Random Thoughts Relating to the Pyramid

• While it's not my dream use, the Bass Pro development is a use that is a re-use, and that is good. At the very worst, Bass Pro will be a placeholder for great future uses that will happen if we don't do something stupid in the meantime.


• Some people think that demolition is to Memphis as magic beans were to Jack. In fact, demolition is to Memphis as the Luftwaffe was to Guernica.


• The Pyramid is a monument that we've been afraid to treat as a monument. Consequently, we've confused the means -- an arena -- with the end -- a monument. So confused, we think it has no use if it's not an arena.
  
  Thinking about it as a monument -- have we ever tried giving it to the National Park Service?
  


• Many people have noted the recent article about the Pyramid in the New York Times. Dan Barry's biblicalesque narrative of wandering in the Memphis desert captures well our local variants of the sacred and the profane -- the pompous and the goofy. Plus he called the Pyramid "glorious."


• From another NYT article:
  

  After a century of flirting with its version of the Great Pyramid of Cheops along the Nile at the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, pyramid power is coming to the home of Beale Street blues and Elvis Presley.
  
  The structure, which is expected to take two years to complete, is designed as a homage to the Egyptian namesake of Memphis and an eccentric coming-of-age monument.

  Forget coming-of-age, remember eccentric.


• The Pyramid is to monumental architecture as the Jungle Room is to interior decorating.


• The Pyramid was an acquired taste for me.


• The Pyramid is an ironic mullet. The world's largest ironic mullet.

Previous random thoughts on the Pyramid.

Is Mud Island Part of the Promenade?

Roy Harrover thinks it is. The architect of Mud Island, the Memphis College of Art and Memphis International Airport says so in a letter to today's Commercial Appeal:

Before expressing firm opinions on the Mud Island River Park inclusion in the Greg Ericson proposal, city officials and representatives should realize that the park cannot be used for commercial purposes.

The park property north of Union was added legally by accretion to the Promenade, which lies between Front Street and the Mississippi River. This open-space promenade was dedicated to the citizens of Memphis by the city's founders.

Roy Harrover

Memphis

(links mine)

Startling, at least for me.

Pyramid Interlude

I want at least 2 things from any Pyramid development:

1. that we preserve it.
   


2. that we build no more surface parking lots around it.
   
   Better would be the restoration of the empty spaces with real buildings and businesses and residences.

Ericson's plan hasn't excited me, but I don't see anything destructive in it so it hasn't really bothered me either.

I do have a few concerns:

1. they want to buy the Pyramid.
   
   What protection will we have that, if the money runs out halfway through construction, if the business fails 10 years from now, that they won't plead poverty and try to tear it down, or sell it to someone who will?
   
   We should give them a free easement with the proviso that should they fail, or tire of the business, the building returns to the City and County. If they're planning on making money from the businesses they've proposed rather than the underlying real estate, then I don't see why this would be a problem.
   


2. They want to call (rename?) Mud Island "Harbor Island." Not a good sign. Boring.
   
   Mud sounds good, looks good. Harbor Island sounds like a condo development in Destin. Really boring.
   
   Embrace the River.
   
   On the other hand, the name's bland, but not destructive. I can still call it Mud Island if I want to.
   
   Or...we could call it Ile de Boue, and split the difference.
   


3. Ericson wants to build an amphitheatre at the southern tip of Ile de Boue. That tip is also Skatepark Memphis' preferred location. The skatepark is the one major RDC project that has few detractors and many vocal supporters. And we already have an amphitheatre, a 100 yards away. So it risks pushing aside a great idea for an idea that already exists, a 100 yards away.
   

While it doesn't look optimal, Ericson's use could be a placeholder for a more visionary time.

For a glimpse of that time, check out Fearlessvk's Museo de Southern Gothic, or Carol Coletta's article on Smart City (very similar to my take, which came later) or Del Gill's Mausoleum for a King.

Or forget everything I've said and watch an early version of the riverfront I'm building (incomplete with unfinished Tennessee Brewery to the right).

Save Us Whit Bissell!

Sometimes, when our civic rulers lay out their plans to make Memphis a world-class impero-authoritarian uglytown, I think about changing my avatar.

What to do with the Pyramid, Idea #752 1/2

It's half an idea because I'm appropriating someone else's really good idea and removing the bad piece.

Smart City Memphis wrote a post a few months ago called "The Mid-South Fair Can't Just Be Fair Any More", in which they offhandedly suggested moving the Fair from the Fairgrounds to the Pyramid grounds. That's the really good part. The not so good part: Smart City wants to demolish the Pyramid to provide the grounds.

Demolish? Et tu, Smart City?

Anyway, my half of the idea is to give the Mid-South Fair a permanent easement to the Pyramid with the following conditions:

• they can't sell it.
• they can't demolish it.
• they can't modify the exterior without approval of the Landmarks Commission.
• they can use it to provide space for their exhibits and entertainment during the Fair and auditorium space for non-profit institutions and educational institutions the rest of the year. That's it. The Sege will have to find alternate arrangements.

We will engrave this agreement on Rameses chest so there will be no misplacing the document.

Why is this a brilliant half an idea?

Lots of space: the parking lots below Front Street are massive and could hold much if not all the midway that the Fairgrounds provided. The meeting rooms inside the Pyramid could provide all the exhibit space provided by multiple Fairground buildings. And the main auditorium would provide the space once given by the Coliseum. What about the livestock? There might even be space in the Pyramid for them.

Good space: the sunken parking lots below Front provide barriers between inside the Fair and out. On the west there are the floodwalls; on the south, a parking garage; on the east, the wall of Front Street; on the north, the Pyramid and Auction Street Bridge.

Parking (aka Our Purpose): because the trolley goes right by the sunken parking lot, you can park anywhere Downtown and take the trolley directly to the front entrance of the Fair. Better than Disneyland! Kids will love it. I will love it.

Ease of travel: Downtown is easier to get to than the Agricenter and the Fairgrounds from most starting points (except Cordova/Germantown and Midtown respectively), including East Shelby County and Fayette County, Millington and Tipton County, east Arkansas, and northern Mississippi.

Free advertising to a captive audience: When you were a kid, did you ever see a roadside fair and scream until your parents got off the highway? I did. We'll supersize that family ritual by putting the Fair next to an interstate bridge.

New customers for Downtown -- kids: Their parents may be afeared for their lives, but kids want to go to the Fair! And the memories Downtown will create -- of riding the trolley, going in the Pyramid, riding the rides with the pointy monolith hovering above them, seeing the Missisippi at dusk from a ferris wheel while eating a fried twinkie -- will be with them happily for the rest of their lives.

The downside:

It doesn't do anything about the debt: We'd still have that. But guess what? We have that now. In fact, most of the other ideas floated for the Pyramid require additional public funding, on the hope that we would see increased tax revenue from the new use. So this would save us money.

The structure and land will lie fallow most of the year (ala, the Fairgrounds): This is sort of true. The Pyramid could still operate for college and high school graduations and for non-profit events (if these aren't in violation of Memphis' agreement with the Grizzlies). But the rest of the time it wouldn't be doing anything except as an office for the Mid-South Fair. However, unlike the Fairgrounds, the parking lots below Front are built under interstate exits and entrances and bridges and probably couldn't be put to many other productive uses without removing the entrances and exits and bridges.

The new use might encourage the "building" of more surface parking lots in the Pinch District: Maybe, but the underuse of it along with the almost certain increase in property values will make this less likely.

The Pyramid is a White Elephant; this idea does nothing about that: Pyramids are White Elephants. Through human history, pyramids have served three main purposes: burial, weird religious rituals, and basketball. When the Ancients lost basketball, they had to go find some dead guy or live virgin.

We've got the Mid-South Fair.