Only a handful of diehard cyclists braved the rain and cold weather this past Saturday for the Madison Avenue Bike Lane Buy-In ride. So organizers have rescheduled the event for Saturday, March 12th at noon. As of Monday, the forecast for Saturday is sunny with a high of 66 degrees.
For more on the event, check out our last post below or the event’s Facebook page.
Madison Avenue is scheduled for re-paving this spring, and the city of Memphis is considering adding bike lanes in both directions at that time. Adding bike lanes would mean taking away two lanes of car traffic, and some Madison business owners are worried that such a move would result in a loss of business.
However, plenty of bike-friendly businesses fully support the addition of bike lanes along Madison. On Saturday, cycling advocates will take to the streets to show their support for bike lanes and pass out “bike-friendly business” window stickers to supportive companies.
The ride begins at noon, leaving from Revolutions Community Bicycle Shop at First Congo Church (1000 S. Cooper) with a plan to arrive at bike-friendly Boscos Squared by 12:45 p.m. Next, the group will ride down Madison to Fino’s on the Hill, another supportive business, by 1:30 p.m. From there, riders will make stops at bike-friendly businesses along Madison to pass out window stickers.
So far, over 200 people have signed up to ride on Facebook.
For more on the Madison bike lane issue, check out this story that ran in the Flyer a couple weeks back. For more on the Bike Lane Buy-In event, check out the Facebook page.
Here’s a list of bike-friendly business along Madison scheduled to receive stickers:
Bosco’s (2120 Madison)
Fino’s from the Hill (1853 Madison)
Fuel Cafe (1761 Madison)
Garden Path Studios (587 Madison)
Hi Gorgeous! Salon (1475 Madison)
Madison Pharmacy (1750 Madison)
Maggie’s Pharm (13 Florence)
Memphis Center for Independent Living (1633 Madison)
Memphis Pizza Cafe (2087 Madison)
No Regrets (1928 Madison)
P&H Cafe (1532 Madison)
Pho Hoa Binh (1615 Madison)
The Salon (1867 Madison Ave)
Sekisui Midtown (Belvedere at Madison)
Shangri-La Records (1916 Madison)
Trolley Stop Market (704 Madison)
Tucker’s Pizza Wings & Subs (1607 Madison)
Got a suggestion to save the city money or increase revenue? If you happen to be a city of Memphis employee, you could win a cash prize for offering your advice to Mayor A C Wharton’s office.
The city launched its new Employee Suggestion program on Wednesday morning. The program allows city employees an opportunity to share their ideas on how city operations could run more smoothly, improve safety, or save taxpayer dollars. If a suggestion is implemented, the responsible employee could win cash awards ranging from $250 to $1,000.
City councilman Kemp Conrad sponsored a council resolution for the program, and it was approved by the full council earlier this year.
“The best ideas to improve city government live with the people closest to the work being done,” Conrad said. “I hope this plan inspires employees and provides them with meaningful rewards for making creative suggestions.”
The program only applies to full-time or temporary city employees. Elected officials, division directors, and deputy division directors are not eligible.
There’s still no word on which major grocery store chain will construct a 53,000-foot facility along Cooper Avenue in Overton Square.
Bob Loeb, president of Loeb Properties, told the crowd gathered in the standing-room-only public meeting at Memphis Heritage Tuesday night that the city must first commit to building a two-level parking garage in part of the massive parking lot between Cooper and Florence.
Once the city commits, Loeb believes the mysterious grocery will follow suit. Loeb said he needs a commitment from the city by June 30th. He estimates the parking structure will cost $5 million, and it also includes a detention basin to curtail problems with the flooding of Lick Creek. The parking structure would accommodate patrons of all businesses in the area.
Most of Tuesday’s public meeting focused on the new design of Overton Square. The proposed grocery store would be pulled up to Cooper Avenue, a decision that falls in line with the recently-passed Midtown Overlay plan. It would most likely feature window displays along Cooper with an entrance facing Trimble.
The plan preserves all of the buildings on the south side of Madison, with the exception of the Palm Court building that once housed an ice skating rink. Loeb said they hope to fill those buildings with restaurants and retailers.
“We want this to be a neighborhood place that’s family-friendly,” Loeb said. “It’d be good if we had some [businesses with] live music, but we’re not trying to compete with Beale Street.”
The plan also accounts for streetscape improvements and preservation of the curving alley between buildings. The cut-out area at the intersection where cars make right-hand turns from Madison onto Cooper would be reclaimed to make the intersection safer for pedestrians.
The design, prepared by architectural firm Looney Ricks Kiss, is in stark contrast from the plan proposed last year by Sooner Investments, which called for tearing down the old buildings on the south side of Madison to make way for a grocery store. Memphis Heritage and Midtowners organized against that plan, and Sooner backed out. Memphis Heritage president June West said she’s happy with the new Loeb Properties plan.
“We can’t tell you how supportive we are of this project,” said June West during the meeting.
A man in the audience mumbled: “I’ve never heard her say, ‘supportive.'”
Loeb said the next step will likely be meeting with the Memphis City Council on the future of the proposed garage.
By Lindsay Jones
Technical jargon and a mind-numbing array of numbers flustered city council members Tuesday morning, again delaying Memphis Fire Service’s two-month-old request to buy eight alternative response vehicles (ARVs).
At a Memphis City Council committee meeting Tuesday, Robert Kramer, a spokesman for International Firefighters Association Local 1784, presented a counterproposal that would require a $4 million budget allocation to buy eight ladder-less fire trucks instead of $500,000 for the ARVs.
While he acknowledged the much greater front-end cost, Kramer said his counterproposal could save the city millions in maintenance and other expenses over time. He said the city could save about $2.4 million to $3.4 million during every eight years of the trucks’ service, or $7.2 million to $11 million over 15 years.
Under the department’s current model, it forecasts spending $700,000 in maintenance when trucks reach a certain age, usually from 15 to 32 years. Then another truck is bought for about $800,000.
“Why commit $700,000 in maintenance over a 15- or 16-year time frame when you could just buy another [truck]?” he said.
However, fire department director Alvin Benson was far from convinced and said he couldn’t support the counterproposal from an EMS perspective. About 75 to 80 percent of the fire department’s calls involve injuries, not fires.
“It’s totally flawed, what they’re presenting here, and I think we should go with my original plan,” Benson said.
When city councilman Bill Boyd asked Jim Strickland, chair of the council’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee, if he still had any reservations about approving the fire department’s $500,000 purchase request, Strickland responded in the affirmative.
“I don’t know if I understand it enough to have a question,” Strickland answered.
The item, which went to the full council two weeks ago but was punted back to committee, will be considered again in committee on March 15th. It first came up at a committee session on January 4th.
Meanwhile, Benson remained as tactful as he could muster Tuesday morning, although his usually pleasant demeanor showed a few cracks here and there.
“This has drug on for a long time,” Benson told the council. “The longer we postpone this, the longer it takes to get any solution.”
The two main sticking points since the department first raised its proposal have revolved around money and safety.
Benson’s position, which he reiterated Tuesday, is that buying the smaller, more maneuverable ARVs would save on fuel, maintenance, and other costs.
The union’s position, on the other hand, is that putting 100-foot aerial trucks, or trucks with ladders, out of service in favor of first responses to EMS calls, creates a danger because it limits what firefighters can do during emergencies.
Kramer and others’ arguments from day one has been that trucks can respond to a greater variety of emergencies than ambulances, and any cost savings might not be worth the risk of deaths or injuries to firefighters or the public. Although the eight trucks he proposed Tuesday would not be equipped with ladders, they would have everything else a normal truck would have. That would leave 19 ladder trucks in the fire department’s fleet.
However, with the city budget facing a $70 million shortfall, Benson said there’s no guarantee any money will be available for trucks. And he remains certain that having ARVs instead of trucks will not pose a danger to anyone.
“I would never have brought this to the table if I thought it would jeopardize firefighters and their families, period,” Benson said.
He added: “We don’t have $4 million to invest in a project like this.”
Benson also reminded the council that San Antonio does fine with its 16 ARVs, so why can’t Memphis chug along with eight?
“I think there’s fear of job cuts with the [union] and that drives their position on this,” Benson said after the meeting.
Foes of a CVS pharmacy to rise at the intersection of Union and Cooper were in full battle array this morning, holding signs and asking for honks of support as they mourned the impending demolition of Union Avenue United Methodist Church.
The group’s leader, Gordon Alexander of the Midtown Action Coalition, conceded that the protest was symbolic. Since the demonstration was already scheduled, he and others decided to proceed even though hope of preserving the historic building is all but lost.
“We have no alternative,” he said. “They’re going to tear the church down.”
Friday, Chancellor Arnold Goldin upheld an earlier decision that essentially clears the way for the historic structure to be razed. It will be replaced by what protestors consider a bland, suburban-style retail pharmacy that doesn’t fit with the neighborhood’s quirky bohemian character.
Once built, the new CVS will sit directly across from a large Ike’s Pharmacy and variety store. CVS bought the building for more than $2 million from St. Luke’s UMC — almost $1 million more than a Presbyterian church would have paid to reuse the building as a church, Alexander said.
He called CVS’ rebuff of about 1,500 signatures against its acquisition of the building “stubborn” and “arrogant.”
“They basically bought their way in,” he said.
Although company representatives have argued their new store will create jobs and fit as much as possible with the neighborhood’s overall look, the protestors weren’t buying it. And if Alexander has his way, plenty of people in Midtown won’t be buying it either. He fully envisions an all-out boycott.
“Lots of people won’t shop at CVS,” he said.
The demolition could proceed in a few weeks.
Egypt. Egypt. Egypt …. that’s all we’ve hearing about these days. But unless you’ve been following the story very closely, it can be a little difficult to wrap your head around what’s really going on over there.
The Memphis International Solidarity Committee was recently founded to educate the public about the uprising in Egypt. They’re hosting a public discussion called “From Cairo to Memphis” at Memphis College of Art’s Callicott Auditorium on Friday, February 25th from 6 to 9 p.m.
Three of the scheduled speakers — Ahmed Zaafan, Zeina Salem, Saad Kamel — will be on-hand via Skype from Egypt. Other speakers include Neal Gammill, Dr. Rob Canfield, Ahmed Elnahas, Merci Decker, and Justin Sledge. A Q&A session will follow the panel discussion.
And if a little education isn’t enough incentive to come, there’s also free vegetarian food.
For more, check out the Memphis International Solidarity Committee’s blog.
At the city’s second Ignite Memphis event tonight, 16 participants will deliver five-minute presentations on topics ranging from Memphis’ tap water to the “dark side of social networking.”
Each participant will deliver a Power Point presentation with 20 slides set to advance every 15 seconds. The Ignite series launched in Seattle several years ago as a “fast-paced geek event,” and it’s since spread to major cities across the country. LaunchMemphis and MemphisConnect joined forces to hold the first local Ignite event last October. Click here to read reporter Mary Cashiola’s coverage of that event.
“Ignite 2” features talks by Opera Memphis director Ned Canty (“Opera Doesn’t Suck”), artist Ian Lemmonds (“A Brief History of Lies”), Mark’s Menus app founder Mark Dinstuhl (““Entrepreneurs- Public Menace”), among others.
The event kicks off in the University Theater at Christian Brothers University from 6 to 9:30 p.m. For more, go here.
It’s official: Memphis is on the grid.
On Tuesday morning, representatives from San Francisco-based ECOtality North America hosted a partner forum at The Peabody to welcome the Bluff City into a five-state embrace of electric vehicles and charging stations called “The EV Project.”
“Electric vehicles are coming, and we want to make sure businesses in Tennessee are as EV-friendly as possible,” said ECOtality’s Stephanie Cox.
Previously, only Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and about 20 smaller towns in East and Middle Tennessee were included in the state’s piece of the federally funded effort to help Americans depend less on fossil fuels and clean up the environment.
The EV project’s purpose is to develop a $230 million commercial and residential charging network to coincide with the continuing release of electric or hybrid vehicles, particularly the all-electric Nissan LEAF. That car is expected to help consumers save about $1,800 a year on fuel costs.
Production for the LEAF, which has a lithium ion battery and can go 100 miles between charges, will be moved in 2012 to the Nissan plant in Smyrna just outside of Nashville. The plant is expected to manufacture 150,000 electric cars a year, along with 200,000 battery packs. Many of the car’s components are made from recycled materials such as plastic water bottles.
“It’s not a question of if; it’s how fast we’re going to see reliance on electric vehicles,” said Mayor A C Wharton.
To supplement the LEAF and other vehicles’ relatively short charging range, high-voltage charging stations are going to be installed around the state to help drivers with longer trips.
Since quick charges take about 30 minutes, the charging stations are going to be put where people tend to stop and spend an hour or more — shopping centers, libraries, hotels, hospitals and other attractions. That way, the inconvenience of having to stop and juice up is more “bearable,” as Cox put it.
Anyone who orders one of the five-passenger sedans is eligible for a $2,500 tax incentive from the state. The zero-emission cars will be priced at about $22,500. About 100 of them are already on the road since their December release, and more will be rolling out during the spring and summer.
“The message is, let’s become less dependent on foreign oil,” said Jerry Collins, president and CEO of Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division.
As the Tennessee Valley Authority’s largest power distributor, MLGW has a vested interest in ensuring the infrastructure necessary to support electric cars comes to the Memphis area.
ECOtality will be hosting two more informational forums in Knoxville on Thursday and Chattanooga on March 22nd.
Story by Andrew Caldwell
Last month, ArtsMemphis donated Apple iPads to a few local arts organizations with one catch — use the tablet in a creative way.
Seven nonprofit arts groups were chosen to receive the iPads as part of a pilot program to encourage creativity in their production processes. The program, funded by the Jeniam Technology Fund and ArtsMemphis, will be following the participating organizations’ use of the intuitive accessory in order to determine whether to donate iPads to other arts groups in the future. The trial period will last several months, and to make things interesting, a cash prize is up for grabs to the arts group that can employ the device in the most original and productive way.
ArtsMemphis president Susan Schadt said she hopes “the portable, relatively inexpensive tool will encourage innovation and creativity.”
Applicants to the program were asked to propose how they planned to make use of their iPad. Based on those answers, seven of the 26 organizations that applied received the computers. Those groups included Ballet Memphis, Beale Street Caravan, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, and Theatre Memphis, among others.
Nearly a month into their pilot program, Schadt, said that everything is going really well, but that it is still too early to make a decision about the program’s future.
Nonetheless, ArtsMemphis has seen promising results over the past few weeks. According to Debbie Litch, executive producer of Theatre Memphis, they have been using their iPad “as a wireless remote for [the] light board … [eliminating] the need to move a heavy console as well as cables during tech rehearsals.” Theatre Memphis also has incorporated the tablet computer into their music education program.
Each of the iPads came equipped with the ArtsMemphis App, created by Resolute Interactive, giving users access to updates from the ArtsMemphis events calendar. The application was one of the first of its kind created for a nonprofit arts organization and is available for free for iPhone and iTouch users.
