This coming Tuesday, TDOT and the Corps of Engineers will host an important public information meeting regarding Memphis' plans for Cobblestones improvement. Details:
The purpose of the Historic Cobblestone Landing Restoration and Walkway Project is to stabilize and restore the Memphis Cobblestone Landing and provide limited usability, connectivity and accessibility improvements.
will the improvements intentionally or effectively decommission the cobblestones as a boat landing?
will they harm the Cobblestone's status as a National Historic Landmark?
the RDC answers my first question, listing
Continuation of and improvements to the docking of boats
as an objective.
No muddiness there, except that it's listed as objective 5 in a prioritized list. So my filtrated question for the RDC is,
"Forget prioritized objectives -- I want to land my boat on the Cobblestones. Will I be able to do this after the improvements?"
* despite its reputation as an opponent of the RDC, the FfOR and its skirmishes with the RDC have sharpened the spotlight on Memphis riverfront. In this case, the FfOR have really publicized a public meeting that will give the RDC a chance to pitch their cobblestone ideas.
All cool but I think a skatepark designed and built for the tip of Mud Island, jutting into and surrounded on 3 sides by the great Mississippi River, would hold its own, and probably more with any of them. Skatelife Memphis has proposed just such an incredible public use for a piece of land that has been unused since it formed over 100 years ago.
The red line below shows the approximate location of the skatepark.
Another master plan that will cost approximately $800 thousand dollars*, when the highest end skate park is only $3 million. Another plan that won't even start gathering input from the public until late March because it's already taken a year to plan the plan.
In the meantime, greatness flows past Memphis.
So maybe that's just water under the bridge. Skatelife Memphis asks that you attend the public input sessions and let the RDC know your support for the skatepark on Mud Island. Let the RDC see the dynamism and vitality that they put off for at least two years, but can still have.
The Riverfront Development Corporation has a new web site. It looks good and, more importantly, it's built on a dynamic, open-source backend -- the Wordpress blogging platform -- and has RSS turned on.
This is a progressive float forward for the Riverfront folk.
Hopefully they'll add an event feed for their calendar soon. And I bet Wordpress will allow them to map previous web pages to their new locations, so they don't lose any of their Google Juice.
(Geekery, yes, but systems are possibilities. If you have a web site that is so static that you need a programmer to update, you won't update it much unless you're a web programmer. No updates mean little communication which means less promotion and less transparency. Of course, you still have to update but for those inclined not to communicate, Wordpress takes away the ease of use excuse.)
Roy Harrover thinks it is. The architect of Mud Island, the Memphis College of Art and Memphis International Airport says so in a letter to today's Commercial Appeal:
Before expressing firm opinions on the Mud Island River Park inclusion in the Greg Ericson proposal, city officials and representatives should realize that the park cannot be used for commercial purposes.
The park property north of Union was added legally by accretion to the Promenade, which lies between Front Street and the Mississippi River. This open-space promenade was dedicated to the citizens of Memphis by the city's founders.
The cobblestones are rocks. No one can deny it. As surely as Graceland is stone, mortar, wood, paint, water, mud and trace amounts of peanut butter and banana, the cobblestones are rocks.
The boys back at the lab won't find anything but rock. Nothing close to the pride of Memphis' founding and commercial ascent, the shame of its brutality and moral decline, the history of its early connection to the River and its lost connection during its dystopic flight eastward. It won't find the ghosts of man, mule and machine that have wandered down to the River's edge and back up to Memphis, or an imagination that conjures those spirits.
Rocks.
Happy Hallowe'en. Be safe, befriend the intangible, beware Dickey Drakeller.
Maybe we suppress it for the same reasons we run from the forest. And we ignore it because we're stuck with a vision of someone else's waterfront -- San Diego, or New York or Destin, or Pickwick.
Memphis needs a vision of the architecture and landscape for the River's edge. The vision should recognize both the edge's natural beauty,
and us.
The River should be the landscape architect.
The man-made structures, the paths, or boat docks, or houses, should be built to survive the River's power, and complement the natural --the River's water, mud, trees, etc. And they should point us to the River. They should tell us to use it. And reward us with their beauty when we look back from the River.
They should not be built to overpower its natural edge.
Although funding was approved for Beale Street Landing, Councilmembers are going to take another look at the project.
In an unprecedented action, Councilmember Dedrick Brittenum has asked that information about the $29.4 million new boat dock be presented to the Council CIP budget committee this Tuesday (June 19) at 12:30 p.m. on the 5th floor of City Hall (125 N. Main).
Brittenum sent letters to those who spoke at the last Council meeting, stating that the public will have an opportunity to speak at the committee meeting.
If you have questions that you’d like answered or comments you’d like to make about the new commercial dock, you may * attend the meeting Tuesday * contact Councilmembers by phone at the Council office, 576-6007(You will be able to leave messages), by fax at 576-6796, or by e-mail at: ec.jones@memphistn.gov brent.taylor@memphistn.gov madeleine.taylor@memphistn.gov dedrick.brittenum@memphistn.gov carol.chumney@memphistn.gov edmund.ford@memphistn.gov barbara.swearengen-ware@memphistn.gov joe.brown@memphistn.gov myron.lowery@memphistn.gov scott.mccormick@memphistn.gov tom.marshall@memphistn.gov jack@jacksammons.com.
Councilmembers Sammons, Chumney, and Jones voted against the boat dock. Councilmembers Brittenum, Brown, Ford, Lowery, McCormick, Marshall, and Ware voted for the project. Councilmember Madeleine Cooper Taylor abstained. Councilmember Brent Taylor was absent.
Virginia McLean President, Friends for Our Riverfront www.friendsforourriverfront.org
So if you like Beale Street Landing, or love it, or hate it, or just think the money would be better spent elsewhere, this is one more chance to be heard and to change minds.
Memphis decays. Beale Street Landing in its pristine condition may have an allure, but what will it look like when the elements -- humidity, moisture, mud, vegetation, heat -- have had their way with it? How will that red paint (is it paint?) look if it's not touched up regularly? What if it has rust, mud streaks? Perhaps it will look like an abandoned piece of farm machinery out in the field. I like decay, so that sounds pretty good to me. But...
Memphis' support for modernist architecture decays even faster. Memphis likes bright shiny new things, and nothing looks brighter and shinier than a newly-minted modernist building. But once it's no longer bright and shiny, once it has heat-warped angles, or chipped paint, or rust stains, Memphis wants to trade it in for the next bright shiny thing and act like it never existed. This is true of non-modernist architecture as well, but there's something about the futurist promise of modernism that disappoints us so quickly as presentist decay sets in.
Does this mean I don't like modernism? No, I love it. I could be the only person in Memphis who doesn't want to tear down the mid-century Modernist Cossitt Library downtown. It should never have been built on the destruction of the original Romanesque building, but here it is and I like it. The point is, it hasn't wowed Memphis with its new car smell in over 40 years and Memphis treats it worse than an abandoned '78 Chevette. Inserting the incongruously modern Beale Street Landing into our our muddy, green, rusty, classic Riverfront could follow the same arc of municipal love.
You still can't get to Mud Island. A trip to or from the Pyramid remains for trailblazers. And in the renderings I can't see the connections between Tom Lee Park, Beale Street, Jefferson Davis Park/Visitors' Center and Beale Street Landing. A strong supporter of Beale Street Landing, Aaron of SkatelifeMemphis makes this point,
When the skate park is built we will have a big draw for the downtown and people will start hanging out more at the Landing as they can watch skaters skating just across the river at the River park.
Or people might be hanging out cursing the fact they can't get to Mud Island. Aaron continues.
Even more ideally, a bridge going from the Landing to the Skatepark would make a great combination and synergy between the two locales.
To silence the curses, we'd have to add another capital project, a bridge. $29 million dollars and we still have to float to Mud Island!
But if we were to instead build the pedestrian drawbridge, along with more modest improvements suggested here and here, we could make the foot of Beale a vortex of connection, rather one more disconnected place.
The foot of Beale, at the cobblestones and the Mississippi, is beautiful.
Between the the Mississippi, the bluff, the cobblestones and other man-made details,
it has a very distinctive feel, a Memphis feel -- muddy and green, rough and rusty, classic.
It conjures the past
but creates no more a barrier to the future than Huckleberry Finn does.
Yet the foot of Beale is empty. No people.
Perhaps that's because:
there's no access. It's hard as hell to get from Beale Street, Tom Lee Park, Jefferson Davis Park, the Visitor's Center and Mud Island.
other than the River, nothing else is there.
So how do we solve the first problem, no access? By creating access.
We build stairs descending from the crosswalk at Beale and Riverside.
We provide a Bluffwalk alternate route that, instead of taking you to Riverside, takes you to stairs we build descending to the cobblestones.
We remove the parking lot between the buildings on Front and Riverside. Memphis parking lots do to walkers what Southern prison movie swamps do to bloodhounds -- lose them.
Presently Gayoso empties into that parking lot...
and runs straight into a lamppost.
We build stairs at the foot of Gayoso down to Riverside, that lead to a crosswalk, that lead to the cobblestone stairs. Presently you have to climb down an embankment to Riverside, then cross Riverside without a crosswalk. If you make it this far, there are some nice stairs to take you to the cobblestones and the River.
We solved the first problem, you are at the River. What about the second problem: what do you do when you get there?
You walk through, continuing the Bluffwalk or beginning the Wolf River Greenway. If you're coming from the Visitors Center/Jefferson Davis, you walk through on the way to Tom Lee Park; and vice versa, if you're coming through from Tom Lee Park. This might require some ingenious method of pointing walkers from the stairs descending from Tom Lee to the ramp ascending to Jefferson Davis, without modifying the cobblestones, but we can do it.
Go to Mud Island. One of the great ideas brought forward in the last 30 years is the pedestrian bridge spanning the Wolf River Harbor that Denise Scott Brown proposed 20 years ago. This will create a major flow of pedestrians down to the River. Kids love bridges. Never, ever underestimate the power of children to enliven Downtown. Here's a photo of a pedestrian drawbridge in the Netherlands.
Go to a restaurant, cafe, riverboat or other vendor moored or located at the foot of Beale. Yes, it's been tried before, it's time to try it again. But if tried again, it can't be tried without fixing the access problem. If it's hard to get there, people will not only not use it, they won't even know about it.
Expanding my point that the Riverfront Development Corporation succeeds best with projects that are details and enhancements, here are 5 they should start work on tomorrow.
extend the Bluff Walk under the old bridges to the National Ornamental Metal Museum.
extend the Bluff Walk over the Mississippi on the old Harahan Bridge. Before the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge was finished in 1949, automobiles had to cross the River at Memphis on the cantilevered sides of the Harahan Bridge. (for further details, check out Steve Cox's cool Harahan site, including this description of the roadway). The Harahan, which was built as a railroad bridge, and returned exclusively to that after 1949, still has the cantilevered supports, minus the planks that cars drove on. The planks could be added and Bluff Walk could be extended on these supports to Arkansas.
3. at various points along the riverfront, use the large rocks that line Tom Lee and Greenbelt Park (on Mud Island) to create steps down to the water. A prototype from the Civilian Conservation Corps. I believe the rocks there for erosion protection, but they're a major obstacle to the River. As steps they will protect and invite.
envision and make the outside of the U.S. Customs House (soon to be the University of Memphis Law School) a public space. It's wide, it's a terminus, it's visually interesting and its market is expanding. This could one of downtown's unique places if its purposes extends beyond entry, exit and passing by.
A outdoor cafe comes easily to mind. Cafe Zero.
Special bonus points if they integrate the fountain area of the Cossitt Library. That area's a neat space, but has never had a use and therefore never had people.
re-envision the Mud Island Auction Street Bridge as an invitation to pedestrians and motorists. It's a problem of details. Like other recently (re)built Memphis bridges, it looks like a freeway overpass from 1965.
When I see something like that, I think, a) I probably can't walk over it; b) there's nothing interesting on the other side. The re-envisioning could be as simple as replacing the street lights and railings with designs that announce "Memphis!".
I want to add some stuff about the foot of Beale, the possible-future site of Beale Street Landing, but will post on that later.
This is an easy post, because the successes are listed here.
Given the rancor that follows the RDC, this might read like sarcasm. It's not -- these are real accomplishments that the RDC and Memphis can be proud of.
Each of the projects is a) well-done, b) evolutionary, building on the work begun by many others such as Boss Crump, Paul Coppock, Mayors Hackett and Herenton, Tandy Gilliland, Henry Turley, etc.; c) relatively low-cost; d) a detail of a place, rather than a place itself.
Tom Lee Park is a great success due to many of these details. It's a vibrant, friendly, diverse, connected, beautiful place that gets better all the time, as its trees grow and the Bluff Walk expands. It's a model that already exists, right in front of our eyes. And the RDC has been a big part of that.
How do we extend the success to the riverfront from Beale to Auction? The RDC's big answer has been major projects like Beale Street Landing and the commercial development of the Public Promenade -- probably well-done, but not evolutionary, not low-cost and not details, but major places themselves. Those projects are deviations from the organic recipe that has worked so well for them and the Memphis riverfront, at Tom Lee Park and Mud Island.
Am I being conservative? I am. Let nature and history be the primary shapers of the riverfront, rather than dam-the-Yangtze style visions.
RDC succeeds, and very well, as steward of a more organic vision. They should keep adding Memphis-class details to an universe-class riverfront.
A million years and a month ago I went to the Friends for Our Riverfront sponsored, Project for Public Spaces led placemaking session for the Memphis riverfront. 135 citizens attended, according to the Commercial Appeal. Members of the FfoR (of course), Memphis Heritage, University of Memphis Department of City Planning, Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development, and the Riverfront Development Corporation (including its Executive Director, Benny Lendermon -- which is great) and bloggerdom attended, among others.
It began with a short introduction to placemaking by PPS' leader Fred Kent and examples of good and bad examples of waterfront places around the world. We then broke up into groups to wander the riverfront between Adams and Beale, the Mississippi and Court Square, and play the placemaking game.
Every participant had the same questions to answer, which included a multiple choice questionnaire about the place (e.g., "rate the place's accessibility", 1 to 5), plus more general questions, like "List short-term changes that could be made to the space to make it more attractive", "Ask users of the space for their reaction to the space." (these are from memory so I've probably gotten them wrong, but not, I think, that wrong.)
My group's destination/space was the parking garage next to Confederate Park. Despite all their other acrimony, the RDC and the Friends for Our Riverfront agree that this parking garage should be demolished. It's what to do with the space after demolition that's the major issue.
My group only had me and two other people in it. One was the group leader, Jack Tucker, architect and one of the pioneers since the 1970s of the downtown renaissance. The other group member was Tandy Gilliland, the founding president of the Chickasaw Bluffs Conservancy, the group responsible for giving Memphis the Bluff Walk. (There are 2 successes from the annals of Memphis activism that blow my mind: the citizens who fought and defeated the proposal to put Interstate 40 through Overton Park, and the citizens who fought the City, powerful developers and powerful property owners and won the right to build the public amenity known as the Bluff Walk. In both cases I wonder, "how the hell did they do that?!")
But I did manage to snap this picture, at the foot of the Bluff on Adams.
Across Riverside is the Visitor Center and the harbor but there is no light or crosswalk and a cyclone fence to block you if you could cross. To get from Adams to the Visitor Center, you have to walk down to Jefferson, cross Riverside, then walk to the Visitor Center, which is actually aligned with Adams.
Someone coming from one of the Convention Center hotels would have to take this circuitous route; worse, a traveler who has stopped at the Visitors Center and might like to try out Mud Island has to make the same serpentine route in reverse to get to the Mud Island bridge and monorail. Here's a video to help confuse you.
Here's one unlucky family experiencing the painfully out-of-the-way walk.
It was pretty obvious how bad this particular problem was and the people who can fix it the fastest, the RDC, were there to walk and witness the problem.
When we returned from the placemaking game, we assembled the many ideas and each group presented theirs. The Friends for our Riverfront and PPS will be creating a report based on the ideas.
