While we are disappointed in the poor design decisions that have marked Beale Street Landing as of late, we want to make it clear that we aren’t interested in joining those who look for any reason to dismiss and vilify the project in its entirety (none of these applies to the commenters to our recent post and their opinions should be listened to by RDC officials). From our point of view, those who call it a “boat dock” simply demonstrate a lack of understanding about what makes cities work, because Beale Street Landing creates a center of gravity, a sense of arrival, a hub of activity that has long been needed for our riverfront to keep pace with the major investments being made by smart cities around the world in their own riverfronts.
It also becomes a bookend to the redevelopment of The Pyramid into a Bass Pro Shops store and attraction (although we’ve noticed that some of the same people who call Beale Street Landing a boat dock call The Pyramid a “bait shop,” illustrating again the tendency to opt for cleverness over reality). The riverfront has needed more vibrancy and activity for decades, and these two elements are opportunities to achieve that. It was in recognition of this fact that Memphis Mayor A C Wharton brought Jeff Speck to Memphis to provide him with recommendations for maximizing the impact of these two projects.
We wish these poor design decisions hadn’t been made, as we pointed out in Monday’s post, but Beale Street Landing is still needed and our opinion has not changed on that fact since we first wrote about in June 9, 2006. Here’s that post:
Located as we are near the foot of Union Avenue, we have a front row seat as witnesses for the consternation and confusion felt by visitors when they wander down from the Peabody Hotel and nearby restaurants to experience the nation’s mightiest river.
Down the hill they walk, every day, excited and expectant for their first view of Old Man River. And yet, when they arrive, their attention on the river is short-lived. Almost immediately, they look up and down the riverfront for the grand public promenade that they assume exists there somewhere. Normally, they wander aimlessly along the riverwalk, unable to even see a place where they can buy ice cream or a soft drink.
That’s why we were so pleased when Memphis City Council approved $4.8 million to get Beale Street Landing under way. Finally, our local equivalent of Everest will have the great public place that it deserves. More importantly, we will have the linkage that connects our riverfront to our downtown and turns the city around so that it faces the water.
It sometimes seems that anything the Riverfront Development Corporation touches is immediately opposed by some people, but surely Beale Street Landing is something all of us can support. That’s because the benefits of the project touch so many needs that we have. Best of all, it would be a direct attack on the image of Memphis as a slow-moving, sleepy river town.
If there is one thing that we can do downtown that would make it more successful, it is to make it more vibrant. Beale Street Landing is a major step in the right direction with its modern docking facility, its grand civic plaza, and its dramatic overlook and sense of arrival.
The $29 million ($10 million from federal and state funds), five-acre project would be located at the terminus of legendary Beale Street, stitching together downtown’s two dominant legends into a single fabric. The consensus that emerged from the public meetings for the Riverfront Master Plan was that Beale Street Landing needs to be a top priority, and that sense of urgency was endorsed by the Urban Land Institute in its subsequent review.
The design for Beale Street Landing was chosen from 170 submissions in our community’s first international design competition. Managed by the UrbanArt Commission, Memphis Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the RDC, the jury selected Buenos Aires architects Javier Rivarola, Gustavo Trosman and Richardo Norton.
As designed, the project features a number of landscaped “pods” that float over the riverfront, connected by pedestrian bridges and joined to a docking area for the large riverboats that moor here almost weekly and smaller boats that populate the river. The docking area in particular responds to a need for downtown, where we haven’t moved too far away from the old days when a riverboat was tied to a tree on the bluffs.
Of course, in the end, Beale Street Landing shouldn’t be built for visitors or tour boats. It should be built for those of us who live here, answering the need for the spectacular civic space that weaves together the urban fabric and using the most iconic asset of our past to create a new iconic image for the future.
Most encouraging of all is that the project turns our attention to the design details of our city, a subject too often neglected on our civic agenda. Perhaps, just perhaps, Beale Street Landing could even be inspiration for a new design ethos for Memphis.
If we have learned anything from the lessons of other cities, it is that places are complex organisms made up of interrelated activities; that projects work best when they connect to a city’s unique character, and most of all, they are about creating a place, not a plan.
Great cities around the world are reclaiming their riverfronts and capitalizing in powerful ways on the bonds between their people and their rivers. No city has more impressive ingredients to work with than Memphis, and Beale Street Landing is the precisely the kind of project that indicates to us what our real potential is.
While it is tempting to justify the project on the basis of economic impact, that would really miss the point. Most of all, grand public spaces like this make cities more livable, they are the physical embodiment of what cities are all about and they create a sense of place like nothing else.
That’s why Beale Street Landing is anything but a frill. It is a core investment in the kind of vibrant, appealing, connected, grand public spaces that we need. After all, isn’t beauty the most important public service of all?
SCM-
I agree that Beale Street Landing is still needed and no one is more disappointed than myself where the impact of value engineering on the original proposal is concerned. However, at some point I do believe that a project can become so twisted and misconstrued in an effort to wring every last penny out of it, that the original intent may be lost and mediocrity comes to characterize the results. Beale Street Landing was supposed to be a great civic space, a place for locals to connect with this city’s original reason for being, a place for visitors to witness and appreciate the special relationship our community has with the Mississippi and a gateway for travel on the river itself. In an effort to reduce costs, the original 3 needs were deemed more and more subservient to the latter justification. The project has become increasingly more focused on its role as a floating dock and less focused on the fact that it will create the physical terminus of the city’s most famous street at its most famous natural feature. The project has continued to shave the amount and quality of usable recreation space and associated amenities in favor of the dock. No doubt, the dock itself is a critical component. After all, it is the only reason BSL will be completed to the extent we can expect in that it serves as the “home port” for the American Queen. Therein lies the very temptation that regulated the public space component of the landing to second rate status. There was an opportunity to justify the project by directly correlating job growth to the endeavor. Instead of selling the landing first and foremost as perhaps the most important and necessary public space improvement in this city’s history, one which would have the added benefit of serving all sorts of commercial watercraft going into the future, the reverse occurred. We were building a landing, that had identifiable jobs directly attached to it that would also include some public space pending additional funding. Half the purpose and original motivation for the project was all but forgotten and thus we are left with half the landing we were originally promised.
In this case, where we already have a riverfront defined by mediocrity, we are creating an additional space that does not raise the bar. We only have so many “we’ll get it right next time” opportunities where the riverfront is concerned.
Tom,
Bravo!
The problem was never with the project. In fact having an outside of Memphis jury decide on the best possible design was so mature so internationalist so cosmopolitan it gave me hope about the future of Memphis. The jury landed on a bold and beautiful design from a young firm from Buenos Aires. (remember, locals wondering why a local firm was not chosen?) The design element of a glass-covered roof is something we are seeing all over the globe in world capitals today. Just look at how lovely the California Academy of Sciences turned out.
My disappointment is when people disregard design to drive commerce. Lets face it the parking lot and the hideous elevator shaft was built to drive traffic into the restaurant.
We need a design board/ advocacy group not run by developers but a group that can help educate developers on the fact that wonderful design in and of itself can drive traffic.
The design for Beale Street Landing was world class, but its execution was very Memphis.
Google images search: California Academy of Sciences
We should have made it clear that we weren’t talking about any of the commenters to our earlier post about the disastrous design decisions at Beale Street Landing. No one here has done anything but make reasonable suggestions, which should be listened to at the RDC.
While we are on the topic of urban design in Memphis, why must the new proposed parking garage in Cooper-Young look like well a suburban parking garage. It pretends to look urban by coming to the egde of the sidewalk. But, as the business leaders in the area picked a parking lot company based in a small panhandle town well it looks like it belongs in Pensacola. I don’t understand if Archimania is the most celebrated collective of architects and designers in Memphis then why have a outside company design and build it? Why can’t we ever think big city , international, forward design in what is suposed to be the “heart of the arts” Midtown?????
Midtown Joe: Good questions.
Joe- I agree. The proposed CY garage missed the mark where its design is concerned. Considering the imposition the garage would make on the surrounding neighborhood, I would prefer it incorporate a living wall such as the one seen here:
http://www.ambius.com/green-walls/panel-systems/prowall/index.html
Urbanut, I went to ambius web site and the green wall might be solution to elevator shaft at Beale Street Landing and on walls of the 1950s Front Street parking garages. Very interesting. As you know CY garage does need to have real store fronts where pedestrians look into building windows/doors with life inside. Walking by an empty building or storage facility (cars, whatever) is uncomfortable and hurts life on the street.
FH-
I agree as long as they are real, rentable storefronts. However, I did take issue with the facade proposed for the garage in CY. The consultants would have helped their cause by showing precedent images as opposed to cut and paste design.
Oh…and wholeheartedly agree re: the BSL and Front St. garage. Great idea!
OK but who will say anything to the parties who make these design decisions? Without a common unified voice that advocates for good design in Midtown we will con’t to have second rate design delivered up by developers looking to save a buck.
Shouldn’t the Regional Design Center take the initiative to have a voice on this?
Yeah, one would think that would be the obvious representative of great urban design, but…
Where was the RDC when we were putting boxes on top of Beale St Landing ?