Standing at the foot of Union Avenue, two couples from Indiana are surveying the Mississippi River when one of the men said: “I’ve been here four times for Elvis Week. I absolutely love this city, but it doesn’t look much like it loves itself. Memphis could use lots of TLC.”
Their conversation then covered littered downtown streets, “bombed out” neighborhoods they drove through from Graceland to the riverfront, the long walk to the Tennessee Welcome Center to see the Elvis statue, and the absence of any place to buy a sandwich on the riverfront.
While the kneejerk reaction of a local is to defend Memphis, it’s getting hard to argue with them.
After all, the riverwalk where they are standing is too narrow, it feels isolated because of the four lanes of traffic they had to cross to get there, and its view overlooks deteriorating cobblestones.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was fond of saying that if you bought a gallon of milk in Memphis on your way to Little Rock on I-40, it would be buttermilk when you got there. Such was the sorry state of the interstate back then. The same can be said these days of patched up Riverside Drive and most streets into downtown, notably Union Avenue and South Main Street.
Design Problems Abound
If the Hoosiers had switched to the other side of the street, they would have encountered an obstacle course with traffic and riverwalk signs in the middle of the sidewalk as they walked north to the Tennessee Welcome Center, where the exhibits of the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau look like high school science fair projects with peeling labels and artless presentations.
To the south, the original architectural design of Beale Street Landing, notably the gentle, sloping roof that was its hallmark, has been devastated. Poor design decisions have produced a grossly oversized elevator and a graceless observation deck replete with railings and garish warning signs added to the roof. In addition, the seamless connection to Tom Lee Park envisioned in the beginning is now gone because of the new parking lot south of Beale Street Landing.
The park, like all of downtown and much of Memphis, is populated by “urban tombstones” – the large electrical transformers that Memphis Light, Gas & Water seems willing to put almost anywhere – in parks, on key street corners, on sidewalks, and in some of Memphis’ most photographed places.
Hopefully, the much-ballyhooed Main to Main project will bring downtown’s Main Street to an acceptable standard, but estimates for the $37 million project seem too low to get this done right and the primary focus seems to be on the pedestrian-bike boardwalk on Harahan Bridge. The boardwalk’s design has been described by the Downtown Memphis Commission as a “sophisticated” mesh barrier, but unfortunately, the design seems more inspired by a WWF cage match than by great pedestrian bridge boardwalks in other cities.
Lack of Love
All of this makes an out-of-towner’s comment that Memphis “doesn’t look like it loves itself” seem right on target.
Cancerous blight makes it questionable if some Memphis neighborhoods can be saved. On Main Street, trolley cars traverse a street that is an embarrassment, with too many broken gratings and patchwork plywood repairs to count.
The Unified Development Code, which took years to develop and promised a new and better future for neighborhoods, is being regularly dismantled and even overlay zoning districts are now irrelevant. Recent proof is a carwash in the medical district, and in the University District, a McDonald’s at the corner of Highland and Southern flies in the face of the overlay district developed with the residents there.
In those heady days when the UDC was being written, so many people were excited to be setting new priorities for the future and talking about concepts like small corner radii, scale, light standards, transect, walkability, and street trees. Those hopeful conversations today are merely distant memories as the UDC philosophy, not to mention its regulations, feel like a burst of imagination about the future ground down by the lack of ambition in the present.
A Main Marker
Simply put, one marker for a city that loves itself is in good urban design that at the least ties together a city with a cohesive sense of itself and that at its best produces an architectural pride and commitment that lift up a city and shape its pride and character through its insistence on architectural integrity, high-quality design, and quality control in execution.
It’s not that we don’t have examples of where this is done right. We have AutoZone Park and FedExForum, and if anything, those stand apart not just by the final product but by their founding principles. Where most Memphis projects (including Beale Street Landing) are about how cheaply they can be done, these two projects were about setting the design standards high and putting up the money to do it well.
Next: Building A City Rather Than Projects
This is a very well put article and summarizes one of the key problems I see in our city. Whenever someone back home (I’m from Wisconsin originally) asks me what I think about Memphis, I generally reply that “we are a city that doesn’t truly believe it deserves nice things.” It’s an attitude we have that manifests itself in projects like Beale Street Landing and Main to Main, as you reference in this article. My perception as long as I’ve been here is that we pay lip service to city improvement, but when it comes down to it we balk at the cost and the investment of time and human capital required to improve it. I want to love this city, but collectively this makes it very difficult for Memphians and transplants like myself to fall in love with a city that struggles to love itself.
It has often been said that “the devil is in the details”. Well, the devil certainly controls the design details in Memphis.
This well read blog, Charleston’s great Mayor Joe Riley, and famous urban designer Jeff Speck have all told Memphians to pay attention to the design details in the City, particularly in downtown. They have said that small projects when linked can add up to big and wonderful results; but we just don’t seem to listen.
The duality of the Downtown Commission and the Riverfront Development Corporation is just not working. A single entity, with attention to design details, needs to be in charge and the Mayor’s office needs to exert more oversight. My vote is to get rid of RDC and turn over control to the Downtown Commission with Friends for the Riverfront as the advisory consultant.
The first step is for the Mayor and any other elected official to resign from the RDC Board. Then he can advise the City Council without a conflict of interest.
I too am a transplanted Wisconsonite, having lived here since the early ’70’s. I LOVE this city with its architecture, heritage (both good and bad), the blues, the vibrancy. But it has changed so much over the years and not always for the best. First time visitors are usually surprised at what we have to offer. We might be the best kept secret of the South. Budget cuts and vision don’t have to be incompatible if the accountants and artists understand each other. In the meantime, self pride means doing the best with what we’ve got. The basic place to start is to clean and repair streets, enforce commercial and residential code violations, display accurate signage, etc.