Moves are underway to make real a plan unveiled in March 2022 that will enlarge Overton Park, add parking for the Memphis Zoo, and forever end parking on the park’s Greensward.
A Tuesday news conference updating the project came a year and seven months after officials signed a plan to end the decades-old use of the Greensward for overflow parking. Many of those same officials met on that large field Tuesday to outline some of the movements making their plan a reality. Much go the new activity comes thanks to $3 million in federal funding, announced in July 2021 and secured by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis).
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland was voted into office one year after tensions between park activists and zoo leaders began to mount. The Greensward issue has been a mainstay on the Strickland administration’s agenda from when it began in 2016 to nearly its end later this year. (Follow the link above for details.)
Strickland outlined several projects in motion now to make that plan a reality:
• The City of Memphis Public Works and General Services personnel have vacated 281 East Parkway and moved to the Coca-Cola facility off of Hollywood by Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. (Some of these 21 acres will become parkland once again.)
• Zoo maintenance has begun moving and relocating some of their equipment to that 281 East Parkway facility.
• The city has performed preliminary design to demolish and regrade the existing city of Memphis facility located off East Parkway.
• The city has performed preliminary design to the demolition, regrade, paving, and re-striping of the existing zoo lot located on North Parkway east of University Street.
• The city is also working with Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) to identify and move any power or light poles within the project area.
Tina Sullivan, executive director of Overton Park Conservancy (OPC), noted minor adjustments to the park’s original plan for the Greensward. Also, she said no solid plans have yet been made for the space in the southeast corner of the park that will be open once the city has vacated it.
One of the original plans imagined an earthen berm to be built around portions of the Greensward, especially where the field bordered the zoo’s main parking lot. Instead, a shaded walking trail will be added all around the Greensward to give visitors access to it and a shady spot to sit.
Also, improvements around Rainbow Lake will “naturalize and beautify” it to “look more like a real lake rather than a concrete pond.” The Rainbow Lake Pavillion will be replaced with a new facility that will allow rentals and offer some outdoor education classroom space.
Some of these changes were seen on renderings present during Tuesday’s news conference. Though, Sullivan said those were ideas more than concrete plans.
Tuesday’s event featured many thanks to the many organizations who worked together for these many years to make a plan that worked and to execute that plan.
“Well, the Greensward’s been saved and Jim Strickland had a lot to do with it,” Cohen said, noting that his help came during the “fourth quarter” of the game. “He received a lot of gruff, which he did not deserve because he was working quietly to get this done.”
To which, Strickland later returned the thanks, saying Cohen’s help with the federal funding “led us into a two-minute drive down the field to score a touchdown at the end,” continuing the football analogy.
Of special note, though, is the new relationship formed between zoo leaders and those from OPC. Much of the early work on this issue seemed adversarial between the two. However, former zoo president and CEO Jim Dean seemingly brought a cooperative spirit to the situation, helping to create a new way forward that not only solved the parking situation but yielded 17 acres of zoo property back to the park.
During Tuesday’s event, Sullivan called new zoo president and CEO Matt Thompson “my new best friend” and Thompson called that a “mutual feeling.”
Melissa Mcmasters