We hope that the Riverfront Development Corporation doesn’t get so caught up in the euphoria of finally opening Beale Street Landing that they think that it solves the lingering problems at Tom Lee Park.
One official recently said that the purpose of Beale Street Landing “was to fix Tom Lee Park,” but regardless of how much we have supported the construction of the riverfront’s new landmark to give us a sense of arrival at our most impressive natural resource, we are a long way from fixing Tom Lee Park, which on its best days more resembles flat pasture land than a city park.
RDC once again said that Tom Lee Park has remained untouched because of deference to Memphis in May International Festival, but in his recommendations to Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, consultant, architect, and author Jeff Speck said in his report that the festival had no problem with adding “rooms” to the park in order to break up its monotony, to give it more vitality, and to just make it more interesting.
“A number of plans have been made for beautifying Tom Lee Park, with the main strategy of using copses of trees and shrubs to divide the 4000-foot-long park into a series of ‘rooms,” Mr. Speck wrote. “People complain that all of these plans have been rejected by Memphis in May as conflicting with its needs, specifically the demands of its large concerts and barbecue cook-off. Conversations with Memphis in May suggest that such a reconfiguration of the park is not at all in conflict with its needs, but that prior design efforts have not included the organization as an active participant…there is good reason to expect that a new design effort that acknowledged Memphis in May as a key client could produce at satisfactory ‘outdoor rooms’ proposal.”
The Worst Riverfront Park
Three years ago, RDC President Benny Lendermon said Tom Lee Park was the worst riverfront park in America. We said he was right then and that opinion is still right today. Adding Beale Street Landing as an appendage to it and as a connector to what hopefully will be a transformed riverfront in only a few years, beginning with restoration of the cobblestones, does nothing to improve Tom Lee Park itself.
As much as anything, Beale Street Landing simply magnifies the lack of imagination that has been applied to the park since the days when it was expanded to its present 25 acres.
Mayor Wharton told us several months ago that he is dead serious about implementing the recommendations in the Speck report, and he’s proven it with his decision to turn Riverside Drive into a two-lane street. Hopefully, Tom Lee Park will be next on his to-do list, because Memphis has the opportunity to do something really special on the south end of its riverfront.
Turning Tom Lee Into A Park
Here’s our January 17, 2012, post about the park:
Tom Lee Park is a room with a view.
It’s a magnificent view but the room is empty.
That’s because Tom Lee Park is essentially a field without any activity beyond the month of May or anything to make it more than a spectacular backdrop for joggers or more than a photo op for visitors.
Expanding the Vision, Not Just the Size
When the park was expanded from a four and half acre sliver in 1991 to 25 acres, it was about engineering, not placemaking. Carol Coletta, president of ArtPlace, a national creative placemaking program, said: “Tom Lee Park was an incredible civic gift from the engineers, but from the perspective of the visitor experience, it’s a wholly inadequate park. The question is ‘how do we take that asset and make a park that lives up to its location?’”
It’s a question that’s come up in meetings about “how to build a world-class riverfront” being conducted for the Riverfront Development Corporation by Caissa Public Strategies. Paige Walkup of Caissa said: “People say they enjoy the space, but there’s so much to be done to heighten the experience. Someone said that after she’s taken her child to see the view once, she has more to do in her neighborhood park.”
About a decade ago, city traffic engineers kicked off a controversy when they proposed to widen and straighten Riverside Drive, once again underscoring the words of former National Endowment for the Arts Director of Design Jeff Speck who said three years ago that “Memphis should not leave the design of the city to traffic engineers.”
Creating a World-Class Park for a World-Class View
As part of the process to consider Riverside Drive’s options, Frank Ricks of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects prepared some rough drawings for three “rooms” at Tom Lee Park that responded to the needs of Memphis in May. “The park’s so long and linear and the three rooms could be created by trees or by an allee of trees lined up with the bluff stairway,” he said. “It’s a world-class view, but it’s barren. It needs something to give it context and human scale.”
Ricks’s ideas also included performing space on the hill on the south end of the park, ways to get closer to the river, and a better urban edge that removes the overgrowth of shrubs and plants at river’s edge. Coletta said the park could benefit from a variety of landscapes, paving materials, and uses.
Landscape architect Ritchie Smith, referring to the ways the land can be contoured to make it more interesting, said: “If you assume Memphis in May remains there, I wonder if there are gentle land forms that could be created to make the park more interesting.”
Adding More to Do
If the decision was made to move Memphis in May, he said a master plan should be developed. Ideas could involve more trees and plantings, improved restrooms and pavilion, places for children to play, picnicking, sand beach volleyball, zones around the Tom Lee sculpture and obelisk, all park benches on pads adjacent to the sidewalks, and sculptural and dramatic land forms “to break the park into distinct areas to create definition so it’s not an undifferentiated treeless lawn with a monotonous topography.”
Now, Tom Lee Park embodies two drawbacks frequently found in public spaces here. First, there are weak connections to other nearby civic places. In the case of Tom Lee Park, that means it needs strong connections to Beale Street Landing (connections weakened with the present parking lot for Beale Street Landing) and Mud Island. “You have to connect Tom Lee Park psychologically and physically to Beale Street Landing,” said Ricks.
Second, there is an absence of the kind of programming and activities that distinguish great public spaces. At Tom Lee Park, there is no programming beyond the three weekend events of Memphis in May.
Achieving the Potential
“It’s all or nothing,” said Coletta. “The park is programmed during Memphis in May, so today, we have a crescendo of activity and then we leave it as barren festival grounds for the rest of the year. I’m all for Memphis in May remaining downtown, but if it were mine to do, I’d move it out of Tom Lee Park. The park is one of our greatest untapped civic assets and it can be a great place.”
Today, Memphis squanders its potential to develop a park that lives up to one of the most spectacular river views in the U.S. Twenty years ago, Memphis backed into the decision for Tom Lee Park to be our festival grounds, but facing the opening of Beale Street Landing, it seems the perfect time to consider how Memphis can turn Tom Lee into a park.
This post was previously published in the December, 2011, issue of Memphis magazine.
SCM-Great post.
That any official stated their perception was that “purpose of Beale Street Landing ‘was to fix Tom Lee Park’” is mildly disturbing yet a somewhat predictable if not always logical assumption. It denotes a basic misunderstanding of the issues that leave the park underutilized most of the year. Instead of seeing BSL as a terminus to Beale at the river and/or a thoughtful design that knits Tom Lee to the Cobblestones, it is viewed by some as an activity generator that will somehow enliven the park 11 months out of the year. Tom Lee is not so much a park at present as it is a grass paved fairground- one with an exceptional view and location. To echo the comments made by those with far more experience than my own- great parks are not just big open spaces. They are thoughtfully created spaces where program and design proceed hand in hand.
I know there are obstacles to be overcome, but I still cannot help but mention that in many ways the space that is Mud Island River Park seems ideal for many of the activities associated with Memphis in May and yet it remains unused. The park features a permanent amphitheater and is accompanied by large open spaces (suitable for both a stage and/or tents) that are similar in nature to those found at Tom Lee and all a mere pedestrian bridge away.
Another great post from SCM.
I would suggest that we in Memphis have a difficult time understand a true urban park. As a city we owe so much to our recent agrarian roots that we think parks are merely cleared brush.
We have excellent examples of recently renewed urban parks including the spectacular Centennial Park in Chicago. They infuse their environments with art, they pay homage to great men and women of the international stage, they offer space for reflection and act as a refuge from “The City”.
Great parks are planned by great park designers and artists and are the products of men and women with great vision.
(We seemed more concerned with events like outdoor cook-offs and music festivals and thus place their importance ahead of all others. )
Peter, et al.
I think the difficulty in understanding the qualities and characteristics of a great urban park, let alone the need for one, range beyond the city’s cultural roots or identity and aligns much more closely with the need for “refuge”. Memphis largely lacks the type of population densities that would otherwise require that our open spaces serve a greater role than green placeholders. Millennium Park in Chicago , Central Park in NYC and Boston’s Common serve as much needed passive and active outdoor recreational space in locations where such space (be it private or public) is lacking. However, even in the case of Millennium Park, pedestrians are few and far between once east of Columbus Drive and the paths on the north side of Central Park can be eerily vacant on a weekday. Remove population density and park use drops significantly. The Trust for Public Land provides a list of the nation’s 110 (or so) most utilized parks. One only finds a few examples of parks outside of the northeast that are heavily utilized and DO NOT include major local, regional or national attractions or facilities such as zoos, major art museums, botanic gardens and/or sports facilities. All the above to say, even if Tom Lee were to benefit from a much needed redesign, it would not necessarily become a heavily utilized space without significant programming and/or the incorporation of new public facilities.
Of course, it is very much a chicken-egg situation. Density drives the demand and use of parks but without great parks and open space, how can we ever hope to foster a more urban lifestyle in Memphis? The logical path is to follow in the steps of the world’s great cities: build great parks first in order to encourage and support an urban community.
There is one big flaw. You make assumption that the RDC’s mission is to maintain and improve the Riverfront parks. (For that matter, you are assuming that RDC even cares about parks.) That is just a 14-year old myth (among others) that needs to die before we can move on.
The RDC was set up to privatize and commercially develop the Riverfront area. Managing the parks was only a sideline, a job it didn’t care about but would obviously have to take on while it carried out its real mission of commercial development. Take the chaff with the wheat.
Although that “management” job provided RDC with an excuse to bargain for a city subsidy in the early years (for which I’m sure it was grateful), it wasn’t expected to last forever. Once the millions of s.f. of mixed-use development came into the picture, the really big money would flow through the RDC’s coffers. Then, responsibility for management of the “public” spaces would be parceled out to the owners of the apartment, office, and shopping complexes – much the same way a homeowner is responsible for the sidewalk in front of her home. Park Management would no longer be RDC’s headache – or if it was they’d be able to charge hefty fees to those landlords.
And there’s the rub. The land bridge was a very bad idea and was killed in 2006, effectively gutting the Master Plan and leaving only BSL and part of the Promenade the RDC secretly hopes someday to turn into condos. For the foreseeable future, RDC would not be able to accomplish the mission it was set up for (and named for): commercial development.
That left RDC stuck with the management job, a task it neither wanted nor was designed to carry out. It also left RDC having to come back year after year for its annual city subsidy. But that’s the way public parks work: They cost money to run. The City Council can close its eyes, but it doesn’t change the truth.
While your ideas are probably good, you are asking the wrong people to carry them out. If you want public parks that are run properly and with vision, you need to unwind and close down the RDC. Then, turn the mission over to someone who wants the job, has that vision (and competence), and is structured to accomplish its mission.
And, as with all public parks, the City will still have to subsidize them. But at least it won’t have to pay for the wood-paneled top-floor offices and big executive salaries that commercial developers like to have.
No, I don’t “hate” the RDC. I’m just realistic about what their capabilities are, especially with jobs that weren’t their mission to begin with, and they are only doing now in hopes they can eventually find something to develop. (Look out, Promenade!)
Please consider reposting this comment on your main blog. I will be interested in your response.
By the way, here’s another myth-buster. Did you know that BSL was only necessary because of that landbridge? Killing the landbridge also killed the need for BSL – but then the RDC needed a bigger and better BSL to justify its own continued existence. Funny how that happens.
Michael Comer:
Your assessment makes sense. Mayor Wharton and City Council should pull back as members of the RDC Board so that views of the RDC contract can be at arms length and the correct organization structure for the riverfront can be put in place to implement a vision of riverfront development. Whose vision is the main issue?
Mike:
We didn’t say that the RDC should be in charge of Tom Lee Park. We advocate for a better park, but we haven’t suggested who should be in charge of making it happen.
As for the history of the RDC, we’ve had different views from you and we’ve plowed that ground thoroughly before so we won’t do it again here. As for Beale Street Landing, we continue to believe that it is an essential, long overdue iconic connection to the river. Finally, the riverfront has a sense of arrival and a source for more vibrancy. That said, cities across the U.S. are making much more significant investments in their waterfronts, and we need Beale Street Landing to be the beginning, not the end, of that.
As for the promenade and riverfront, we believe that Jeff Speck’s recommendations are based on what makes riverfronts successful, they are practical, and they should be implemented.
Thank you for your response, Tom.
Unfortunately, you avoided answering my central point. The fact is, RDC *has* control over and responsibility for the entire riverfront, including Tom Lee (and excluding the Pyramid). Is there any point in talking about a vision for the riverfront without answering the question of who will carry it out? Do you think that publishing essays on your blog will somehow convince the RDC’s unelected board and their passive-aggressive executives to see the light? Tom, meet FfOR, who spent more than a decade trying to do exactly that!
History aside, I was pointing out that the RDC is and has always been the wrong vehicle for maintaining and improving the Riverfront as a public space. It wasn’t intended for that. The RDC’s mission was always: to privatize and commercially develop the riverfront.
Even in that mission it has failed. Failure was predictable as early as 2004 when it turned out that there wasn’t enough commercially developable land to make the project work. The RDC would have to *create* several dozen acres of land (the land bridge) and take over even more public space (the Promenade). And even then, the City would have to cough up many tens of millions of dollars – hundreds of millions if you count the capital borrowing. The Master Plan’s flaws should have been a reality-check. But no, the Mayor and City Council looked at pretty pictures, then closed their eyes and adopted the Master Plan literally by acclamation.
No, Tom, what you need to do is write essays convincing the Mayor and City Council that the RDC is the main *obstacle* to a better Riverfront, and that Herenton’s grand experiment should finally be declared finis. When that happens, Memphis can finally move on.
I’ve said my piece. Thanks again for listening.
Mike:
Our blog post wasn’t about who should carry out the vision or set the vision. As we have written previously, Mayor Wharton asked Jeff Speck to read all the reports, studies, etc., for 25 years and to provide him with recommendations that would comprise the Wharton Administration’s vision. At any point that the mayor wants to invoke his authority to take over development of Tom Lee Park of anything else on the waterfront, it can be done. Also, as we have written before, the mayor has said that he is serious about implementing the Speck recommendations, so it seems to us that whether the RDC is in place or not, he is prepared to move ahead (as he did on the Riverside Drive changes in spite of concerns raised by RDC). We are confident that in the face of his leadership, the RDC, if it still has a contract with city government, will step out of the way if the mayor wants to improve the riverfront.
We know that Friends for our Riverfront has written often on these issues, but it long ago, lost its traction on public opinion because of the predictability of its positions. As we have said before, we think most of the public aren’t interested in the war between RDC and Friends. They just want something done.
As for the RDC, strictly speaking, it was not created to privatize and commercialize the riverfront. It was created to develop a plan for a 21st century waterfront that would make Memphis more in line with the other great cities making major investments there. After the plan was developed, it set out bold ambitions for the riverfront and added commercialization was needed to finance it. As Jeff Speck said in his presentation here, the plan was bold and impressive, but such plans have not been executed or been in vogue since the 19th century. For those reasons, it was clear that it would be next to impossible for the market to respond in a way that would allow for the plan to be executed.
We don’t consider that the RDC is the main obstacle to a magnificent waterfront. City Hall can remove that obstacle anytime it wants and already, the Speck report has laid out a different approach and image of the riverfront’s future. It’s more about city government adopting a vision and driving it. It’s bigger than whether the RDC is in place or not, and these days, it’s unclear if its contract will be renewed and if it is, if it’s only a temporary reprieve.
All that said, we repeat our support for executing fully the recommendations of the Speck plan for the riverfront.
Thanks for your comments.
The FfOR has been more Speck-like in its complaints about RDC. The FfOR seems to have a better solution for the cobblestones than RDC. Most of the conflict over cobblestones is technical engineering, which does not appeal to the public, but the vision of FfOR is for the cobblestones to be dock-able year round so that commercial ventures can thrive and create activity at the water’s edge. This couldn’t happen under RDC’s restoration specs.
So if you let FfOR handle the cobblestone restoration and the Mayor handles Speck’s recommendations himself, RDC’s money from City can go to Park Department to maintain the riverfront without high corporate salaries.
Speck’s concept for Tom Lee Park should be subjected to a design process involving public input. At this point Memphis in May has almost “squatters rights” to Tom Lee Park and its supporters are very powerful. Thus MIM would be directing the design process to make sure that May events can go on.