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.

As a lover of gates, and those in particular,

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.

The Concept or the Particulars

"I'm having a hard time following the whole concept and the particulars of it. We've been talking about this for a month now, and I don't feel like I know more now than I did at the beginning."

City Councilman Jim Strickland
talking about the plan for Fairgrounds redevelopment

The vision gets fuzzier with each published piece of information.

I Have Seen the Future and it is Memphis Roller Derby

Last Sunday's Commercial Appeal carried a story about Memphis Roller Derby's business struggles at the Memphis Fairgrounds.

First, the Fairground's new facilities management group is giving MRD the business about their insurance, even though it's the same policy used by roller derby leagues around the country, and hiking their rent at the nearly abandoned Fairgrounds.

Second, Henry Turley, the new Fairgrounds master developer, while lauding the Derby's passion, posits a preemptive NIMBY reaction because of their tattoos and saucy clothing.

"I wouldn't be the one to say no," Turley said. "It would have to be the community stepping in and saying, 'Hey, everything you said you wanted to do with the fairgrounds, that doesn't fit.'"

What community would it be? The present community has embraced them. Perhaps the unbuilt Fairgrounds residential community, or the "the national youth sports events developers hope to attract to a planned indoor athletic facility". A repressive anti-tattoo community from the future vs the real, dynamic and open community that supports Memphis Roller Derby now.

The value added by Roller Derby's energy and creativity is far greater than anything a speculative and prudish tenant could bring. Memphis Roller Derby is the kind of vital, home grown enterprise that a new Memphis and a new Fairgrounds should embrace and build around.

Rolling and Staggering Towards a New Memphis

We had the Skatepark Demo at the Fairgrounds on Thursday.

No one in my family is a skater -- yet -- but I still wanted to see it. When I saw all the cars outside the Youth Building, I assumed something else was going on. When I saw the people riding bikes and carrying skateboards, I knew something really exciting was going on. The turnout was incredible!

Here's a very short video of my experience before the batteries in my digital camera ran out.



Luckily amiev was also there, capturing the energy, enthusiasm and capacity of the turnout.

And Aaron, the mastermind of the event and of Skatelife Memphis, has done a post-vitam of the event. Note to activists: use Myspace.

The next day, the Memphis Zombies walked again. And there was no sophomore slump. The Zombie horde was at least equal to last year's, and their audience was significantly larger, imho.

Here's some recaps.

Here's Paul Ryburn's video chronicle of the passing Zombie throng.



Here's a couple of apprentice zombies.


And I heard a great piece of heckling from a Beale Street bouncer:

Look! It's a zombie Gerry Cooney!

Mixing Neighborhoods: Cooper-Young and the Fairgrounds

How will the Fairgrounds development mix with adjacent neighborhoods?

As the Fairgrounds, it was a place of special events, once-a-year, once-a-month events with no residents. Other than Fairview School, it had no regular daily users. Plus, its sea of surface parking took away the visual, spatial joy of walking even though it has some great buildings. Only during the Fair, when magic carnies built a City out of parking lots, was a walking, physical connection restored.

The main entrances show the physical traces of the Fairgrounds separateness. None are aligned with the grid of streets from the neighborhoods surrounding. On Southern, the Coliseum entrance dead ends into the railroad, on Central into the CBU parking lot, on East Parkway into Cooper Young homes. I don't think there is an entrance on Hollywood. Chain link fences define most of its perimeter.

Will the new Fairgrounds maintain its historic separation, or will it intentionally and physically make a stronger connection with adjacent neighborhoods, becoming more porous? While I wouldn't want it to be sliced and diced rationally, obliviously, by Memphis' auto grid, I think a greater physical connection would make the development better and stronger for both itself and neighbors.

A good place to start connecting would be the eastern terminus (soon to be connectus) of Cooper-Young's Young Street. It dead ends at East Parkway into the Fairgrounds fence that separated the free world from Libertyland. A walker coming from Cooper-Young has to take a left to the north and walk 100 yards to get to the Fairgrounds entrance.

Raise the dead end into a live gateway. Surround the gateway with tree- and Pippin-height multi-use buildings that attract use and provide energy and market. The way of the gate doesn't have to be a street, but could be, maybe should be, a pedestrian path. The gateway should provide a visual draw for those walking or driving down Young, or stopped at the light on East Parkway, via the design and height of the buildings and gateway, framing the the Zippin Pippin in the background. Something visible to a walker from as far as Young and McLean would be great, if not impossible.

The new and the old can meet and grow at East Parkway.

Zippin Pippin Listed on National Register

I received word from Denise Parkinson that the Zippin Pippin has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. What does this mean?

• Listing in the National Register honors the property by recognizing its importance to its community, State, or the Nation.
• Private property owners can do anything they wish with their property, provided that no Federal license, permit, or funding is involved.
• Owners have no obligation to open their properties to the public, to restore them, or even to maintain them, if they choose not to do so.
• Federal agencies whose projects affect a listed property must give the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation an opportunity to comment on the project and its effects on the property.
• Owners of listed properties may be able to obtain Federal historic preservation funding, when funds are available. In addition, Federal investment tax credits for rehabilitation and other provisions may apply.
  

[emphasis mine].

Many congratulations and thanks to Judith Johnson, Denise, Steve Mulroy and the Save Libertyland crew for this great work.

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.

Ride the Zippin Pippin, Part 0.2!

If you haven't seen the news, Save Libertyland now owns the Zippin Pippin. In honor of that, I present the next version of my Zippin Pippin work-in-process animation, now with color, some texture, a sky, all in horrible low-resolution!

Click on the image at the bottom of the post to get a little higher-quality vision.

Getting back to reality, the good news about the Zippin Pippin: if it survives, it will survive in Memphis. The bad news: survival isn't assured.

The people who bought the Pippin and have now given it Save Libertyland did not buy the land under the coaster. That still belongs to the City of Memphis. To date, the city has been random at best, antagonistic at worst, to the efforts of Save Libertyland to do as their name states. I hope the city can see the imaginative value of keeping the Pippin and the Carousel in the fairgrounds redevelopment. (I have always envied Alvy Singer for living under a roller coaster at Coney Island).

This Flyer article mentions that SL is also talking to Elvis Presley Enterprises about preserving the ride. This is great, although EPE hasn't been particularly active in preserving Elvis' physical legacy outside of Graceland's gates. Hopefully this will change, but if it doesn't, perhaps they can enlist Elvis fans and fan clubs around the world in the efforts to preserve the ride (and the Chisca too).

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.