Memphis has a lot of park land – maybe more than any big
city in the country.
And the debate over what to put in downtown parks and
Shelby Farms is very similar to the debates going on in many other cities.
Those two things are made clear by a story in Friday’s
Wall Street Journal, “The Focus-Grouped Park,” on the “heated debate” about
what to put in them.
Although Memphis isn’t mentioned in the story, the cities
that are – Seattle, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, Minneapolis,
Houston, and Orange County, California – all have multi-million dollar park
improvements or expansions underway.
“On a scale not seen since the City Beautiful movement of
the late 19th century, public green spaces are proliferating,” the
story says.
The report says the real controversy is over what to do
with them, with suggestions ranging from passive activities to zip lines,
climbing walls, riding trails, bocce ball, and free wireless internet. And, of
course, how to pay for those things.
Anyone following the debate over Tom Lee Park, Beale Street
Landing, the downtown promenade, or Shelby Farms will find many familiar notes.
What’s most striking, however, is that the biggest park in the Journal
story is 1,347-acre Great Park of Orange County. The story notes that this is
“60 percent larger than New York’s Central Park.”
Well, as many Memphians know, Shelby Farms is five times
the size of Central Park. And downtown Memphis, with 250 acres of parks, is also
park-rich.
Corporate sponsorship, naming rights, and private donations
are helping pay for the new parks in other cities. Gold Medal Park in
Minneapolis was financed by a $5 million donation from a United Health Care
executive, and Millenium Park in Chicago has named prominent areas after SBC,
Boeing, and British Petroleum. So far, Memphians have taken a dim view of
private development on park land, preferring to seek state and federal funds to
bolster local funding. Meanwhile, rival groups engage in an intellectual arms
race by bringing in friendly experts and consultants to rally supporters and
publicize their views.
Friends of Shelby Farms, the Riverfront Development
Corporation, and Friends For Our Riverfront take note: Memphis has an
embarrassment of riches. And the story suggests that focus groups, consultants,
and visiting experts may help the process along, but ultimately nitty-gritty
decisions are made at the local level by concerned citizens battling it out.
“It’s much more challenging to satisfy everyone’s notion of
what a park should be,” says Witold Rybczynski, a professor of urbanism quoted
in the story. “You want to please as many people as possible, but we’ve become
so different.”
