Memphis Builds a Hole

My long-simmering, near burnt thoughts on August's stunningly lopsided 10-2 City Council vote, clearing at least the political path for CVS to demolish the Union Avenue Methodist Church:

• The vote's a template for future defeats that advocates for a better built Memphis can't ignore. Organizational unity, education of both leaders and citizens, and political advocacy for both candidates and systematic change are important to avoid a thousand defeats and an uglier, less livable Memphis.

• A big mistake for the built community would be to try and pin the defeat on Memphis Heritage. In voting for the CVS anti-design, The Council ignored the Office of Planning and Development, the Land Use Control Board, the Memphis Regional Design Center, the Commercial Appeal, the Central Gardens Neighborhood Association, Playhouse on the Square, the Midtown Redevelopment Corporation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the district's councilmen, Jim Strickland and Shea Flinn, and Memphis Heritage. It was a blow for preservation, smart growth, urbanism, walkability, planning and Memphis' built environment.

• Urbanists can separate themselves from preservationists in fast growing cities. In Memphis, preservation is a necessary tool of urbanism. We can say, "I don't care about saving that building, I care about good design", but as a practical matter 9 out of 10 people who don't care about re-using a good building also won't care about good urban design.

• I heard someone say that the defeat was due to poor lobbying by the opponents of the CVS design. I don't know enough about political campaigns to know the truth to this, but it does scare me that our Council could be so lightly principled that some special political ingredient -- beyond the public pleas of the staff, boards and associations mentioned above -- could have turned a 10-2 defeat into a 7-5 victory. Anyway, even if extra special lobbying could have made a difference, it strikes me as a very expensive, unsustainable, politically exhausting way to move toward a better built Memphis. A thousand city-wide mobilizations for a thousand buildings and designs that start at the bottom of a 10-2 hole won't work.

• The Council made it clear in their words and horsetrading what they would do the next month -- gut the Midtown Overlay.

• I don't think the Councilpeople who voted for CVS are clueless or idiots or [insert your insult here], but I do believe that the issues of smart growth, walkability, good design, much, much less preservation, have made little inroad into our city's political leadership. At this point, the great majority of our Council don't care. Their apathy is a core smart growth problem in Memphis.

• City Council meetings are like a game show hosted by the Great and Mighty Oz. Citizens stand below the raised, intimidating dais of the Council and are given a ticking 2 minutes to speak. Instead of a screamed "Silence!" a buzzer goes off when the speaker's minutes are up.

• Near the end of the debate, Councilman Bill Boyd let the crowd in on a dirty little secret. Numbers of supporters or opponents in City Council chambers don't sway their vote. Perhaps this where the off-the-clock lobbying comes in and citizen advocacy gets the buzzer.

• If you need political support for regression in Memphis, get yourself a spokeschristian. Very effective.

Saving the Union Avenue Methodist Church

Memphis Heritage is holding a meeting tomorrow, Thursday, May 27th, at 6 p.m. at their headquarters at 2282 Madison, to discuss the possible sale and demolition of the Union Avenue Methodist Church by pharmacy chain CVS. The church, built in 1923 and listed on the National Register, anchors the southwest corner of Cooper and Union, diagonally across from Playhouse on the Square's beautiful new theater.

Random notes:

• There's precedent for CVS to preserve a historic building due to public outcry -- the Scherer Building in Chicago. In fact, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has a complete initiative dedicated to the issue of chain drug stores destroying historic buildings.
  


• If you don't think the church is that great, worth preserving, then advocate for a quality new urban design that complements Playhouse, rather than ignores it. CVS also has precedents for that.
  Just saying "tear it down!" is to cede to the default -- anturban blight. Progress in Memphis' built environment is to be fought for, never assumed.
  


• We need to stop bashing Germantown Parkway to make points about Union Avenue. Let's stick closer to home and talk about the Medical Center from I-240 west to Dunlap. Devastated by hordes of parking lots built as enticement to commuters who didn't want to be there, and eventually weren't, the result is arguably the worst commercial strip in all of Memphis
  


• Crappy development threatens Playhouse on the Square's investment of money and vision in that spot of Memphis. Especially a crappy development in the literal center of their vision.
  
  See: A 270 degree panorama I took from the front steps of Playhouse on the Square.
  
  The threat to this vision should be enough to stop a bad outcome, except it's not.


• Preservationists and urbanists could combine forces with CVS to cajole or force Ike's/Walgreen's to sell CVS the soon to be vacant Ike's store on the southeast corner.
  


• Join the cause via the Save Union Avenue Methodist Church Facebook page.

A Cliche for the Wrecking Ball

We're not so far from our annual demarc between Future and Past that I can't sling a cliche back over into auld lang syne:

preservationists can't let go of the past.*

Like any cliche, you can find someone who fits it. But I've found that that nostalgia for the past can coexist happily with the complete physical destruction of its artifacts. People can easily talk about happy memories in places being pulverized around them.

In my estimation, people dedicated to saving older buildings are motivated not by a fetish for the Past but by a specific and recent history lesson. The lesson that in America over the last 60 years, we have built bad where we have demolished great. We have destroyed and replaced visually exciting, energy creating buildings with walk-stopping parking lots, energy-draining setbacks and city-killing banality. Not always, of course, but 9 out of 10 times, if not 99 out of 100 times.

As urbanist James Howard Kunstler put it in this excellent podcast on preservation:

we're not capable of putting new things up that are as good as the old things we're losing. It's hard to account for that. We're not really dumber than our great-grandparents and we're certainly a lot richer than they were... But there were forces in our culture and in our economy that have prevented us from putting up buildings that are as worthy or as beloved or as lovable, as worthy of our affection, as these things we're losing.

It didn't have to be that way, but it was. It doesn't have to be that way, but it still is.

Until we can consistently replace good with better, or at least, as-good, many of us will see the approaching bulldozers as tools of regress, coming to wreck our neighborhoods, our districts and our city's Future.

* most recently penned by Commercial Appeal editor Chris Peck.

Open Meeting about Overton Square Demolition Request

From Memphis Heritage:

Before the City Council hears the owners request for this demo permit, Councilman Shea Flinn, sponsor of the Resolution that passed requiring council approval of any demo permit for the Overton Square area, would like interested parties to meet.

This meeting is being held this Wed. Dec. 9th at 4pm at City Hall 125 N. Main in the 5th floor conference room.

We want our supporters and the community to know about this important meeting. This is an open meeting. The public is welcome to attend.

Sooner Investments, the proposed developers, have not submitted a plan for the site. Instead the owners' plan to demolish the buildings at Overton Square before a plan is approved. It is a possibility that the proposed development might not move forward and there would be an even larger parking lot.

Oppose the Overton Square Demolition

The owner of Overton Square wants a permit to demolish these beautiful structures without a plan for rebuilding. Memphis Heritage asks you to contact our City Councilfolk with your opposition.

There will be a meeting Wed Dec 9 @ 4pm City Hall 125 N Main St. 5th floor about the owners application for a demolition permit for Overton Sq. Please call City Councilmen Shea Flinn and Bill Morrison (901-576-6786) and let them know you do not want the CC to allow any demolition at OS until the developers have submitted their plans.

For me, this isn't about saving these buildings at all cost, but losing them without an approved plan for replacement.

I want to see the future.

1970's Parkway Village, 1980's Covington Pike and 1990's Germantown Parkway are not the future.

Start Defacing our Economic Advantage

During his 12 Suggestions talk last year, Jeff Speck made his audience gasp when he showed that Memphis had replaced the Masonic Lodge

with the Blake Building.

On Halloween I had a few minutes to ponder this very weird replacement while I waited for a bus on Second Street.

I pondered the Blake Building's rigid box form, the panels and ornamental grills aggresively enforcing opaque 2-dimensional facades,

the strangely placed fire panels,


the structure on top of the box.

Standing there, bored and a little liquored up, I wondered: is it possible that the original building is still there, hidden under a goofy modernist facade?

Then last week, I had the honor of talking with Keith Kays, the architect leading the charge for the protection and appreciation of Memphis' great modernist buildings. I mentioned the goofy building at 2nd and Madison and he said, "you know, the original building is under all the panels"

Wow! It is still there. Very, very exciting.

Except ... it isn't. The hidden building isn't the Masonic Lodge, the Victorian in the photo at the top. Unfortunately that really is gone. Speck's liner notes,

note that it was demolished in the early 20th century and replaced with the Germania Building that is now presumed hidden at 2nd and Madison. While I don't know what the Germania Building look/s/ed like, I do assume that a structure built on a prominent downtown corner in the early 1900s is probably still pretty beautiful.

Conceivably Memphis could have 2 good outcomes from this.

1. By removing the panels and grillwork, we can daylight the early 20th century Germania Building underneath
   
   
2. By re-forming the freed groovy modernist panels and grills in a more porous manner somewhere else on our streets, we can create urban space where there's only urban void now.
   

I'm hoping to get closer soon and see if I can get pictures, from inside or out, of the hidden building.

From the Overton Square Charrette

Just in time for the second public meeting (tonight, Tuesday, August 25th, 6 p.m. at Playhouse on the Square), here are some random notes and thoughts from/about last month's Overton Square charrette.

• The leaders of the charrette have created a great website, http://www.squaretalk.org, for the redevelopment effort. You can share your comments and ideas there.
  
  
  
  


• The leader of the charrette, Chooch Pickard of the Memphis Regional Design Center, acknowledged that a lot of folk weren't happy that it was held on a weekday. He said this session was just a beginning and there would be more sessions at more publicly accessible hours (see top).
  


• It was still packed.


• The participants weren't all preservationists (although it did have substantial preservationist participation). All were advocates for a quality built environment in the area known as Overton Square.
  


• Architects, planners, developers, businesspeople, students, preservationists, environmentalists and dumbass bloggers were there.
  


• The morning session began with a walking tour of Overton Square, followed by a general brainstorming session. I missed both of these.
  


• The afternoon session had the participants split into 3 groups:
  
  
  1. those who wanted to save all the Overton Square buildings,
  2. those who wanted to save some buildings and most of the facades,
  3. those who considered the entire site as a tabula rasa.
  
  The 3 groups (and sub-groups) brainstormed ideas for the area.
  


• The Regional Design Center has now posted its summary of the charrette plus the specific plans from each of the 3 groups.
  


• The original Overton Square founders were visionary businessmen with a great eye for Midtown commercial architecture but the monolithic ownership and regional parking lots they bequeathed are the root of the present problem.
  
  
  
  


• A great comment I heard from a charrette participant: the size of the Overton Square footprint overwhelms us with big dreams. Just start with something small -- and good. Begin.
  


• Monolithic ownership and dreams of the big score make the small, iterative difficult. In Overton Square, at the Fairgrounds, at the Pyramid.
  


• I voiced what many?most?all? probably thought was a dumb idea: Overton Square should choose Cooper-Young as a model.
  
  My explanation for my dumb idea: Overton Square should at least learn from its never so flashy, but ever so sustainable Midtown twin.
  
  Lessons like iterative, piecemeal development; reuse rather than rebuild; mixed-use; strong participation and input from its neighborhoods; distributed leadership; diverse ownership.
  


• Monolithic ownership, dreams of the big score and the urban scars left from a viral parking lot make following the Cooper-Young model difficult. But it's still a healthy, home-growing model to consider as we search for solutions to vitality.
  


• Low density, pedestrian discontinuity (e.g., Union Ave), and single use zoning and mentalities are obstacles for a vital street and public life in Memphis. Overton Square needs residential and residents to seed the street life.
  


• The biggest missed opportunity in Overton Square's history was the design of the now-defunct French Quarter Inn.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taking the spot of Solomon Alfred's nightclub, which was firmly and directly planted on the corner of Madison and Cooper, the owners pushed the hotel back from the corner (and the street), separated it with a parking lot, then walled it up. While the wall made the parking lot more palatable to the neighborhood, the lack of entrances and the parking lot barrier made the French Quarter Inn a non-presence in Overton Square.
  
  Had the owners placed it directly on and opening to the corner, the hovering hotel and Overton Square would have fed each other's energy and business, just as the district began competing with Beale Street and fake neighborhood bars in the 1980s. Disconnected, they both began a long decline.
  


• Playhouse on the Square, now building a cool new theater complex above the corner of Union and Cooper,
  
  
  
  
  
  
  has the most to lose from antisocial, butt-ugly neighboring development. But it also presents Overton Square development a new opportunity: the people pouring in from all over the city, region and country for plays, camps and events.
  
  This major cultural investment should not only be enough to stop a bad development, it should be more than enough to entice a great development to build next to, on to.
  
  
  

Urban Redo

Let's take a mulligan on the last 50 years of Memphis city planning.

That's what we had to do with this massive Jackson Avenue urban renewal tract from 1961, immediately north of St. Jude (from the Commercial Appeal's Memphis Memories).

Memphis renewed the area cleared as suburbish strip malls. 40 years later, it had to renew the renewal.

Absence of decay is not presence of vitality. Demolition is not design.

NoMore EyeSore

Decaying buildings don't threaten Memphis; devitalizing suburbanism threatens Memphis.

Not discrete aging structures ill-defined as eyesores, but an entrenched system of speculative emptiness, willfull destruction, oblivious discontinuity and bland development.

Time to give up boring, neosuburbanist visions of an always tidy city, and focus on the rebuilding blocks of a sometimes messy, increasingly beautiful and necessarily vital city.

The Ascent of King Edward

A forlorn beauty when I passed it a year ago,


Jackson's King Edward Hotel was in the middle of a vibrant restoration when I passed by again last week.


The King Edward has been empty since 1967, for 40 years before its restoration began late last year. In comparison, our own great Hotel Chisca closed as a hotel in the early 1970s, but was occupied as headquarters by the Church of God in Christ until the early 1990s.

Let's wish the developers, who include Deuce McAllister, the greatest success on their work. Afterwards we can invite them to take the train up to Memphis, for a visit to Main and Linden.

Meeting Wednesday about the C&I Bank Building

From Memphis Heritage:

Important Meeting Regarding the Future of The C & I Bank Building 200 Madison Francis Gassner, Architect Built 1974

There will be a meeting for all those concerned about the future of the Gassner Building, 200 Madison Ave., at Memphis Heritage's Headquarters, Howard Hall at 2282 Madison Ave. at Edgewood on Wednesday, August 13 @ 12 noon. Please feel free to bring a sack lunch we will provide beverages. The meeting should be over by 1:30.

The building is presently owned by the Memphis Chamber of Commerce and is for sale. To date all of the parties interested in buying the property have plans to demolish the mid century modern Memphis Landmark (in one case to build a surface parking lot). This meeting will be to assist everyone in knowing the latest plans for the property and to discuss alternatives to it's demolition. Please email June West at jwest@memphisheritage.org if you can attend this meeting or if you are interested in getting follow up information on our plans. Thank you for your support of historic Memphis.

The C&I Bank Building was completed in 1974, designed by Francis Gassner, FAIA (1927-1977) of Gassner, Nathan, and Browne Architects. The innovative design used tubular truss framing and butt glazing to shape the building and enclose its atrium. When completed, the C&I Bank was applauded for its geometry and light-filled atrium. The C&I Bank was recognized by both state and local AIA Awards, and, in 1979, the Museum of Modern Art included the building in its exhibit of the 400 buildings that "have had a significant influence in the recent directions of architecture." In 2000, the C&I Bank building was recognized by the Memphis Chapter of the AIA as the Design of the Decade (1971-1980). The C&I Bank building was purchased in 2004 by the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce Foundation for use as its headquarters.

June Waddell West
Executive Director
Memphis Heritage
www.memphisheritage.org
901.272.2727
fax 901.272.0149

More background on the threat.

Fight Flight Blight

I read 2 days ago in the Memphis Business Journal that CCL Label was destroying their former downtown Memphis home. CCL didn't want to maintain the building, which is diagonally across from Autozone Park on Union, so they're bulldozing it.

I emailed Jeff Sanford, head of the Center City Commission, to express my opposition. He responded very quickly,

Unfortunately, there is no legal prohibition against this demolition. We are most concerned about conversion of this property to surface parking. We have conveyed our concerns to the property owner's broker. We are told the demolition is being done to reduce the increasing cost of maintaing a vacant building, and that the surface lot, which must meet certain code requirements, is an interim use until the property can be sold for a higher and better use. Small consolation although there is some hope because we are seeing considerable developer interest in this and other properties along the south side of Union west of Danny Thomas.

So this means that despite all the private and public capital invested, and the hard work of people like the CCC, a landlord can knock down a downtown building for no better reason they don't want to be bothered. After hearing over and over again from urbanists like Jeff Speck and Maurice Cox about the importance of walkability, we still have no protection from willful blightings that leave walking dead zones that inhibit commercial development (e.g., the Edge).

Without protection, downtown's development is at the mercy of speculative landlords who sustain value from their neighbors' investments even as their own cheap disinvestments subtract value from everyone else.

Meanwhile, a mile north, the CCC works on a plan to resuscitate the Pinch district, except that "one of the challenges to development in the area is 25 percent of its land parcels is comprised of vacant lots, parking lots or is home to vacant buildings, according to the CCC." The lion's share are lots created by willful, unchecked speculative destruction around the time the Pyramid was built.

We plan to fight after what we have no plan to fight before.

But fighting the blight after is expensive and slow.

Less expensive would be to fight it before, by denying demolition permits to anyone not in possession of a legitimate building permit for an approved use. A vacant lot or parking lot is not an approved use. We should add this at the very least to zoning for Memphis' South Central Business Improvement District.

At this point the destruction is at least half done. However if they want the interim use of a parking lot, they will still need a special exception that is subject to many conditions that must be approved by the City Council. I would like to remind the City Council that not only has this landlord destroyed a building on a gateway to downtown, they have fled the city taking their jobs and taxes with them. Memphis owes them nothing special.