cobblestones. In contrast to cities in the US and worldwide who cherish and protect their cobblestones, in spite of the fact that people have used our landing for a century and a half, we were going to do our darnedest to make people look away and stay away. “Cobbles under glass.”
If I get PO’d it’s because the whole switcheroo has been so shall we say “sneaky”. Even money that was supposed to go toward the Cobblestones was diverted to BSL. Even to this day, RDC claims that the BSL project is part of and in accordance with their Master Plan. It definitely isn’t. [Link] But how many people in Memphis or readers of this blog have actually read the plan?
To close this comment off: I think a large measure of the problem is this: In 2000, Memphis was on a high about all the cool redevelopment projects downtown. We got to the point where we thought “mixed-use development” was going to be the answer to everything else that ailed us. So when the developers went to Herenton and said they could solve the riverfront problem, he said sure. And when they asked him to shut down the Parks Commission, and remove the riverfront from purview of the Center City Commission, in effect creating a bifurcated downtown and a separate “river city commission”, he said, why not. And when they suggested he throw in the Public Promenade as a bonus, he said, done, it’s yours. Memphis loved developers. It was all too easy to hand our riverfront over to the developers and let them decide what to do, and be grateful for any amenities we got back from it.
And so we got what we got: A plan for creating 55 acres of new land (wiping out Mud Island River Park) and putting 10M s.f. of brand new development on it. A plan for 800K s.f. of new development on the Promenade. A plan for a $37M monument to Herenton’s folly and boat dock to nowhere, right at the foot of Beale Street, where it could be a taxpayer-funded amenity for whatever might be built at One Beale. And a crappy plan for our historic Cobblestone Landing.
Mike:
We won’t reply to everything, but it includes a lot of revisionist history. Nobody has been harder on developers than we have but they didn’t convince Herenton to do away with the Park Commission. The Council did, and all for political reasons, and it was a gigantic mistake. And the reason the land bridge was abandoned had much more to do with City Hall than anybody else.
We support restoration and preservation of the cobblestones. We just don’t think they produce the vibrancy and vitality that we need on this sad, dormant riverfront. It’s just a difference of opinion. It’s not life or death. It doesn’t make you a fool or u (but we you probably disagree with that).
And we’re willing to get involved and support any plan that brings investment and new life downtown. If anyone thinks that downtown is in the midst of a renaissance, they must never travel outside this city. We had some reservations about the master plan and the land bridge, but at least someone produced something to prick our minds to think bigger and to have a competitive, first-class riverfront, which let us say it again, we do not have now.
And we say it one more time, since it’s been drowned out all day, most people don’t care about the internecine warfare between RDC and Friends. All they care about is doing something on the river that matters. We vote for Beale Street Landing. That was the point of the post.
PS: We knew you left Friends. We read your blog.
No caffeine tomorrow for MIke. It’s been a day of ranting and raving. It’s great to have an opinion but at least listen to those of us who have a different one. This is what’s wrong with Memphis and what makes other cities look good to me. We’re always shouting at each other.
Hey Cromer,
NOBODY gives a flying fart about the cobblestones.
Even Branston himself, in the blathering article you referenced, said NOBODY cares about this crap.
That a grown man could devote his existence to caring for rocks is no less than bizare, but to each his own.
IF the city will pay me $25,000 I will bring the help required over an evening to dig up every cobblestone and hurl them into the Mississippi. Problem solved.
I realize this would be devastating to you but you might find that you like golf, bowling or my suggestion, extreme sky-diving.
I respect your right to voice your opinion. I don’t respect your opinion however because I think it is cancerous to the development of Memphis.
People need jobs. Beale Street Landing represents jobs and it represents a chance for young people to build THEIR Memphis. You don’t have a right holding them to a dead, irrelevant past.
To Benny Lendermon and the RDC……. can you not have the cobblestones removed as a safety hazard? Surely OSHA would not pass these things as suitable and safe for citizens to travel over, would they?
I think you need to ask the city Insurer to re-examine the cobblestones and see if the additional premiums don’t by themselves warrant removing the rocks.
Have you ever tested a cobblestone for heavy metals? Typically these kinds of stones are impregnated with things like Arsenic, Lead, Copper, Nickel and sometimes radio isotopes.
Are we sure we want kids playing on these ugly things?
Seriously, the RDC needs to quit playing softball. You guys ave done a lot of work, solicited a lot of input, designs and opinions for the BSL. You need to get tough.
Can’t city attorneys look into tortuous interference lawsuits?
Get the damned rocks dug up and removed.
Let’s move forward. I can’t wait to go shopping, partying and watching people on the new Promenade.
The rocks don’t give a fart about you either, Tommy.
Just so I understand, when Smart City Memphis says “we”, who does that include?
Because this is a company blog, it represents the opinions of the people who work here.
We use “we” with Mark Twain’s admonition in mind. It’s reserved only for royalty and people with worms.
Gotcha.
I think BSL could be successfully scaled back in light of the vanished demand for commercial riverboat docking (local tour boats belong on the cobblestones). Heck, we could probably take out the docking facilities and replace them with a skatepark and still save money.
Hey Scott………….
scaled back? Who is going to pay for the added expenses?
It would have to be redesigned, new engineering studies would have to be done making sure that what the “scaling back” is, is compatible with the work already done.
Who would pay for the new design and engineering work? You?
Who would we choose to do the redisgn? Do you not even comprehend how much ADDED delay and cost and confusion would be added to this project in opening it up for yet MORE public hearings, and studies?
By the way Scott, the funding for BSL was undoubtedly guaranteed for a specific set of plans, drawings and design.
Do you have any idea how government works? If any major design changes are made to BSL the guaranteed funding would be pulled and we would have to go back to ground zero, starting from scratch.
Brilliant idea there pal, I tell ya BRILLIANT!
Wait, here’s an idea…………. Let’s finish this project and move on to teh next one.
No matter what version of a Riverfront access project is presented roulghly 1/2 the people are not going to like it, and it will be a circle jerk the entire way.
Does it even dawn on people like you that this is 2010 and Memphis is losing citizens and ground to other cities left and right?
Idiots in Memphis oppose BSL, Bass Pro, Shopping development in Overton, development on Mainstreet, and ANYTHING that changes teh dim dead past of Memphis.
I have been in Memphis for 10 years now and have witnessed far too little action. I have had my fill of kook historians, preservationists and cowards unable to take a stand and drive a project home.
If we don’t start letting progress take place, there won’t be anything left of Memphis.
People amaze me with their simplistic ideas of “saving” money.
Shorter: Whenever we do something stupid, we ought to finish the job lest we be might accused of being half-stupid.
First, we want to say that we are not choosing between the cobblestones and Beale Street Landing. We can do both.
And Mike, we get your point. We just don’t agree with you that Beale Street Landing is stupid. It was never a stupid idea, it’s a smart design to liven up our riverfront, and it’s beyond time to do something smart there.
We learned the lesson of The Pyramid. It was done 100% stupid. Let’s do something noteworthy and significant, but most of all, let’s do something first-class for a change.
Scott: We still agree with Skatelife that a first-class skate park should be on Mud Island.
By the way, SCM, I have to ask. At the top of the article you say “in this case, that means stopping Beale Street Landing in its $17 million tracks.” Where does that number come from? It connects to nothing I’m aware of. Instead of just throwing numbers out leaving people to mistakenly think it’s a $17 project (it’s really $37M), could you please explain?
The RDC’s latest Powerpoint says the project will cost $36,316,000 when done. (I have my doubts, but let’s take them at their word.)
By the way: Their Powerpoint also says that Federal funding now comes to $7,932,215. The Feds are paying only 21.8% of the total. So we’re spending $3.68 to match each “free” Federal $1. I wanted to make this point clear because you’d surprised how many people think BSL is mostly Federal money.
Were you talking about how much (City, Federal or otherwise) has already been sunk into the project? In May, the RDC told City Council $11 million, with Phase II 95% complete, and Phase III yet to be awarded.
Phase III is the steelwork, to be built offsite (so much for creating jobs here) and then barged in. The contractor’s been chosen, but as of a couple weeks ago there was no signed contract on file with the City.
Which is why some of us are yelling, “Freeze!” The more money that is sunk down that hole, the more difficult it becomes for rational beings to take stock and evaluate what we are doing and whether it’s the best course from here. See “Sunk cost fallacy.” Meanwhile, there are some people whose jobs are on the line, trying as hard as they can to sink more money into that hole as fast as they can, so that the project becomes even more “unstoppable”. Mayor Wharton needs the breathing room.
The Mayor also needs some facts. That’s why I am calling for an independent audit. Until now, the only way to get “facts” is for all of us to wait for Benny’s next iteration of his Powerpoints, and then to swallow those pills with a full glass of spin.
Mr. Lendermon may be a nice guy, but he is hardly a disinterested party.
Mike:
We were referring to how much has been spent to date.
We were for the project whether federal funding was ever in it.
We evaluated what we needed to build way back when, and the economic impact of the project pays the yearly debt service far and away, so it’s paying for itself.
We just think we need to finish it. I think Mayor Wharton is completely capable of gathering all the facts, and we also expect that he’ll come to the conclusion that we need to finish what we start in a first-class way.
“We evaluated what we needed to build way back when, and the economic impact of the project pays the yearly debt service far and away, so it’s paying for itself.”
I’m sorry. I’m not calling you a liar, but merely mistaken or misled — until you can show me this evaluation.
I have seen everything that was ever available to the public, plus lots of internal documentation that were never shown to the public, and I have never run across a dollars-and-cents study showing the BSL pays for itself. If there was one, you can be sure the RDC would have papered the town with it by now.
What’s more, I have seen the numbers on the original Master Plan (from which BSL was just a feature) and those projections definitely did not show the riverfront paying for itself. They showed the riverfront going in a big deficit, and after 30 years still leaving the in debt for over $100 million.
The economic argument for BSL has always been no more sophisticated than this: “Build it and they will come.”
Show me the numbers. Until then, I still maintain that the RDC never came up with any such evaluation or projection. And even if it had, it would be radically different now that the big riverboats are out of business.
You know my email address.
By the way, I hope you will bookmark and keep reading my blog. You have inspired me to lay out some more truths, including the overarching truth that what RDC says to the public and City Council ranges from out-and-out deceptions to marketing b.s. (at best). I am all too familiar with marketing b.s., having been a product marketing manager myself.
Tommy, based on published rants around town, you are without a doubt one of the most uncivil people I know of in Memphis.
“Does it even dawn on people like you that this is 2010 and Memphis is losing citizens and ground to other cities left and right?”
I’ve had the opportunity to live in some of the most desirable communities in the country and folks weren’t attracted to them because they had spent millions of dollars on concrete and steel. They are attractive because families can live healthy, intellectually and culturally rewarding lives.
Memphis has some serious problems and a shortage of cash. If money is to be set aside for public improvements, it should be educational and recreational–a simple trail connecting Harbor Town to the Metal Museum would be far cheaper and so much more beneficial than BSL.
RDC needs to fix the spalling concrete on the Model Mississippi and hose the silt off the cobblestones before we give them anymore money to build new things.
And somehow, Tom, I don’t think you’d take such a condescending tone with me face to face. It will be most entertaining if you do.
Mike:
Well, it sure sounds like you’re calling us a liar and that you have done it for days. 🙂
The study showing that BSL pays for itself says that it produces $1.8 million in new tax revenue yearly and supports 683 jobs. The money to finish it would be the equivalent of about $500,000 a year in debt service and if Build America Bonds were used, it could probably be substantially less.
Scott:
We welcome your comments, we appreciate your joining in, and we hope you will continue to share your opinions with us.
We hope you read our earlier post about Mud Island: http://www.smartcitymemphis.com/2009/07/memphis-the-good-the-bad-and-the-in-between/