Saved our Shell!

It looks official [pdf alert]. On September 5, the Memphis City Council approved the

RESOLUTION REQUESTING CITY COUNCIL APPROVAL OF THE MANAGEMENT AND RENOVATION AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE CITY OF MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, THROUGH ITS DIVISION OF PARK SERVICES AND THE FRIENDS OF THE LEVITT PAVILION MEMPHIS, INC., A TENNESSEE 501 (C) (3) NON PROFIT CORPORATION, FOR THE MANAGEMENT AND RENOVATION OF THE RAOUL WALLENBURG SHELL IN OVERTON PARK. THE INITIAL TERM OF THE AGREEMENT IS TO BE TWENTY-FIVE (25) YEARS.

(Their caps, not mine).

Many thank yous and congratulations should go to the Friends of Levitt Pavilon Memphis.

Anything other than preservation of the Shell would have made a lie of our commitment to Elvis' legacy. I will move the Shell to the preserved side of the Elvis' demolition tour.

A Tale of Two Coopers; or, P*rk*ng L*ts Suck!

Left unchecked, parking lots are like syphillis to architecture and commerce.

Need proof?

Overton Square.

Here's a Google eye view of Overton Square's parking lots (marked in red):


Note especially the massive block-square surface on the bottom. Since the founding of Overton Square in the early 1970's, the buildings in this block have been demolished, the trees and vegetation removed, and swallowed by a viral parking lot. The only petroleum-free signs of life are a couple of trees on the west corners.

With that much parking, Overton Square should be about the most convenient place in Midtown to shop. And by conventional wisdom, convenient should be attractive to customers. Yet, look at this picture taken around 7 p.m. last Saturday night:



On a nice sunny Saturday evening, the lot is barely a third full. And look at these pictures:





I think at least half of Overton Square is empty. As that parking lot and others in the district have expanded, the vitality of the place has shrunk. Others have noticed the area's decline as well.

Need a counter-proof?

Cooper-Young.

Cooper-Young is practically the twin of Overton Square: they share a common street, architectural style and demographic. But take a look at Cooper Young's parking distribution:


Cooper-Young has no massive parking lots. And the small lots it does have are few. Conventional wisdom says: they need more parking! Yet Cooper-Young is not only well rented with lots of new businesses, it has an energy that Overton Square probably hasn't had in 30 years, when it started demolishing everything it could get its hands on.

C-Y's energy isn't due just to great businesses (which Overton Square also has plenty of) but a visual and physical texture that creates, reinforces and retains the energy, rather than destroying it with long stretches of nothing. It has a texture not overgrown with invasive parking lots.

For Overton Square to get back its energy, it has to demolish those parking lots and start paving them with trees and beautiful buildings.

Land Use and Laser Beams

I went down to City Council chambers yesterday afternoon for a Memphis and Shelby County Land Use Control Board public meeting. Besides my interest in the Medical Center Zoning Overlay and the One Beale Project, I figured I'd get a slightly interesting, mostly boring, civics lesson in zoning.

But when this lady steps to the microphone, nominally in opposition to the overlay, and announces "I'm Jon Benet Ramsey. And the President of the United States", I knew I better turn on my camera.



Sometimes Memphis' beauty is cultivated; othertimes, it's like a mushroom growing on bullshit.

I offer this video in honor of the River City Mud Bugle, the newly-minted and much-anticipated political news blog of autoegocrat. The Mud Bugle's inaugural post is an expose of sleaze by proxy in Tennessee's Ninth Congressional District.

Upcoming Land Use meeting

There will be a Memphis Shelby County Land Use Control Board meeting on Thursday. Among other agenda items they will be lookin' at the zoning overlay for the Medical Center, and "the Special exception to permit a 30-story Mixed-Use Development" that the Carlisle Corporation wants to build at Number One Beale. Both of these items will be during the afternoon session.

Details:

Location:
Memphis City Hall
125 North Mid America Mall
Memphis, Tennessee 38103-2084 (901) 576-6619

Schedule:
Thursday, September 14, 2006
8:30 A.M. Executive Session, Conference Room “A”, 4th Floor
10:00 A.M. Morning Public Session, City Council Chambers, Lobby
12:00 Noon Lunch
1:00 P.M. Afternoon Public Session, City Council Chambers, Lobby

Even more details here [pdf alert].

A little wonkish, yes, but I might attend the afternoon session.

Legend(s) of the Pyramid

I think the Pyramid's best days are to come.

As much as we'd like to think of it as a financial problem, a governmental mistake, it's part of Memphis' visual subconscious. And it deserves a legend. The Pyramid is half-finished. It's half-finished because ... we ran out of money. We ran out of money because...well, we didn't have enough money. That's all the legend I got for now, although I'll take suggestions. But henceforth, I'll refer to it as the half-finished Pyramid.

We have 2 choices with the half-finished Pyramid.

1. Intentionally let it fall into ruin. Like all good ruins, maintain it enough to keep it from collapsing, but that's all. Let vines and other vegetation grow up its sides. Let Memphis-style decay wash away the original banal veneer. Perhaps some earthquake-induced liquefaction will give it a perverse and mysterious angle. The haunted half-finished Pyramid will be striking.
   
2. Finish it. Find an architect with taste and vision to complete it. Anything can be inside it -- Bass Pro Shop, movie production facilities, Stalin and Marcos' Tomb of Doom, Jolly Royal Furniture -- but the outside is ours. See the angles that people view it from -- from the bridges, off the River, Tom Lee Park, the Peabody, the Madison Hotel, down North Parkway -- and finish the exterior in a grand and iconic manner.

The problem with 1, although cheap, is that a guy with a bulldozer will show up and start talking about how it would be cheaper to just tear it down. They'd blame asbestos, or getting it up to code, or insurance, or the costs of wasting a good bulldozer.

The problem with 2, is that it will take money, which is of course what we ran out of because...[insert legend here].

16 years ago, we didn't need a place for the University of Memphis to play basketball, we didn't need a place for concerts. 16 years ago, we wanted an icon. We have that icon. Let's embrace it and make it more ... iconic.

A Hero's Story

The story of Tom Lee is a great story, but I think it's extra special for children. It has bravery and heroism, the Mississippi River, steamboats, and simplicity of means -- Lee's fishing skiff, the "Zev". I particularly like the "Zev" because it's a reminder that the instruments of greatness are within our grasps -- our backyards, our kitchens, our schools, our books, our minds.

AIA Chalk Art Festival

I headed down to this event today, bought some tasty coffee from Cafe Francisco at their booth in the Memphis Farmers Market, and took some pictures of the excellent chalk art.

I didn't stay to see the winners, but the interesting thing to me is this: the Pyramid was in at least 6 of the drawings I saw, although it's considered damaged goods to many around here. Empty or not, it's a Memphis icon. Maybe not the put-us-on-the-proverbial-map, backwater-no-mo Memphis icon we were sold 16 years ago. But it's an icon in spite of its utility.