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.

Master Plans and Public Participation

I want to clarify my attitude towards plans and participation.

I'm for 'em!

but...

• we have to have everyday, always-on principles and visions of our natural and built environments. For instance, Sustainable Shelby's top recommendations and Jeff Speck's first six suggestions for Memphis. We can't use master plans to outsource, offload, avoid, postpone, ignore or forget these principles and visions, or their defense.


• Public participation and input happens all the time, and has always happened all the time. We now have the collaborative, visual, ubiquitous, sometimes place-based, sometimes asynchronous, usually inexpensive tools to capture the ideas, moods, uses, input of citizens. Discrete meetings in discrete places should always be one of the tools, but exclusively it deludes rulers leaders that the public is something you give 2 minutes to stand up and speak, and 5 seconds to sit down and shut up.

Completing Main Street

When the Center City Commission asked the public about returning auto traffic to Main Street, the public came out strongly against the idea.

There have been many arguments for returning traffic to Main. The CCC's retail consultant made the argument. The NEA Director of Design, Maurice Cox recommended it. His predecessor at the NEA, Jeff Speck, made it one of his 12 suggestions for Memphis.

Even if public sentiment for the pedestrian over the car is technically flawed from an urban design point of view, such sentiment is still a good, progressive sign for Memphis. And I want to point out that Speck had also suggested fixing the South Main knuckle, the walking discontinuity formed by the Main/Beale parking lot, MLG&W's mega-berm and parking garage, and the empty Chisca. I believe that the knuckle is a much greater obstacle to Main Street revitality. It cuts Main Street off from the energy of both South Main and Beale Street (which is itself auto restricted yet prospers). I don't think returning traffic without fixing the knuckle will fix Main Street.

The CCC will decide later this month what it will do. They could still open Main to traffic. At the very least, I hope the public's opposition will keep them from the more invasive, multi-million dollar projects. Maybe the opposition will lead the Commission to take Speck's specific advice and try a woonerf, a simple plan that would make the pedestrian and the car and the bike equals on Main.

The Core Idea

Whenever you have a limited pedestrian zone, and another, slightly distant, limited pedestrian zone, you're going to generate X pedestrians. If you connect them you'll generate 5-to-10X pedestrians. There's the incredible geometric relationship when you attach small systems into larger systems. The amount of pedestrians you generate is a geometrical outcome.

Jeff Speck, speaking to the Memphis Regional Design Center
about the walkability disconnect between
Autozone Park and Beale Street.

This was my favorite idea from Speck's talk, simple and powerful.

It should be at the center of all of Downtown's planning. It should be in every presentation that a Downtown leader makes.

Making walkable the spaces between Autozone Park and Beale Street, Beale Street and South Main, South Main and Main, and all of the above to the Bluff Walk and Tom Lee Park will produce the geometric outcome. And anything that disrupts the walkability, like the MLGW berm or the Main/Beale parking lot or the ill-advised Beale Street Landing surface parking lot, blocks that outcome.

Stop dreaming of the mythic East Memphis customer who would come Downtown if only there were convenient parking.

Start looking across the parking lot at the very many who are already here, at Beale Street, at Autozone Park, at South Main, at Tom Lee Park.

Plan how you will get them across the soon-to-be-formerly dull spaces, and how you will entertain the crowds that follow.

Where Do We Deserve an Urban Waterfront?

Wagner Place.


The Bluff and flooding have always separated downtown Memphis from the River. However, this location could very much satisfy Jeff Speck's suggestion for these reasons:

• Closest that urban downtown comes to the river.
  
  


• Smallest Bluff drop to the Riverfront.
  
  
  
• City of Memphis owns the property.
  


• No easements as with the Promenade, so it can be developed commercially.
  


• Adjacent with the Promenade so public developments like the University of Memphis Law School and extension of the Bluff Walk are perfectly complementary.
  


• Will create back-and-forth walking continuity between downtown and Tom Lee Park/Beale Street Landing/Cobblestones.
  


• It's presently a surface parking lot so (almost) any urban development is a step forward.
  


• If Memphis is serious about 2 other Speck suggestions -- fixing the 3rd St. Promenot and the Main/South Main knuckle -- we would have a continuous downtown from Autozone Park to Peabody Place to Beale Street to Main Street South Main to the Riverfront.
  


• Because the Cobblestones are a man-made extension onto the River and this site is in front of the Cobblestones, this would be very much an urban waterfront.
  


• Because it would be between the River and Autozone Headquarters/Waterford Plaza, any development would have to be the 3 or 4 story buildings that Speck used as in his presentation (example). Which for me is an advantage.
  

What are the downsides?