5 Years at the Fairgrounds
On the grounds that were fair, I like the idea of Pretty Decent Lawn that will create a green axis connecting the old Fairgrounds gates* with the Liberty Bowl.
I can't help myself.
Yet the larger Fairgrounds project is not only unbuilt, but under-demolished, under-visualized and incredibly under-imagined.
By fall 2010, we'll have the Lawn, the Liberty Bowl, parking and trees, the latter 3 of which we've already had for 40 years.
But we still don't know whether we'll keep the Coliseum, the Arena (along the axis of the Lawn), the Creative Center, the Pipkin Building, or what we'll do with all the empty space we will have even if we don't demolish any of those structures.
I don't think I'm just being an itinerant civic butthead to say that after 5 years of public meetings, public input, studies, committees, RFPs, ignored RFPs, demolitions, closings and evictions that we would should have a much stronger sense of what the Fairgrounds will become.
I know that large tracts of empty real estate render Memphis catatonic before their highest-and-bestest radioactive mega-value, but 5 years and counting and waiting should be a sign that we need another way to rebuild our city.
* In this rendering (the only one I've seen), the present gates don't appear. I don't know what to make of that except to say that I can't believe Fairgrounds nudgers and shruggers would have such bad taste as to not use them.
Labels: architecture, fairgrounds, Mid-South Fair, midtown, urban design, urban planning
posted by gatesofmemphis at 8:10 AM
4 Comments:
I can't believe Fairgrounds nudgers and shruggers would have such bad taste
Almost everything about the project boggles my mind, so don't tempt fate by giving credit to the "nudgers and shruggers" for any sense of design.
Brad, I think it's a possibility they'll stay mainly because they're already perfectly lined up on the axis.
But construction churn, which requires demolition of usable structures, is a major development anti-pattern here so they could knock them over just to put up something else. Maybe the abstracted gateway forms of an anturban office park entrance.
Another rendering. A bit more tasteful, in my opinion, but still not utilizing the space to its greatest potential. A couple of gates there, though certainly quite a bit more diminutive in stature compared to the originals.
http://www.memphistn.gov/images/GreatSpacePh1.jpg
I wish our leaders coould generate a land-use strategy based upon public input and forethought, rather than chucking an idea into the hat and making sure it's complete by the start of a football season.
I was told by Councilman Bill Boyd that "the stonework will be retained and used at the E. Pkwy entrance according to the City co-ordinator of the overall redevelopment of the FG and the architects."
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