Tag: city development

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Opinion Viewpoint

Another Bright Idea for Memphis: Show Some Ambition!

Smart City Consulting’s Tom Jones has some more Bright Ideas for Memphis:

At the risk of being branded for civic heresy, I’d like Memphis to adopt Nashville’s attitude. I admit that I’ve never really “gotten” Nashville, but I nonetheless grudgingly admire something imbedded in its civic culture — ambition.

I was in Nashville shortly after its school district was placed on the state’s “high priority” list. There was a palpable outrage among city leaders that such a thing could happen there, and they vowed to do something about it. Here, more than 100 of our city schools do not meet state benchmarks, but there’s a pervasive sense that that’s just the way things are in Memphis.

In Nashville, better decisions flow from this ambition and sense of purpose. Its political and business leaders simply refuse to accept second best or any suggestion that they shouldn’t set national standards. It’s hard to imagine a Bass Pro Shop inhabiting a signature building there.

When Nashville wanted to build a symphony hall, it did not append one onto a convention center so it could finagle hotel-motel taxes. Instead, it built a symphony center that is a monument to its cultural commitment. When it came time to build a new central library, it built it as a reminder of the importance of urban design — and downtown.

The magic in Nashville isn’t the result of consolidated government. Rather, the magic is found in a special strain of leadership that brings all civic resources, public and private, to the table to solve problems. And yet, Memphis needs consolidation, not because of promised savings that are unlikely to materialize, but because we need to do something to shake up the status quo and send the message to the rest of the nation that things are changing here.

We begin by being brutally honest, because troubling national indicators should inspire a new sense of urgency and a new way of thinking. We need action on all fronts. We need Highway 385 to be a toll road. We need to attack teenage pregnancy by getting serious about handing out birth control. We need to eliminate all tax incentives for low-wage, low-skill jobs. We need to find the best urban school superintendent and pay whatever it takes to get that person here. We need to get more city school students to college graduation, because they are the best predictor of our future economic success. We need to transform our riverfront from a stage set trapped in time to a vibrant magnet for talent.

We need to rationalize our tax structure. It’s simply not right that the less you make in Memphis, the more you pay in taxes as a percentage of income. It’s intolerable that city taxpayers pay a disincentive to live here and pay for programs and amenities that are regional in nature. If we move regional services to the regional (Shelby County) tax base, the Memphis tax rate can be comparable to Germantown’s.

These things don’t require that much money. They do, however, require ambition.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Another “Bright Idea” for Memphis: “Stop Building Crap”

In last week’s cover story, “Bright Ideas,” associate editor Mary Cashiola asked nine Memphians how they would improve the city. Here are some ideas from Andrew Couch:

When I think about Memphis, I think of a city that is okay. If you leave education, leadership, and crime out of the discussion, we’ve got a mostly all right place to live.

Our air quality isn’t perfect, but it isn’t that bad. Our water is clean(ish) when compared to other cities. Our commute times are not that bad. We’ve got loads of open space nearby, loads of parks, a giant river, easy access to great food and live music, and we’re not very far from larger cities like Chicago, Atlanta, and New Orleans. So what needs to change?

If I could change anything about Memphis, it would be this: I would ever so politely ask the majority of my co-inhabitants here to take another look. There is a problem with our way of life, and it has nothing to do with global warming, hippies, environmentalists, terrorists, or the president.

This city is becoming a dirty, sprawling, and increasingly homogenized Anytown, USA. Why do we need so many Walgreens, so many lousy identical strip malls, and so many poorly and inefficiently built homes so far out into what were once perfectly pleasant woodlands?

Why do we need these giant vehicles to lug our overweight and malnourished bodies all over the once-beautiful town that we are ruining with such lousy and culturally neutral garbage? Why is there so much litter on our streets? To quote my favorite writer, J.P. Donleavy, we’re “teaching the landscape an ugly lesson it will never forget.”

Here are a few extraordinarily simple ideas that I would like to share:

1) Stop building crap. By crap, I mean cheap, ugly, inefficient buildings that age poorly and look worse than the building you tore down.

2) Stop tearing down old buildings to build crap. See above.

3) Stop building so many parking lots. If you have to build a parking lot, put it behind the building.

Once the building is required to bear its regrettable face to the street without a parking lot to bear the brunt of the offense, you may just decide that your building looks like crap and subsequently redesign.

4) Get out of your car every once in a while. Take a bus, ride your bike, or ride in someone else’s car for a change. The Health Department has a wonderful ride-share program that works great.

5) Stop throwing trash on the ground.

My wish and vision for Memphis is one that is simple and attainable in the near-term: a town that has preserved its identity, stopped being so wasteful, and cleaned up its mess.

— Andrew Couch, Executive director, West Tennessee Clean Cities Coalition

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News The Fly-By

For Thought

CREDIT: Michael Drager | dreamstime.com

I’ve recently started working on my five-year plan. I think it’s all the business and planning forums I attend. I’m always hearing “if you don’t know where you want to go, how can you ever get there?” (I also hear a lot about “low-hanging fruit” and benchmarks, but I digress.)

My five-year plan covers everything: housing, transportation, spawn, salary, lifestyle. And in many ways, it has to. If you have children, that affects what kind of transportation you use. And where and how you live certainly depends on how much money you make.

I mention this because in the last week or so, it just seems that the more things change in the city, the more they stay the same.

The city administration formally presented the results of a $700,000 efficiency study to the City Council last week, but even though it found $19 million in potential savings, Mayor Willie Herenton didn’t seem interested in implementing them. About 80 percent of the savings came from the fire department.

“We have known for some time that there are opportunities to reduce costs, but that wasn’t what we wanted to do,” said Herenton. “The consultants can come in and study, but we’re the ones who have to run this.”

Outdoor retailer Bass Pro initially said it was interested in the Pyramid late December 2005, but it still hasn’t made a commitment. An article in last week’s Commercial Appeal quoted city CFO Robert Lipscomb saying people needed to have patience. Maybe this is what we get for dealing with a retailer that caters to fishermen, a group of people known for both their patience and their tall tales.

Also this week, Save Libertyland announced that they had been given the Zippin Pippin. The activist group is interested in donating the roller coaster back to the city, if the city will preserve it and keep it on the Fairgrounds property. If the city agrees, the only difference from a few years ago would be the Mid-South Fair made $2,500 off of it and now the ride doesn’t have any cars.

Is this progress?

What if I told you that in five years from now, the Fords will still have a family member on a majority of the local legislative bodies? Or that Herenton was still mayor? Or that the Pyramid was still sitting vacant?

Would that be acceptable?

In Curitiba, Brazil, now a world-renowned city for its solutions to sprawl, poverty, limited public funding, and other urban problems, planners started working on the city 40 years ago. Now it’s been a “showpiece of urban planning,” — more than 40 other cities have developed transportation systems based upon Curitiba’s rapid bus system and leaders from all over the world have visited the city to learn how it transformed itself.

But the smallest step was perhaps the most important: Planners met weekly, even daily, not to work on the plan but to remind and refresh themselves of the goals they were working toward.

I’m not sure how proactively the Memphis region is thinking about the future. There are areas of foresight, of course. The chamber is looking at Brooks Road and the concept of the aerotropolis. Germantown has a plan for itself called Germantown 2020. Within the entire county, the office of planning and development has a comprehensive planning section that is charged with providing direction for future growth by developing policies and strategies.

In the long-term, the most critical factor for the community’s future is perhaps transportation. The decisions that are made about roads and highways eventually affect where housing and retail are located and at what densities. And those decisions are made very far in advance.

The Memphis Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is currently working on Destination 2030, a plan for the Memphis area’s transportation needs for the next 25 years. But if the MPO is talking about what Memphis will need for the next quarter-century, the rest of the region needs to be thinking about that, too.

Look at the future Highway 385 — it’s going to extend Memphis’ reach past the Shelby County line and into Fayette County. Pretty soon, citizens might start debating the merits of the Shelby County school system versus the Fayette County school system.

But in the short-term, I think the most critical factor is what the public wants. Maybe it’s more trashcans on downtown streets. I’d like to see that, as well as eye-catching recycling bins set up in government buildings, public schools, and the airport. Maybe it’s The Pyramid torn down.

The bottom line is this: Either we think about what we want for our city or we’re just along for the ride.

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News The Fly-By

Mission: Physician

A visit to a coastal village on the Eastern Cape of South Africa sounds like a pleasant vacation. A team of Memphis health-care professionals, however, worked harder than ever on a recent trip to Dutywa, a village in the region on the verge of becoming a city.

Local New Direction Christian Church pastor Stacy Spencer and church member Charlsetta Gipson organized the trip to bring medical services to residents of Dutywa and the surrounding area, which lacks medical infrastructure.

Spencer and Gipson recruited family-care physician Twyla Twillie, dentist Steve Ballard, sickle-cell specialist Patricia Graves, and obstetrician Lanetta Anderson-Brooks, along with about 10 registered nurses. The group spent three days last month serving roughly 300 patients a day.

“It was an interesting community to spend time with,” says Anderson-Brooks. “They don’t have any doctors that practice in the community, so the primary goals of this mission are, long-term, to open a clinic, and short-term, to introduce the concept to the community and see how well it would be received.”

The group chose Dutywa because of the village’s importance as a regional education center. “Kids within a 100-mile radius will get their education there,” Anderson-Brooks explains. “Most of the kids are living away from their parents in hostels.”

Dutwya struggles with growing pains. “It’s becoming a city, but there’s no infrastructure,” Anderson-Brooks says. “People have cell phones but no running water. People are suffering from basic health needs that can make or break a community, such as poor nutrition and bad water.”

The group made advance accommodations to ensure access to medicine and basic equipment. “We had a scout team go out six months prior to the trip, and they determined the needs. They knew I would be doing pap smears, so they had a bed that could accommodate a pelvic examination and a light,” says Anderson-Brooks.

While the Memphis group made referrals and hoped to positively impact Dutywa’s public health in the short-term, they realize that one mission is only a beginning.

“One of the biggest barriers to making a long-term change is understanding the cultural differences and then starting to work within those confines,” says Anderson-Brooks. “We have plans for 30-day, 90-day, and then a one-year follow-up. We want to set a new standard in the community.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Urban Suburban

CREDIT: Soupstock | Dreamstime.com

It looks like downtown Memphis’ housing market may be getting some new competition. And it comes from a reliable, even traditional, source of real estate competition: the suburbs.

Germantown presented a Smart Growth Plan draft last month for its 700-acre central commercial and government district, complete with a new logo, wi-fi hot zones, and central city condos. It is, in short, a plan that puts the urban back into suburban.

The draft, created by the Lawrence Group, follows Germantown’s recent Vision 2020 plan, one of the goals of which was mixed-use redevelopment in the heart of the city.

According to community input from the Smart Growth draft, the public wants to see Old Germantown preserved and enhanced, a walkable/bikeable community, and more housing options, with mixed-use condos the most often cited. In fact, 95 percent of study respondents said they wanted to see townhouses, patio homes, and condominiums in the $150,000 to $349,000 price range, indicating to the consultants that there is a market for housing types not currently available.

The study even mentions installing countdown timers at pedestrian crosswalks!

If you’re not familiar with the timers, they tell pedestrians how many seconds they have left to cross a street. They’re simple and very helpful, especially on heavily pedestrian thoroughfares. But … they seem sort of out-of-place for a traditional, vehicle-driven (ahem) suburb.

Smart Growth itself seems an interesting choice for Germantown’s future. The design movement encourages compact, mixed-use communities in which people can walk to a variety of destinations.

Under its recommendations, the draft says that “buildings should always frame and enforce pedestrian circulation, so that people walk along building fronts rather than across parking lots or driveways.”

Now think about Germantown Parkway. I don’t even like to drive it; I definitely don’t want to walk across it.

In other ways, the Smart Growth Plan may not be that surprising. Germantown doesn’t have a lot of open land left; it needs to utilize what it has in a way that brings in the most tax dollars.

Despite growth in its retail and medical sectors, Germantown is still very much a bedroom community. Eighty-five percent of the city’s total tax revenue is residential. An inefficient land-use plan, like the one it has currently, is a loss of potential tax revenue. And urban properties are hot.

Twelve miles to the west of Germantown, the downtown Memphis renaissance, facilitated in part by Peabody Place, AutoZone Park, and FedExForum, has followed the rest of the country in an overall condo-fication. Why shouldn’t the suburbs follow suit?

About a year and a half ago, The New York Times even ran a trend story about “the loft look,” fake lofts (flofts?) being built in gated, suburban neighborhoods. The “flofts” have the same brick, the same exposed ductwork, and the same open floor plan as historical downtown buildings that have been converted to condos, but they’ve been built from scratch.

Unfortunately for Germantown residents, however, the plan has encountered one hitch: Like overgrown grass and visible trash cans in Germantown, it’s illegal.

“The development concepts in this plan are currently illegal under Germantown’s existing zoning and subdivision regulations,” reads the draft. “In fact, the current standards are completely antithetical to the urban design principles of this plan and the city’s vision of a ‘mixed-use,’ ‘pedestrian-friendly’ central district that would ‘create sense of place for the community’ as articulated in the Germantown Vision 2020 document.”

The consultants assume that the existing code will be changed. If so, this just may prove the old axiom: The grass is always greener, especially when there’s less yard.

Categories
Living Spaces Real Estate

South Rising

This April 12th through 29th, every-thing’s hotter down south.

That’s when the Downtown Home Show at South End takes place, and many visitors will get their first peek at what all the area hubbub the last several years has been about.

The South End is a 70-plus-acre area of downtown demarcated by developers at Riverside Drive to the west, Huling Avenue to the north, Front Street to the east, and Georgia Avenue to the south. Within those geographical boundaries has been a burst of construction that has seen ideas long on the drawing board turned into reality.

But it’s not an every-man-for-himself development where decisions are made independent of what’s happening in the building next door. The South End is “place-making” in action: turning bricks and mortar into places to live.

“We had a unique opportunity here of doing this assemblage of properties, to have a plan that at the end of the day becomes seamless and fits together,” says developer Terry Lynch of Southland Capital, one of the flag bearers on the South End project.

Where there’s something with a lofty goal, you can bet there’s an “ism” involved. The one on the mind of South Enders is “new urbanism.” That’s the theory of city planning that stresses having an inclusive community and a connectivity of neighborhood while being mixed-use (residential alongside retail alongside commercial), mixed-product (not homogenous in home size, price, or architecture), high-density, walkable, and sustainable.

Armed with these principles (and not a few dollars), developers joined forces to carve out a swath of land that would be created in the image of new urbanism. By the looks of things, they are well on their way to success.

Among the highlights of the South End are: formerly pedestrian-unfriendly land along streets transformed into walkable places with 10-foot-wide sidewalks, “bump-outs,” raised crosswalks, and streets lined with trees; numerous sites for public art; and planned space for restaurants, clubs, banks, a grocery store, health facilities, and retail.

There will be two anchor parks (Martyr’s Park/Asburn Park running next to the Mississippi River and Central Park at Central Station) and numerous pocket parks (open spaces tucked along streets, at intersections, and along natural boundaries).

This is an ambitious project that has been in development for over five years. The population of the South End area was 1,000 in 2001. Projections put that at 5,000-plus by 2011. In that year, there will be 2,500 housing units in the neighborhood.

The Downtown Home Show at South End is free for all visitors and runs April 12th to 29th, Thursdays through Sundays only, from noon to 6 p.m. ■ — GA

LivingSpaces@memphisflyer.com