Liberty Pocket Park will celebrate its grand opening on Sunday, December 10th, at 2 p.m.
According to Liberty Park Memphis, the park will feature a half-mile walking trail and 10 pieces of interactive cardio equipment.
“Weather permitting, we invite you to see the new park, hear remarks from Mayor Jim Strickland and others who inspired it, and visit other new assets in Liberty Park, including a new football and soccer field and a new ninja course inside the Memphis Sports and Events Center.”
Ashley Cash, housing and community development director for the city of Memphis, said this addition fits into the development’s vision of a place for families and people to come in hopes of activating the center of the city.
Cash explained that while they opened the Memphis Sports and Events Center a year ago for different sporting events and activities, they wanted to make sure there were “assets for the community.”
“That’s where we are now,” said Cash. “It’s a nice sized park. We really wanted to have those fun places for community members to go, but then in conversations with the American Heart Association, be able to provide a place for people to come out and get healthy.”
The Flyer spoke with Cash ahead of the opening of Liberty Pocket Park regarding the development of the space, design considerations, and potential collaborations.
*This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Memphis Flyer: Can you talk about the consideration of the community when you all were designing and developing the Pocket Park?
Ashley Cash: As a part of the development, there was actually an old track that was on the northern part of the site. We anticipate some private development coming on board with a hotel and some other retail. That will go in the space of the old track, and a lot of people want that track. We also had several community meetings about what people wanted to see in the area, and oftentimes people talked about places where they could go congregate, be safe, and get some exercise, do some things with the family, and that’s where we envisioned a small park could go on the site. We thought about that replacement track, and while it’s maybe not the exact same size, this one’s got a little bit more curvature to it. We tried to create a nice walk for folks who are participating in that kind of sport. We really tried to bring what the community wanted to see, also with what we took away from the site at the time.
We know our young people like to do a lot of things. They like to play soccer — there’s a lot of youth football leagues in the city of Memphis — so we took a sort of three-activity approach in that same area. Next to the Pocket Park we will have a [turf] football field, a new soccer field that will, for now, be managed by the parks department. We’re trying to fill those needs where we see sports activity rising that we can meet the need and provide those additional activities for kids and older people alike.
Do you foresee any collaborative partnerships with Memphis Sports and Events Center?
We work really closely with them, and the managers of the site are Eastern Sports Management (ESM) and they’re really great partners. They’ve hosted a bunch of stuff, SneakFest, American Cornhole [League], just all kinds of adult and youth leagues. We envision, hopefully expanding that partnership, where we can maybe collaborate on different types of events. Someone may be having an event inside, and we can simultaneously have an event outside. We think it’s a great opportunity where people may be able to practice or warm up; they’re right across from the big sports building.
What can the community expect in terms of maintenance and potential expansions for the Pocket Park?
Of course, we expect to keep it well-maintained, as we try to do with all of our parks and all of our assets. In terms of amenities, there are already some exercise equipment type things like pull-up bars — stuff that doesn’t require electricity, human-powered if you will. What we hope to see is those being utilized. We’re excited to come back and revisit it in a year or two and see if what was developed is really reflective of what the community is doing, and how they’re using it, and if they’re any opportunities for us to make modifications to the park, at that time, we’re certainly open to doing that. I think folks are really excited about the high level of intentionality and design of the park.
