Return of Main @ Jefferson

I went to the Lowenstein Building opening on Wednesday and was happy to see this great project completed.

Also cool to see its across the street neighbor, the Courtyard Marriott ascending at Main @ Jefferson. This is the visualization.


And this is the actualization, still in progress.

Hugely exciting to see the rebuilding of that corner.

I hope the local buildings can collaboratively use the new space and energy on the street.

By the way and along the way, this is what happens when you treat the street as incidental:

Don't waste the opportunity!

Building Up

There's a matte shot in Scorcese's "The Age of Innocence" that has always blown me away. It's a sudden, unexpected shot of a single mansion, standing alone on a corner in the undeveloped grid of what will be upper Manhattan, waiting for the rest of urban New York to catch up. It's a vanguard for the built changes coming to New York. It's a stunning, exciting image.

I was similarly stunned by 2 new buildings in Memphis when I first saw them:

The Rivercrest

and the Stratum on Highland.

Suddenly appearing on corners where parking lots and underurban developments had been for years, they're exciting vanguards for Memphis' under-developed grid. They've done it by:

• building over 2 stories
  
  AND
  


• building to the sidewalk, that is, Hell no! to parking lots and mega-berms.
  
  AND
  


• building residences on a mostly commercial street, that is, mixed-use.
  
  AND
  


• building on the corner, that is, magnifying their power.
  
  AND
  
  
• building on a spot that was either under- or unused before, that is, infill.
  

The Rivercrest is not so radical for a building in the South Main district, but it immediately changed the way I experienced the corner of Front and Pontotoc. Probably because it filled a corner which was long a surface parking lot. Plus it has a great staggered roof texturing its skyline.



So filling the space next to Gus' Fried Chicken on Front Street is all gravy.



Mixed-use combo.

The Stratum on Highland (which I've posted about before) not only transformed the corner it's on, it's close to physically transforming the street. It's made Highland Strip a more urban space as well as a mix-used environment by adding residences to the street.



And they've done it in an area where they could have easily gotten by with the same old berm/parking lot style development. Far as I'm concerned, the Stratum is THE model for healthy physical changes in the University district. Good design, good use of space.

Will development catch up with them? In a hundred years we won't be as dense as New York, but a Memphis-scaled* density could be so much greater than what we have now. But the Stratum and Rivercrest are very much the exception now.

*by building not much higher than Memphis' great oaks, we could still have 5 to 6 stories of new development that wouldn't dwarf neighborhoods.

Race and Economics Forum

The third forum in the New Path/Memphis Urban League 2008 Race Relations & Memphis panel series will be held next Wednesday May 21, 2008 from 6pm-8pm at the Ben Hooks Central Library in Meeting Room C. The topic of the discussion is Race & Economics and will feature panelists Dr. Jerome Blakemore, Dr. Dale Bails, and Roby Williams. Daphene McFerren will moderate.

Thanks, I look forward to seeing you there!

Tarrin McGhee

Program Director, New Path

tarrin@newpathmemphis.org

www.newpathmemphis.org

Try to attend this forum, which was preceded by Race and Politics and Race and Media.

More Blight Near Highland

The Helmsman reported a few days ago that the University of Memphis had begun demolition on the Prescott Memorial Baptist Church on Mynders.

So what looked like this for 75 years


now looks like this.


The University and its partners have been in the news a lot lately talking about how they can improve the surrounding areas and make a better, more attractive community.

So what are their plans for the space? The Helmsman says

The University has not decided what will be built where Prescott Memorial Baptist Church once stood.

Maybe a parking lot, maybe an educational building, almost certainly a construction staging area.

Either way, what had been a simple and charming part of their local built environment for 75 years has been destroyed without a plan.

Speculative demolition.

This is not New Urbanism. This is not Sustainable.

This is Same Old Shit Suburbanism. This is Waste.

For 3, 5, 10 years, maybe forever, the community will have to look at an empty space, probably with cars or construction equipment on it.

This is Blight. Same Old Blight.

Clarifications: The demolished church above is not part of the Poag & McEwen development on Highland. Prescott (demolished) is here; the Highland Street Church of Christ (Poag & McEwen's recent purchase) is here. The latter will be demolished eventually too, but with a plan at the ready. In fact, the P&M development will infill several lots that once had mansions on them -- themselves speculatively demolished by someone (not P&M) sometime in the last 20 years.

Also, the construction staging is for University of Memphis construction, presumably the dorms being built across Patterson, not the Poag & McEwen development.

A Little Context for the Crosstown Development

Here's a a Google Maps version of the Crosstown development (aka "Midtown Memphis") overlays, as seen in the Memphis Flyer.

Practically everything I've heard and seen about the development looks, sounds positive. I wonder about the northern approach, the Poplar/Watkins gateway, however. It appears to be a entire block of street exposed parking. They've talked about rooftop parking, so hopefully that's what going on here. A building flush with the sidewalk at that corner would

1. provide an architectural advertisement for their work, on one of Memphis' busiest thoroughfares. We zoom past parking lots all the time. A building on that corner would be a unique herald of the changes inside. An exciting invitation inside for both cars coming up and down Poplar, and walkers coming from Vollintine and Evergreen. Parking lots do not invite.


2. help restore physical, visual and even social continuity between Evergreen and the development in the Washington Bottoms.


3. increase not only the area's walkability, but also its walk-to-ability and walk-from-ability.

3 Things About The Stratum on Highland

Because it's transforming and using the space around it, the Stratum is one of the most interesting buildings going up in Memphis right now.

1. Although it took the place of 2 or 3 bungalows on Highland, it didn't keep their residential offset. Not even a perfunctory strip of landscaping (thank God!). They're building right up to the edge of the sidewalk on Highland and Mynders.
   
   It's an invitation to walk, down Mynders to the University and down Highland to the restaurants, bars and shops.


2. It has an interesting (and rarely seen in Memphis) mid-rise size. About the height of a mature oak tree. I think will add significant density, presence and energy to the area without overpowering.


3. They have built it inside an existing commercial district, which is also rare in Memphis. What they're doing on Highland, smart developers should do in Overton Square, Cooper-Young, even Beale Street. Let the residential and commercial cross-pollinate.

I think it will be a fun place to live.

What Has Happened at 100 S. Main?

When the Center City Commission announced the winning development team at 100 S. Main, this was the projected vision.


Now, this is on the Commission's 100 S. Main page:

It's like one those heartbreaking before and after shots of historic Memphis.

(The building at top could be the first Memphis building torn down before it was even built. The building below should have a historic marker out front honoring its predecessor.)

Since the CCC's Jeff Sanford "cited architectural context as one of the reasons they chose the five-story concept," and the context is late 19th and early 20th century, you have to wonder, how did the retro-70s design get there? And will it stand?

Dearth of people and foot traffic, and a related homeless concentration, has been a major problem on that stretch of Main. I don't think that a cold, passionless design will help solve those problems.

Via the Urban Planet Memphis forum, where there's rare agreement that the the project has taken a downgrade.

Memphis' Evil Twin Sister City?

When I opened this Wired article, about the building of a 70-story skyscraper on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, something looked very familiar. Half a second later, I figured it out.


The camera angles of the visualizations, the buildings towering alone over the waterfront, the slope of the low-rise roofs.

And there's more. From the article:

At 72 stories, the new headquarters for Russia's state-run gas company will tower over St. Petersburg. And, yes, the Gazprom building — part of a complex to include a sports center, theater, and cafés — has its critics. They note that, at 1,300 feet, it's a touch tall for a 300-year-old city of church spires and canals. Not that such carping hinders progress in neo-authoritarian Russia. Only vigorous protest kept the city from funding the entire project, and the liberal Yabloko party was barred from recent elections for opposing it.

When I'm pissed off, I will call Memfograd "neo-authoritarian Memphis", or "the neo-authoritarian Bluff City".

(There might be value in finding not only new models of progress but also new models of dysfunctionality. Looking at the problem from a drastically different angle might -- might! -- give our civic narrative a fresh new twist.)

By the way, this is not a commentary on either Beale Street Landing or One Beale. I just found the images similar.

The Integrity of Feasibility (or vice versa)

Here is the City of Memphis Request for Proposal for a "Feasibility Study for the Development of a New Liberty Bowl Stadium". I point to it because there appears to be a financial incentive for the winning bidder to say the new stadium's feasible. In Section IV (Reporting) of the RFP it reads,

Preliminary Progress Report: The consultant shall provide the Mid-South Fairgrounds Redevelopment Committee’s Stadium Subcommittee with a Preliminary Progress Report at the conclusion of the market analysis and address the threshold question of whether the Stadium is feasible. If it is determined that the project is feasible, the consultant shall complete the demand and financial analysis. If not, the consultant will perform no additional services and be paid solely for the completed market analysis.

And in Section III (Scope of Work),

Recommended Stadium Facility. Subject to the initial determination of project feasibility, the consultant shall develop preliminary design parameters for the Stadium including options for site location and preconceptual building designs. The number of seats, club seats, luxury suites, parking spaces, and other key design attributes should also be discussed. The consultant shall provide an estimate of the preliminary project cost of the Stadium identified by expenditure type for professional services, development costs, site work, cost of construction, fees, testing, and project contingency.

(emphasis mine in both excerpts)

That sounds like a lot of planning work that extends beyond feasibility. A lot of lost work if you say "not feasible!"

Many, or at least most, or at least a massive majority, of Memphians (outside of the Mayor's Office and Folk's Folly) have great skepticism about a new stadium. The study, if it is to be done, should have integrity. The Mayor's Office should firewall the feasibility portion from the planning and design portion. Perhaps even forbid the same consultant from bidding on both the feasibility study and planning/design/construction, in a Sarbanes-Oxley kind of way.

But if the firewall doesn't exist, Memphians should be skeptical of a study that announces "feasible!"

The bids were due last Friday, April 20. The oral presentation are May 3 and the winning bid will be announced May 4.

Update: The Commercial Appeal has a little more about the stadium process in today's paper. Interesting quote: "One of the things that the committee has said is that we will allow the information to drive the process -- not vice versa," [chairman of the fairgrounds redevelopment committee, Cato] Johnson said."

I think it's super they said it. But they didn't write it into the RFP.

Locating a Downtown Grocery Store

When I first read this Memphis Daily News article, I thought that they were talking about making the proposed grocery store at Auction and Seventh the fabled Downtown grocery. On second reading, it sounds like an Uptown project, specifically designed for the Uptown neighborhood. Nothing wrong with a neighborhood grocery store, especially if they build it to New Urbanist design standards.

As pointed out by my friend Justin in an offline conversation, here's the problem with that being the Downtown grocery store.

A six block walk from the trolley means that most downtown residents, who probably own a car, would drive to this grocery store rather than walk. They're driving now, so this location wouldn't change their experience, only the amount of time they spend in the car getting to the store.

Here's a picture of Downtown/Medical Center/Crosstown. The trolley line's in green, surrounded by an approximate 3 block border in white. (I chose 3 blocks as a not unreasonable amount to walk with a few bags of groceries).


There are lots of places to put a grocery store that downtownies could get to without burning fossil fuels.

By building the grocery store within walking distance of the trolley, we add to the special experience for Downtown residents and visitors. It's this experience that many people want when they move or visit downtown. It's this experience that we should consider with every major project that happens Downtown.

Are the Brownfields of Memphis Fertile?

Are they especially fertile for new development?

Or put another way, is the existence of old buildings toxic to new development?

I would never say they were toxic but they could be a drag if Memphis were all built up -- no empty space left. But Memphis has plenty of empty space left. Plenty. So many empty lots that already exist throughout downtown -- lots emptied long ago by demolition.

We bulldozed everything around Beale Street 40 years ago, but it's only been the last 5 years that something besides grass and surface parking has replaced the lost buildings. We bulldozed everything in the block surrounding the Morgan Keegan Building over 20 years ago, and it still has empty space.

And that's on top of the many surface parking lots all over the Pinch, through the main and eastern section of downtown and around the FedEx Forum -- all paved on the graves of once standing structures.

If demolition attracted new development, downtown Memphis would have the skyline of Hong Kong.

Beware of Memphis' second greatest and grossest development anti-pattern: speculative demolition.

If the developers we're trying to attract are such bottom-feeders that they can't:

1. imagine the re-use of an existing structure;
   
2. envision the space without it being empty first;
   
3. pay for demolition themselves.

then we better hope that all we've torn down was a convenience store, because we're not likely to get anything better as a replacement.

The answer is "no". Fill the holes first before creating new ones.

Questions about the "Zipper Zone"

Here are some questions I have about the zipper zone idea of Frank Ricks, profiled in Sunday's Commercial Appeal:

• How were the outlines of the zipper zone determined? Most notably, why was the major part of Union Avenue (it appears from Watkins to Cooper) in Midtown left out? Why develop smart on Poplar but develop stupid 2 blocks away on Union (by perhaps knocking down more character-rich buildings)?
• If "special design and zoning guidelines -- possibly similar to the Medical Center zoning overlay -- should be established to promote smarter, more sustainable growth", then why shouldn't they be applied city-wide? If this is indeed smarter growth (and I believe it is), it stands to reason we would have stupider growth everywhere else. I believe Memphis should be smart everywhere.
• Why would the "new guidelines spook some developers"? Are there extra development costs associated with the special design and zoning guidelines proposed? And anyway, should we really care about a developer spooked by smarter growth? Considering our present pockmarked commercial landscape, with vacancies and random ugliness easy to find, it looks like someone more important -- the retail entrepeneur and customer -- is already spooked. Stupid growth doesn't seem to be working.
  

These are not rhetorical questions.

Well, maybe one or two rhetorical questions.

south of Southern

The Commercial Appeal ran a story Saturday morning about the University of Memphis' plans for a new nursing building. The University's choice of location -- the South Campus.

The University has owned that huge underused parcel, formerly known as the Kennedy Hospital, since 1966. (See photo outlined in green -- lots o' space).


Yet during this time it's expanded primarily north across Central into an established, architecturally sound neighborhood. They acquired, then demolished, many fine homes for this northward push. (See photo with red outline. The outline marks what the university has acquired and with a few exceptions, bulldozed).
And with nary an exception, they replaced each house with something far, far, far away uglier. This includes the Central surface parking lots, the banal student dormitories that border Poplar and the hyper-bland Holiday Inn. They did save many of the mature trees, but everything else -- "kaboom!"

Meanwhile, the South Campus has remained largely unused. And the area surrounding has declined. Crime has increased, in the commercial areas especially. The University, by finally turning their interest southward, can really help stabilize the area. They have a lot of undeveloped land that doesn't have to be seized or bulldozed. The presence of more students, faculty and staff will give adjoining neighborhoods confidence about the future. And a beautiful structure would be a catalyst for other improvements.

If we can diminish the Central neighborhood with bad architecture, we can improve the Sherwood Forest, Audubon Park and Cherry/Quince neighborhoods with great architecture.