Charlie Newman – Memphis Flyer

When the news broke Sunday of the death of Charles McVean, he was being widely remembered as someone who was a great achiever – not only as an entrepreneur but as a devoted philanthropist.

McVean, who was 78, had been ailing for some time. But he continued his active interest in his community work, which, among other things, included the Peer Power student-to-student tutoring program, and the creation of the Big River Crossing, the country’s longest active rail/bicycle/pedestrian bridge.

He was a member of the Society of Entrepreneurs, selected for his success in running McVean Trading & Investments, LLC, and last year was honored with the Master Entrepreneur designation by the society.

In a story in Memphis magazine announcing the award, he was described as being observant of opportunities, whether in business or community, and going after them with a passion.

The story said: “Early in his commodities work, he noticed something about the cattle futures market: ‘I said, we just got a bunch of gunslingers and cowboys trading these cattle. I think I can apply some of the more advanced statistical techniques learned [from] the grain trade and beat these guys.’ And he did.”

He received an Innovation Award from Inside Memphis Business magazine twice, first in 2013 for Peer Power, and again in 2017 with Charlie Newman for the Big River Crossing.

Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen issued a statement that said, “Charlie McVean had a brilliant, creative, and innovative mind. He used it for Memphis in the areas of public education and amenities. … We need more Charlie McVeans who give back to make us better. His was a unique, valuable, important life.”

bigrivercrossing.com

As is well known, the city of Memphis sprawls a good bit. In fact, we are used to hearing politicians contend that, area-wise, Memphis is larger than Chicago, although that claim has an apocryphal ring to anyone who has driven through the Windy City from north to south.

It is undeniable, though, that over the weekend an event occurred on the downtown side of Memphis that will both magnify its size and extend its borders enormously in the eyes of the outside world.

This was the event known as the Big River Crossing, a commemoration that occurred in tandem with the completion of the Main Street to Main Street project that now links downtown Memphis with downtown West Memphis — and does so via an innovative pedestrian/bicycle pathway extending all the way across a refurbished Harahan Bridge, heretofore used only by trains. At night, moreover, the bridge has the capacity to be visually spectacular, thanks to a lighting system that can shine in “architectural white” or, as it did on Saturday and Sunday nights, in dazzling rainbow colors.

This new addition to the city’s landscape is no serendipity. It is the result of years of visionary thinking and liberally applied elbow grease on the part of several local pioneers, who, in tandem with counterparts across the river in Arkansas, worked together to accomplish what, at first blush, had seemed a crazy idea, even to some of its most avid backers.

The father of this project is the distinguished trader/investor Charlie McVean, but he had help in designing it, funding it, and executing it from a host of others — notably the late Jim Young of Union Pacific Railroad in Little Rock, who overcame his industry’s bias against shared rail/pedestrian structures, and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who went to bat for the project in Washington and ended up making it possible through the acquisition of a $15 million TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant that completed the necessary funding package.

The TIGER grant not only significantly underwrote the project (technically known as the Main Street to Main Street Multi-Modal Connector Project) but also made it possible for both of the bookend cities, Memphis and West Memphis, to undertake significant rehabilitation of their downtown cores. It is one of those rare circumstances from which environmentalists and urban-growth enthusiasts can both take heart.

And McVean and his collaborators aren’t resting on their laurels. They imagine further work on the adjoining Mississippi River levees that would result in a recreational artery extending all the way to New Orleans and to the creation of what would be, in McVean’s words, the world’s largest land park.