An exasperated Memphis City Council urged Memphis In May (MIM) and Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) to put aside “bad blood,” act like “grown ups,” and get a lease deal signed to bring the festivals back to the Tom Lee Park this year.
Eighty-three days before May, the festivals are “in jeopardy,” according to MIM president and CEO James Holt. Some other contracts cannot be signed — like those securing artists for Beale Street Music Festival — until the lease deal for Tom Lee Park is in hand, he said.
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland has long had the groups in mediation to hammer out details. Holt described hours of meetings recently with Strickland and his team directly. Still, one detail has stymied the lease deal.
MIM wants a cap on payments made to repair any damages done to Tom Lee Park during the festivals. MRPP wants no cap on those payments, in a sort of you-break-it-you-buy-it situation.
MRPP president and CEO Carol Coletta said renters are likely responsible for any damage done to government-owned facilities like the Renasant Convention Center and the new Memphis Sports & Events Center.
”Jim Holt — after all the conversations over the last one, and after the mayor his [Chief Operating Officer] Chandell Ryan worked so hard to get the final pieces of this deal — walked away and said, ‘We can’t live with being responsible for our damages, the expense of our damages. We cannot do it. So, we walk away from the negotiations.’”
Holt said MIM agreed to up its average restoration fee of $50,000 a year to $500,000 for the 2023 festivals. Strickland added another $500,000 of city funds. That $1 million would be ready to clean up the park after the festivals.
The additional money is needed this year as Tom Lee Park is undergoing a major, $60-million renovation. The renovation will include new landscaping, new sidewalks, new buildings, new play and recreation infrastructure, and more.
“We feel that [MRPP is] effectively attempting to shut down our festival,” Holt told council members Tuesday. “Now, the government contractor that the mayor and the city pays … is dictating the terms and has told the mayor and MIM, ‘no, $1 million is not enough. I only accept MIM to take unlimited responsibility for any damage.’”
With MIM being on the hook for damages — even with $1 million in funds to fix any — it would incentivize the group to not damage the park, said council member Worth Morgan. Should the liability fall to MRPP, Morgan said they likely fear MIM “might damage the park unnecessarily as getting back” at MRPP.
Tension between MRPP and MIM rose almost immediately after MRPP unveiled the new look of Tom Lee Park in 2017. MIM officials quickly pointed out that the new design would shrink the size of the festivals, which would also shrink its revenues, and taxes into city coffers. MRPP has defended the park design as a place for all. All of it has made for a tension between the two that even the public can feel.
Morgan said the situation was like “the Greensward issue.” There, a similar tension was publicly felt between the boards of the Overton Park Conservancy and the Memphis Zoo. That issue flamed, roiled, and simmered — and included an arduous council-led agreement process — from 2014 until a final agreement between them was inked last year.
“There’s some bad blood between the two and that is really what is inhibiting this [lease deal] rather than dollars and cents.”
Worth Morgan
“You have two boards and there’s distrust, there’s some bad blood between the two and that is really what is inhibiting this [lease deal] rather than dollars and cents,” Morgan said. “That’s why we’re here trying to arbitrate this. So, I would strongly encourage the boards to put down their pitchforks that are pointed at one another and simply agree to the terms that we’ve talked about.”
MRPP officials were present at Tuesday’s council hearing on the matter but were not given a chance to speak by chairman Martavius Jones, claiming the hearing was bumping against the council’s full meeting at 3 p.m. Jones invited MRPP back to speak at the next council meeting in two weeks but urged them to have a deal in hand.
