Little Bitty Land

RETURN TO LITTLE BITTY LAND

*A festival for families in honor of Grandparents’ Day*

WHEN: Sunday, September 9, from noon until 7 p.m.

WHERE: Peabody Park, Higbee at Cooper St. in Cooper-Young

FREE food, games, lemonade! Sprinkler-park party!

Bubbles courtesy of IKE’S on Union Avenue!!!

*** Giant Inflatable Waterslide, Moonbounce, and
Dunking Booth courtesy of Event Outfitters, LLC ***

MUSIC in the Vintage Gazebo by:

Miss “T” White
Audra Brown
Greg Hisky
The Puppy Dawgs
Those Darlin’s

Also: Native American Dancing, Clog Dancing, and more!

Brought to you by members of Save Libertyland!, a local non-profit organization working to restore Memphis’s historic parks and bring fun to families and children throughout the Mid-South.

For information, contact Denise Parkinson, 276-0346

Thoughts and Notes on a Fairgrounds Redevelopment Meeting

which was held at CBU last Tuesday night.

1. The Mayor's vision for a new stadium is going to swallow the redevelopment's good will and ideas. There was a lot of emotion, if not anger, directed at the idea during the meeting, using up maybe 75% of the Q&A, with 80-90% of the audience against a new stadium.
   
   Despite the acrimony, City Chief Financial Officer Robert Lipscomb graciously went out of his way to introduce the widow of William H. Gaskill (the architect of the present Liberty Bowl) even though she is an opponent of a new stadium.
   


2. Fairview Junior High, building and institution, seems secure thanks to the City School's decision to renovate it. It does give me pause that the magnificent Fairview would otherwise be expendable in a redevelopment plan that uses adjectives like best and highest and historic.
   
   A save is a save, but beware if MCS change their mind.
   


3. The Salvation Army has already begun designing the Kroc Center at the Fairgrounds, and with it a troubling detail: Kroc Center's parking lot will front East Parkway. Although there will be a wall, the development will point a surface parking lot toward East Parkway. East Parkway!
   
   This inaugural development will set the tone for the rest of the Fairgrounds. If it stinks -- if it's ugly, or suburban, or completely out of character for the area -- it could be off to the races for bottom-feeding real-estate developers. For 30 years crappy developers and their henchman will say "it's built to the standard set by the Kroc Center". On the other hand, if it's a high quality design and use of space, it will be bottom-feeder repellent, and an inspiration to everyone else.
   
   Yet there are no architectural guidelines or restrictions to guide it. The architectural gurus for the fairgrounds haven't even seen the Kroc Center plans.
   
   Despite this substantial visual void, 2 different citizens knew what they wanted: they asked the redevelopment committee to recreate the lost Shelby County Building (see below). Here, here!
   


4. County Commissioner and Save Libertyland member Steve Mulroy made an strong plea for the redevelopment committee to incorporate the Carousel and the Zippin Pippin in the plans. He pointed out Coney Island's redevelopment had made room for the Cyclone.
   


5. The meeting concluded as all our meetings should -- with visions of fantastic Memphis. Sonny Bauman, sports and hotel entrepeneur, presented William Gaskill's circa 1970s vision for a domed Liberty Bowl.
   
   

The redevelopment committee is going to have 2 more public meetings. When I get the dates I'll pass them along.

By the way, on Wednesday a City Council committee voted against paying for a feasibility study for the new stadium. This has to be a major victory for new stadium opponents.

Updates: for a much more coherent view of the meeting, go to Memphis Magnet.

Also, the Mayor's office appears to be fighting back against the unfunding of the feasibility study. Before the ADA study for the stadium is complete, the city architect (can you believe we have one? Or perhaps it proves my point here) is already telling what the results are going to be.

Save Memphis: Denise Parkinson runs

Denise Parkinson, of Save Libertyland, is running for City Council District 5, now held by Carol Chumney.

Denise Parkinson for City Council

Please join me, my family and friends as I announce my candidacy for City Council. During our park preservation efforts over the past year and a half, I have met many people who see the potential for Memphis to grow in a positive direction. Spring is the season of Hope!

When: Sunday, March 18, at 4 p.m.

Where: Quetzal, located in Marshall Arts District at 664 Union Ave.

What: Denise Parkinson for City Council, campaign kick-off

Hosted by Stephanie Charbonnet, treasurer

Let's Put Memphis First!

for more info, call 276-0346

The Movement Called Save Libertyland

It's amazing the amount of work the group called Save Libertyland have produced. They have:

• saved the Carousel, a 100-year old treasure of Memphis that the Mid-South Fair would have sold if not for Save Libertyland.
• produced all of these videos.
• produced all of these events.
• created a blog whose exhaustive communication puts the non-profits and yes-profits in Memphis, and their professional communications staff, to shame.
• produced 2 citizen-politicians, Steve Mulroy and Denise Parkinson.
• And last but not least, this movie by Memphis auteur John Michael McCarthy.

And that's all I can think of. There's almost certainly more.

For its part the City of Memphis has

• gutted Libertyland -- in other words, destroyed.
• paid a consultant $27,000 to produce this report [pdf!] and some architectural illustrations. The report is interesting and is neutral on the issue of Libertyland (it is one of the possible uses). However, I don't think the City has implemented a single idea in the report.
  

Outside of that, they haven't built, or conceptualized, or visualized anything, except maybe in their own head. Even a new stadium, a $150 million dollar undertaking at the least, has almost no specifics or visuals attached to it.

Citizens without much money have done much. Politicians and bureaucrats with much money and much power have done little -- nothing! And I'm being charitable because destruction is less than nothing.

I don't think Save Libertyland is an isolated phenomenon. I think they're the Memphis vanguard of a movement. It's a movement that an MIT conference, Beyond Broadcast 2007, just finished addressing. The conference's hypothesis, that the skills that emerge in the course of participating in pop culture can become powerful forces when translated into tools of civic engagement is a template for Save Libertyland, 'cept SL predates that hypothesis.

Long Live Libertyland!