Tag: Bass Pro Shops

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Reddit Bonanza!

Memphis dazzled on Reddit last week. Here are just a few examples.

Interesting as Duck

A gif of the Peabody Hotel duck march made the front page in a post to the r/interestingasfuck subreddit. In 24 hours, the post had more than 87,500 upvotes, 1,200 comments, and the gif had been viewed 3.5 million times.

Murica

This old (2019) tweet resurfaced over on the r/Murica subreddit.

This. This right here.

The winner of the snarkiest bumper sticker in Memphis goes to …

Posted to r/memphis by u/betweenthewinds

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News The Fly-By

City Clear-Cut Trees Near Bass Pro Without Permit

CREDIT: Naomi Van Tol

Less than 10 days remain in a cease-and-desist order issued by the Corps of Engineers that halted the clearing of trees and underbrush from the east banks of the Wolf River Harbor.

The clearing, initiated by Mayor A C Wharton’s administration, began in December, when more than 1,000 yards of trees and underbrush were razed from the riverbank — with much of the clearing occurring on the bank below the Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

Shortly after, the Corps issued a cease-and-desist order to the city because they were operating without proper environmental permits.

Naomi Van Tol

An area clear-cut by the city without a permit.

“To me, it’s not a silly, minor issue. They need to do some serious mitigation for this,” said local environmental activist Naomi Van Tol, who noted the irony of a massive clearing she calls “unnecessary” occurring directly below a retail giant that touts conservancy as a core principle of their mission.

Van Tol and other environmentalists have several concerns about the clearing, but the potential destabilization of the riverbank stands out.

“Many of those trees are over a hundred years old. The trees, the underbrush … that’s what was holding the bank together,” said Van Tol, who witnessed large amounts of dirt being removed from the bank and dumped in the harbor.

Should any portion of the harbor collapse and create the need for corrective action, the cost will likely be shouldered by taxpayers, Van Tol said.

Gregg Williams, chief of the regulatory branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, signed off on the public notice of the cease-and-desist, but he would not speculate on potential damage.

“We’re not for or against the project. We’ll look at the comments. We’ll look at the assessment, and then we’ll make a decision once we have all of the information we’ll need,” Williams said.

Jack Sammons, the former chief administrative officer for the city, initially authorized the clearing as part of the Bass Pro public-private partnership to redevelop the Pyramid and the surrounding area. The clearing of the trees was to provide unobstructed views for patrons of Bass Pro and to make way for a floating boat dock for Bass Pro’s planned fishing tournaments.

Van Tol is quick to point out that an unobstructed view was already available from the observation deck, and the floodwalls surrounding the Pyramid already restrict view into the harbor and river.

“There was absolutely no point in the clearing. None,” Van Tol said.

When contacted, Bass Pro would only say that they had nothing to do with the decision to cut down trees.

“We were unaware that any trees were ordered cut down around our facility. This was conducted by the City of Memphis. This was not our decision,” Bass Pro spokesperson Jack Wlezien said.

An after-the-fact permit for continued work could be issued by the Corps, but according to Mayor Jim Strickland’s Chief Communications Officer Ursula Madden, no further clearing work is being planned at this time.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1395

Frosty’s Got a Gun

Have you ever stopped to think about some of the things that go on in the popular holiday song “Frosty the Snowman?” Like that part where Frosty leads the children down the streets of town right to a traffic cop. And he “only paused a moment when he heard him holler, ‘STOP!'” Have you ever wondered how Frosty could just flat-out ignore a policeman’s direct order and get away with it?

Well, he’s a snowman, so he’s white obviously. But that’s only part of the troubling story. What we didn’t know until this ad for Bass Pro’s $49.99 holiday inflatables came out: Frosty, the “happy, jolly soul” immortalized in song, isn’t an ordinary enchanted snowman. He’s a seven-foot-tall enchanted snowman packing major heat. It’s all visions of sugarplums until your childhood fantasies start fighting back.

Neverending Mongo

Prince Mongo shows up in the strangest places. Last week, his name popped up in a post for the feminist blog Jezebel. Mongo told the author, who was in Memphis to shop at thrift stores, about the time he won an insurance settlement and used the money to rent a hot-air balloon and buy a bunch of expensive radio equipment to broadcast from said balloon and how said radio equipment had to be thrown from the balloon to make it lighter as the balloon approached power lines.

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News The Fly-By

Pinch District Keeps Historic Designation

The Pinch District won’t lose its listing on the National Register of Historic Places any time soon.

In January, the Pinch was in the crosshairs of the Tennessee Historical Commission (THC) to be removed from the register. The commission said the area had lost many of its buildings, and “has lost the significance for which it was listed and no longer retains integrity of location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, and feeling.”

But the THC deferred a decision on the removal in January. In a letter to state Senator Lee Harris, E. Patrick McIntyre, executive director of THC and the State Historic Preservation Office, said “I have deferred consideration for the de-listing of the Pinch District indefinitely.”

View of the Pyramid and Pinch District

Harris said Pinch constituents asked him to get involved in the decision just as he was taking office in January. Since then, he said he’s been in talks with the THC and planned public meetings on the topic.

“For now, that fire is out,” Harris said in a Friday meeting with Pinch stakeholders.

But he warned that things could change if the THC gets new board members or a new executive director.

Listing on the National Register goes beyond words on a plaque. June West, executive director of Memphis Heritage, said Friday the degeneration allows building owners to leverage historic tax credits to renovate their properties.

“If it had been de-listed, each individual property owner would have had to nominate their building as an independent, self-standing building to be on the National Register,” she said. “In some cases, some of the buildings probably would not be allowed to do that on their own because they may not have the significance that the National Register might require.”

The news comes as Pinch neighbors and business owners prepare for the MEMFix event (the city’s ongoing series of neighborhood revitalization festivals) happening there on Saturday, April 11th. Friday’s MEMFix meeting at the Crowne Plaza Hotel brought together stakeholders and volunteers to get the Pinch ready for hundreds of visitors expected at the event.

John Paul Shaffer, Livable Memphis program director, looked down at the Pinch from an 11th story window in the hotel. He pointed to lots of vacant properties there but noted the many opportunities for development. From the window, it was hard not to notice the huge, silver Bass Pro Shops sign on the Pyramid and just how close it is to the Pinch.

“The thinking on the part of the Pinch stakeholders was to get out in front of Bass Pro,” Shaffer said. “to bring attention to the Pinch to say, ‘We’re here. We’ve been here. We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Now’s our opportunity to show everyone where we are on the map’.”

Many of the vacant lots in the Pinch got that way by lack of restrictions on surface parking lots when the Pyramid was built. So many buildings came down as property owners looked to cash in on Pyramid parkers.

In fact, the original nomination to the National Register was comprised of 41 buildings or sites in the Pinch. The figure was bumped up to 43 in 1990 in an administrative correction. But in the time of the Pyramid’s construction and its closure, only 19 of the buildings remain in the Pinch.

“The expanse of vacant lots is distressing for what once was the cradle of the City of Memphis,” the THC petition says.

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News The Fly-By

MEMFix Event Promotes Pinch Potential

Heavy construction pounded on at a fevered pace to transform the sleek, shiny Memphis Pyramid into Bass Pro Shops. But over in the Pinch District — spitting distance from the Pyramid’s storm of industry — things were quiet.

Westy’s was opening for lunch. The red picnic tables in front of Red Fish were empty. The people who were outside on Main Street appeared to be locals. No outside visitors, it seemed, came calling for the vibe of the neighborhood. But there’s a plan to change that. 

Livable Memphis and community leaders plan to make the Pinch District the place to be, at least for one day, by holding a MEMFix event (the city’s ongoing series of neighborhood revitalization festivals) there. On Saturday, April 11th, the Pinch will be filled with pop-up shops, the sounds of live music, and tons of people who haven’t been to the Pinch in awhile. 

The sparsely developed Pinch District is in the bottom left corner.

Though the MEMFix event will transform the district for only one day, leaders hope it will leave a lasting impression and re-energerize a part of town adjacent to next year’s hottest spot for new Memphis tourists.

“We want to put the Pinch back on the map,” said John Paul Shaffer, program director for Livable Memphis.

Shaffer’s group, local business owners, property owners, and neighborhood groups met last week to begin planning April’s MEMFix in the Pinch. 

Tanja Mitchell, past president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, said she thinks a “little road striping, and a little paint, and some landscaping can go a long way.” She’s looking forward to the MEMFix event to spruce up the Pinch District, get it ready for the Bass Pro opening in May, and she hopes the event inspires some development in the area.

 “We just hope Memphians notice the Pinch again,” Mitchell said. “It’s been dead there for awhile, but we’re here and we’re not going away. It’s a unique part of Downtown, and there are a lot of businesses that are hanging on there and they have been for awhile.”

The neighborhood took a hit in November when T.J. Mulligans owner Lee Adams announced he was going to close the bar. The Irish pub was a favorite of locals from Downtown and Mud Island, and it was a major magnet for outsiders to visit the Pinch. 

But Adams told Memphis Business Journal at the time that he’ll remodel the building and either lease it or build a new restaurant concept there himself. That concept would likely have an outdoor theme to attract customers visiting Bass Pro, he told MBJ.

Redevelopment plans have come and gone for the 23-acre Pinch District. Those plans have always been a secondary priority for city officials, behind the Pyramid redevelopment.    

A new study of the area, published in 2013, said the Pinch was “too sparsely developed to feel like Downtown” but said the area has “good bones,” which gives it potential for redevelopment. 

The area has the potential to attract some spin-off energy from Bass Pro, the study said, but how much depends on what’s there and how easy it is to get there. 

Originally, the city wanted a single master developer for the area, but the plan fell through. Development now will likely happen through one-by-one deals with developers and individual property owners.      

“The quality and speed with which these out-parcels are developed will have a profound impact on the spin-off energy provided by the reuse of the Pyramid,” according to a 2013 Pinch development study.   

That spin-off energy, too, will need to be conveniently funneled, and the study suggested a pleasant pedestrian connection from Bass Pro to the Pinch. 

Overcoming these possible pitfalls and realizing the Pinch’s potential is exactly the mission of April’s MEMFix event.

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News The Fly-By

Bass Pro Shops Expected to Also Draw Memphis Urbanites

CREDIT: Courtesy of Bass Pro Shops

Downtowners, Midtowners, Harbor Towners, and Uptowners will soon have some of the shortest drives to one of the largest selections of duck hunting gear ever assembled in America.

Bass Pro Shops officials unveiled details of their massive Pyramid project in a tour last week. They boasted that the store will, indeed, have an enormous selection of water fowling gear, maybe the biggest in the country.

It’s an intended draw for duck hunters. But what about Paul Ryburn? He’s a consummate Downtown Memphian whose love of living and playing in urban spaces is detailed on his blog, Paul Ryburn’s Journal. 

He said he’s excited that Bass Pro Shops will bring more people downtown, and it will give him a reason to hang out in the Pinch District. Also, the new bowling alley inside the Pyramid will be a place he and his friends will go regularly, he said. 

“For shopping, I don’t know whether I am in Bass Pro’s target market, but it will be nice to have a place to buy clothes without leaving Downtown,” Ryburn said. “With the May 1st opening date, I will probably stop by the first week to pick up a rain jacket for Barbecue Fest.” 

Courtesy of Bass Pro Shops

Artist’s rendering of Bass Pro’s grand entry

On the outside, the Pyramid is still that shiny, sleek, modern-looking building that defines the Memphis skyline. Nearly every inch of the inside has now been rustically hewn like a vintage hunting camp in worn, knobby lumber and weathered steel, accented with antler chandeliers. Taxidermy and animal pelts line the walls, and wildlife tracks are stamped into the floors. 

The inside/outside juxtaposition of the building is a lot like the demographic juxtaposition it sits in. The Mid-South’s largest outdoor retail destination will be set right in the midst of perhaps the least outdoorsy people in the Mid-South. Still, many Memphis urbanites said they will go to Bass Pro when it opens.

Regena Bearden is a self-proclaimed Memphis “cheerleader” as the vice president of marketing and public relations for the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau. But she also lives in Harbor Town and said she hasn’t heard many complaints about the Pyramid from her neighbors. But she knows there are naysayers. 

“The fact that [the Bass Pro Shops] is in a really unusual place and that it’s in an iconic building with a great view, people are going to be curious,” Bearden said before trailing off with a shrug, “…and if [naysayers] happen to have a good time while they’re there…”

Pam Mackey also lives in Harbor Town. She doesn’t hunt or fish. But she’s been to other Bass Pro Shops across the country. The stores are like “hunting Disney,” she said, and she’s been drawn to them because they looked “pretty, exciting, and entertaining.” 

Mackey said she’ll go to the Bass Pro Shops for the peripherals — the spa, the restaurants, the wildlife, and to satisfy her curiosity. 

“I’ll definitely be in there when it opens, and once I go in, I’m more than likely going to buy something,” Mackey said.    

Construction on the Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid is now two-thirds complete. The attraction is now slated to open on May 1, 2015.

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News News Blog

City To Receive At Least $1 Million In Rent Each Year From Bass Pro

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The city is set to receive a minimum of $1 million in rent each year from Bass Pro Shops’ new Pyramid store for the initial lease with possibilities of as much as $2.5 million in rent annually, depending on revenue from the store.

That’s according to a memo sent to Mayor A C Wharton from Housing and Community Development director Robert Lipcomb on Monday. The $1 million figure sets the “floor,” while the $2.5 is the estimated “ceiling” for annual rent revenue. Bass Pro has a 20-year lease with the city for the Pyramid with seven consecutive renewal periods of five years following that initial lease term.

“With the addition of the Rooftop Facility and Hotel to the rent calculation, $1.5 to $1.9 million is a very conservative working estimate for the annual rent revenue for the initial lease term of 20 years,” reads the memo.

The rooftop facility and hotel will feature an exterior glass “skyride,” a 10,000 square-foot rooftop restaurant and bar, and glass observation decks on the west and southern faces of the Pyramid. Construction of that project goes to bid on October 15th. Construction for the hotel and the retail store goes to bid on October 10th. Construction should be completed by August 31st, 2014, and the store is expected to open in December of that year.

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Opinion

The City Budget Explained in Ten Points, Sort Of

CREDIT: John Branston

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Talk to City Council members, go to meetings, read the handouts, put a pencil to it, and here’s what I think about the budget, with one more meeting scheduled for June 25th.

1. This is complicated stuff. No wonder the council met for seven hours Tuesday. And no wonder that last-minute decisions are the new normal, as they are in Congress. On the 4.6 pay increase for city employees, the council split 6-6, with one member (Lee Harris) absent. Every member is a potentially crucial seventh vote on every big issue.

2. The once-and-for-all fix is an illusion. Shea Flinn challenged his colleagues to come out for a cover-everything-with-no-layoffs tax rate of $3.91, an increase of 80 cents over the current city tax rate. “We can all go home,” he said. No takers, even with the Heat and Spurs in Game Six. Several years ago, former Mayor Willie Herenton came to the council with a long-range fix that would have raised the tax rate a lot less than 80 cents. The council declined. But even if it hadn’t we would probably be about where we are now.

3. Putting a pencil to the 80 cent non-starter (using the property tax calculator on the Shelby County Assessor’s website), if you own a house worth $100,000 it would cost you an additional $200 a year in city property taxes. A $200,000 house would be about $400, and so on. You have to add county taxes to that. The Commission is looking at a 9 percent increase. On the $100,000 house, that’s an additional $90, or $180 on a $200,000 house, and so on. Added together, the 80-center and the 9 percenter would be about $290 for the $100,000 house and $580 for the $200,000 house.

4. To put that another way, at $580 a year, we’re talking low-end season tickets for the Grizzlies or a new washing machine every year. More than a dollar a day. Less than full-service cable television or most cell phone charges. Not saying that is a lot or a little. Just comparing.

5. Some will say the house valuations I used are too rich. You can find sources that put the “median” home below $100,000 depending on whether that is “value” or “sales price” during a particular time frame and this may or may not include foreclosure sales. According to a Kiplinger survey, Memphis is one of the ten least expensive places to live in the U.S. Kiplinger uses “median home value” whatever that is, and pegs it at $99,000. I don’t think many if any elected officials live in houses worth less than $100,000, but I know several who live in houses worth a lot more than that.

6. On the 6-6 vote on the 4.6 percent raise, Council chairman Ed Ford voted against it, along with five white council members, as he told me he would. White councilman Bill Boyd joined five black colleagues in voting for it.

7. If property taxes are a big factor in where people live then why isn’t Lakeland, which has no city property taxes yet, growing faster than Collierville, Germantown, and Arlington (where Lakeland high-schoolers go to school)? Obviously, schools and other factors come into play.

8. The biggest mistake the council can make, or one of the biggest anyway, would be cutting back on trash pickup. It’s a cliche to say that legendary big city mayors and bosses like E. H. Crump and Richard Daley, whatever their faults, got the trash picked up. Cities that work pave the streets and pick up the garbage at a minimum; broken cities don’t.

9. Tourism Development Zones (TDZs) like the one at the fairgrounds are toast, if not this year then next year or the year after. Bottom line: The tax money they funnel into big underused public buildings and capital improvements in places where people don’t live is needed more for general operating expenses in places where people do live.

10. The Riverfront Development Corporation didn’t use $317,000 in federal funds for a walkway behind the Pyramid so the feds are taking it back. The grant was issued 13 years ago. It would have built 4,350 feet of walkway from the existing walkway over the cobblestones to the bridge to Mud Island. Any marketer with a minimum of imagination could have dubbed this stretch and the adjoining Greenbelt walkway and Tom Lee Park walkway going up the hill to the lovely overlook at Martyr’s Park “The Great Mississippi Bike and Pedestrian Path.” It could have been open 10 or 11 years by now, hosting annual events ala Joe Royer’s canoe and bike races, but for the uncertainty of Bass Pro Shops in the Pyramid and the RDC being the RDC. Instead we have, in various stages of planning and construction, a boat dock for more than $40 million, a Bass Pro superstore for about $200 million, and a Main Street to Main Street Connector for more than $30 million. Probably $300 million in all, if and when it is finished. Think of all the things that could be done for $3 million, or one percent of that. Swinging for home runs has a price.

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Opinion

Expert Suggests Six Quick Fixes for Riverfront

CREDIT: John Branston

river_walk.JPG

Jeff Speck, author of Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step at a Time, suggests six quick fixes for the riverfront.

At the request of Mayor A C Wharton, Speck reviewed some 20 riverfront plans dating back more than 30 years. He gave a nice straightforward 90-minute talk to about 125 people at the Memphis Cook Convention Center Monday. Speck showed familiarity with the past, present, and future of the riverfront. He was last here for an extended visit in 2008, but also remembers the 2002 grand vision that included a land bridge and high-rise buildings on Front Street. He called it “as imaginary as it was imaginative.”

“The last thing the city needs is another plan,” he said.

Here are his six suggestions, along with my comments.

The Pyramid: Its connection should be to Main Street, not Front Street. The Pinch should focus on attracting people from conventions, not travelers on the interstate. Bass Pro “still has a long way to go” to understand the city. Speck suggests selling off four acres on Bass Pro Boulevard (the southern entryway next to the state visitors center) for private development and turning the boulevard into two or three lanes of car traffic and a lane for bikes and pedestrians.

Comment: I watched the Tunica casinos come out of the ground in 1994-1995. There was an incredible sense of drive, mission, and urgency. The Bass Pro Pyramid does not have that. I doubt it will meet the 2013 opening deadline. The boulevard is small change.

Mud Island Park: Still disconnected from the rest of downtown. Needs stairs to the monorail from the visitor center. Speck suggests a water taxi from Beale Street to the tip of the island. He thinks the park should be open year round. Speck did not comment on the naming controversy over Jefferson Davis Park, which is just south of the visitor center. He said this park is “the next great waterfront opportunity.”

Comment: Visitor experts overestimate Mud Island River Park every time. Memphians are bored by it, and it attracts very few tourists. It is closed six months for a reason.

Riverside Drive: Shrink it from four lanes to three lanes or two lanes. Include a buffered bike lane and a lane for parallel parking. Take the parking lots out of Tom Lee Park and next to Beale Street Landing. Keep Memphis in May in the park. Break the park up into small areas separated by trees.

Comment: A $42 million boat dock with a restaurant with no parking lot. Yikes.

The Cobblestones. Speck said it is about impossible to make it usable and historically accurate at the same time, given the demands of accessibility and preservationists. He said the RDC should finish the project and add light structures “draping” on it.

Comment: The man has done his homework.

The Riverwalk: By this he meant the sidewalk and Bluff Walk going from the Pyramid to Martyr’s Park. It now leaves the riverfront and goes behind the law school and into South Bluffs residential development. Speck suggests making it more linear and always within sight of the river. The walk should be extended between the Church of the River and Channel 3’s offices to the French Fort area south of the Harahan Bridge.

Comment: The section along the railroad tracks between Union and Madison is a pain, but I like the dogleg through South Bluffs. Those who want to stay in sight of the river can take the 84 steps down from the Bluff Walk to Tom Lee Park at Huling Street and follow it south to where it ends near the church.

Beale Street to Beale Street Landing: Needs “edging” — development along Beale Street by the parking lots near the river, once envisioned as the site of One Beale, a tall hotel and condo. The Harahan Project needs something on the West Memphis side in the floodplain, maybe just a loop trail and a pavilion, because Main Street West Memphis (the other half of the “Main Street to Main Street” idea) is too far away.

Comment: The fact that there is basically nothing on the bluff at the corner of Beale and Riverside Drive, a pretty famous American intersection, is sad. This corner, like the Pinch on the north end of downtown, actually had more activity 30 years ago when Captain Bilbo’s was around.

To learn more about Speck and his 74 pages of observations and proposals, visit the city of Memphis website.

Categories
Opinion

The Rubik’s Cube on Top of Beale Street Landing

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I have written enough about Beale Street Landing. Like Chief Joseph, I will fight no more forever. In May, when the “colorful topper” was in its infancy, I collected renderings from the Riverfront Development Corporation and Friends For Our Riverfront. An RDC spokesperson said colors in the final product might be “more muted.”

Is this muted?
Is this good urban design for a prominent public space?
Does this make the widely-mocked-as-inappropriate Bass Pro “bait shop” logo look like the Mona Lisa?
Was this created by a child with a box of LEGOs?

You make the call.

rubiks-cube-original.jpg

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