Tag: Greensward

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News News Blog

Zoo Garage Consideration Could Pause Current Plan for a Year

CREDIT: City of Memphis

City of Memphis

The current plan for the Memphis Zoo’s new parking lot, which will end parking ‘forever’ on Overton Park’s Greensward.

Construction will halt on the Memphis Zoo’s new parking lot as officials consider building a parking garage on site. City, Overton Park Conservancy (OPC), and Memphis Zoo officials said Wednesday that the move that could possibly push the current plan back one year.

Work to reconfigure the Prentiss Place parking lot on the zoo’s west side near McLean began in August. No work has been done to the zoo’s main parking lot. The current plan is a product of months of mediation between the zoo and OPC and hours of work and debate by the Memphis City Council. The plan was expect to end overflow parking on the Overton Park Greensward and be completed next year.

savethegreensward.org

Officials said Wednesday that “overflow zoo parking will continue on the Greensward while the new solution is being pursued and implemented. Should the new solution ultimately not be determined as feasible, work on the original plan will resume next winter.”

Work was halted, officials said, as they consider “a promising new structured parking solution that could result in no or minimal lost green space.” The garage would be built on the Prentiss Place lot.

The new garage could offer as many as 240 additional spaces on top of an “expanded Prentiss place lot, yielding 348 of the 415 required new spaces, and significantly decreasing the number of spaces needed from an expanded zoo main parking lot.”

“After looking into the feasibility of this solution in recent months, we reached out to both the Zoo and the Conservancy to gauge their interest, and both zoo president Jim Dean and the conservancy executive director Tina Sullivan are open to reviewing it,” said Doug McGowen, the city’s Chief Operating Officer. “While we have more work ahead of us, we feel optimistic enough about this solution that we should pause before we begin removing and/or transplanting trees from the main lot, which was the next item on the project schedule for expanding the zoo main lot.”

Officials said early looks at the plan show it’s “feasible and within the existing cost estimates.” 

A garage was considered but not included in the current plan. When he unveiled his proposal in July 2016, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the cost of a garage — then quoted at $14 million — was a major constraint on the project. Further, he said the citizens in the nearby Galloway neighborhood voted against a parking structure.  

Crews have completed 90 percent of construction on the Prentiss Place lot, which was the first phase of the original, multi-phase plan. The next phase would have involved the removal of dozens of trees, which is best done during the winter, officials said.

“Overton Park Conservancy is grateful for the city’s willingness to explore newly available building technology in search of an outcome that preserves green space,” said Sullivan in a statement. “Along with the city and the zoo, we fully support pausing the project to pursue a solution that reduces or eliminates any expansion of the zoo’s main lot into the Greensward.”

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News News Blog

Zoo Lot Construction to Begin Monday

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Brandon Dill

It’s the beginning of the end for parking on the Overton Park Greensward.

Construction is slated to begin Monday on a project that will reconfigure the Memphis Zoo parking lot, adding an additional 415 parking spaces. Those spaces are expected to end the decades-long practice of parking cars on the Greensward, the grassy field adjacent to the zoo’s parking lot.

The first phase of the project will focus on the Prentiss Place parking lot, on the northwest side of the zoo. Work there will take about three months, and during that time, the lot will be completely closed. Once complete, the new Prentiss Place lot will have gained 108 parking spaces.

Prentiss Place is expected to stay open as a two-way street for most of those three months, though some closures are expected to complete pedestrian crossings and on-street parking.

savethegreensward.org

Construction crews will then begin work on the main zoo lot, just south of the zoo entrance. That work is slated to start this fall and winter, an optimum time to transplant many trees, which officials have said is necessary to the project.

During it all, the zoo’s North Parkway entrance will be staffed and open on busy days when overflow parking is expected. This will give access to the zoo from the nearly 200 on-street parking spots on North Parkway.
[pullquote-1] “By executing on this project, we’ll fulfill [Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s] promise to put 30-plus years of controversy behind us by permanently ending parking on the Greensward, as well as accommodating the growth of one of the nation’s top zoos,” Doug McGowen, the city’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “We will surely have some growing pains as we work through the construction, but we’re committed to strong communication to make sure park visitors, zoo patrons, and neighborhood residents know what to expect.”

New zoo president and CEO Jim Dean said he was “very happy” to have the “strong” support of the Overton Park Conservancy, Overton Park Alliance, and the city of Memphis.

“The Memphis Zoo has been a part of Overton Park since 1906,” Dean said. “We have grown quite a bit since then and have faced some challenges.

The hotly contested battle for the Greensward

“We’re happy this resolution will, once complete, end parking on the Greensward. We are also excited about strengthening and growing our partnership with the Overton Park Conservancy and the Overton Park Alliance to continue to make Overton Park one of the best parks in the country.”

Tina Sullivan, executive director of the Overton Park Conservancy, said community support made the project possible and “is a testament to Memphis’ love for Overton Park.”

“We look forward to the day very soon when park visitors can look from the Doughboy statue to Rainbow Lake across a beautiful Greensward that is free of cars,” Sullivan said.

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News News Blog

Zoo Parking Problem? Nah. Go Valet.

CREDIT: Memphis Zoo

Memphis Zoo

Memphis Zoo adds valet service from A+ Parking Services.

The Memphis Zoo, home to what was the most controversial parking problem in Memphis, has a newer, easier parking option for guests. (See the how-it-works video at the bottom.)

Construction begins this month on a project that will add 415 new parking spaces for the Memphis Zoo. The project will forever end parking on the Overton Park Greensward.

Zoo parking on the field has been a controversy for some three decades here. But it boiled again in 2016 and roiled until a plan was finalized in 2018. That plan will increase the number of parking spaces from 865 to 1,280.

Here’s the official word on the new construction from the zoo:

“Parking construction begins in mid-July at Overton Park and Memphis Zoo. The first stage will focus exclusively on the Prentiss Place parking lot. Prentiss Place (the road) will be open to through traffic on all but three or four days during construction. It is anticipated that the first stage of construction will continue through October or November.”

But if you want to just avoid all that, valet that whip.

Memphis Zoo announced a new valet service Wednesday. It’s an add-on service, provided by A+ Parking Services, “which provides high-end valet parking for venues like Hardrock Café, The Orpheum, National Civil Rights Museum, Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, and more.”

[pullquote-1]
“The zoo’s valet attendants will not only make parking easier, but will unload and load coolers, strollers, backpacks and anything else guests bring along when visiting the zoo,” reads a statement. “A text-to-retrieve option is available for visitors who choose valet, which allows them to text ahead of time and have their vehicle waiting.”

VIP valet parking at the zoo is offered at an additional cost of $5 for members and $10 for nonmembers.”

Wanna see what zoo valet looks like? Check it out here:

Zoo Parking Problem? Nah. Go Valet.

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

On the cover story, “Bad Behavior” …

“Strip clubs, porn, booze, weed, guns”

What are things found on Bruce’s monthly expense report?

Charlie Eppes

Q: “Did you expense the lap dances?”

A: “I did the job I was hired to do!”

Q: “Did you expense the lap dances?”

A: “YOU’RE GODDAMNED RIGHT I DID!!!!”

Packrat

On Toby Sells’ News Blog post, “Marijuana Law Passes First Hurdle in Council” …

Of course, Director Rallings is against decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana — petty, nonviolent, drug arrests make the city quite a fair bit of revenue. The surprising thing, to me, is that for someone who is supposedly so “in tune” with the plight of our city, he sure is okay with sending a lot of otherwise innocent young black men to jail. This not only removes their opportunity to be active members in their homes and communities but further hampers their chances for future gainful employment by putting a mark on their record. Hmmmmm. I wish the local BLM chapter (or whoever the recent protesters claim affiliation to) had been more educated on his stance before they championed him so intensely. Memphis has so many other things we need to be focusing on rather than petty, nonviolent, plant-based offenses. Maybe the officers that aren’t arresting people for marijuana could focus on the giant (not so) underground heroin epidemic instead?

R.K. Ford

From Bruce Van Wyngarden’s Letter from the Editor, “Common Sense Pot Policy” …

I recall the alcohol debates in Mississippi when preachers and bootleggers joined together to oppose legalization.

CL Mullins

Purely from an economic standpoint, it makes tons of sense. How much of our public resources are dedicated to pot “criminals”? How many people are we paying to incarcerate due to breaking marijuana laws?

If it’s legal, instead of paying all these prices, you can regulate and tax the product. You create legal industries, where the businesses, employees, and consumers all pay taxes on the transaction. Today, those transactions are all tax-free. Also, by not loading up the population with criminal records, you make people more employable, which is a good thing for the economy as a whole.

I’ll also add that the advent of synthetic marijuana and the continual chase to ban new strains of that is a spin-off of having marijuana be illegal. If marijuana is legal, people don’t need to seek a “legal” alternative substance. Those synthetic marijuanas are getting more and more dangerous the more that they keep banning the new combinations used.

CL, I like your reference to the Baptists and the bootleggers. In this case it’s the Baptists and the pharmaceutical lobbyists.

GroveReb84

On Bianca Phillips’ News Blog Post, “Coalition of Concerned Citizens Plans Legal Action After Graceland Protest” …

I’m still kinda foggy on why they were protesting Elvis fans. I guess they have some kind of logic in there, but to me, it seems like an incongruous venue to be protesting against. Was Graceland doing something wrong that they needed to protest?

If they are upset about police behavior, maybe protest at a government facility? Maybe City Hall? Or MPD headquarters? Graceland seems like an innocent victim in all this mess.

OakTree

On Toby Sells’ News Blog post, “Boyd Threatens Overton Park Conservancy Funding Over Greensward Suit” …

Sick to death of all of them, especially Allan Wade. Self-righteous blowhards! Yeah … let’s pull the upteen millions allotted to the zoo chumps! They filed the first lawsuit against the City and the City Council! AND … THEY VIOLATED THE SUNSHINE LAW, with their March 1, 2016 shenanigans! They think their seats are safe on election day … think again! The citizens won’t forget.

pdp

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News The Fly-By

Not All Are Happy with the New Greensward Parking Plan

Grumbles about the final Greensward parking plan began even before the Memphis City Council recorded its unanimous vote to approve it last Tuesday.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland unveiled a plan to permanently end the Memphis Zoo’s use of the Overton Park Greensward on July 1st. That plan included adding parking spaces on existing zoo lots and on North Parkway, a new zoo entrance on North Parkway, and running shuttles from a new zoo lot on East Parkway.

Council member Bill Morrison brought a modified version of that plan to the council on July 19th, one approved by the zoo and the Overton Park Conservancy (OPC). The Morrison plan added 415 new parking spaces to the zoo’s existing lots and added parking along North Parkway.

With this, zoo officials said they no longer needed the added parking on East Parkway and, thus, no longer needed to run trams through the Old Forest or on city streets. The city’s General Services lot on the east side of the park will instead become parking and green space for Overton Park.

But all of this will take time. Morrison’s plan won’t end Greensward parking until 2019.

Also, the plan gave the zoo legal latitude to park on the entire Greensward until the new changes are instituted. However, zoo officials have said they will continue to park cars on its traditional footprint, which is roughly the top third of the 12-acre Greensward.

The new agreement does not set legal boundaries for park entities, a contrast from the council’s March 1st resolution, which gave the zoo control of two-thirds of the Greensward. Instead, council members gave the city engineer authority to establish those boundaries — flexibility to change the plan as engineers fit the 415 spaces in the area.

All of this raised the ire of Citizens to Preserve Overton Park (CPOP), an independent park advocacy group.

“And just to put a cherry on top, this action was a violation of state Sunshine Law, because the public had zero access to this resolution or exhibit until a citizen requested that information during the city council meeting,” read a CPOP post on Facebook.

Details of the final plan were not divulged until the council’s executive session, only two hours before the group was set to vote on it. The resolution was passed out to council members during that session but wasn’t made available to the public beforehand via the council’s website.

Getting that information led to an awkward exchange between CPOP member Stacey Greenberg and council chairman Kemp Conrad. Greenberg asked Conrad if the resolution was the final vote on the issue. Conrad said nothing.

“Mr. Conrad, did you hear what I said?” Greenberg asked. “I asked a question.”

“I heard you loud and clear,” Conrad said.

After a moment of silence, Greenberg said, “You’re not going to answer?”

Conrad replied, “I think it’s pretty clear.”

The final Greensward plan also calls for a northern portion of the field, a low-lying area with trees, to be paved.

“[One hundred and fifty] of the trees in this picture will be removed and paved over in accordance with our ‘win,'” said, Hunter Dempster, a member of the Stop Hurting Overton Park Facebook group. “We have the numbers and stats that show they don’t even need the Greensward.”

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News The Fly-By

Tina Sullivan Talks Trams in the Old Forest

As the final vote on Greensward parking approaches, park leaders said they’ll fight any plan to run shuttles through Overton Park’s Old Forest.

Running shuttles or trams through the Old Forest has emerged as, perhaps, one of the final sticking points on an agreement that would end parking on the Greensward.

Mayor Jim Strickland’s plan would put a surface lot on the site of what is now the city’s General Services area. Shuttles, buses, or trams would carry Memphis Zoo visitors from the lot to the zoo entrance on city streets.

Zoo officials have said the General Services lot won’t work unless they can run shuttles on Old Forest roads. However, state officials have said no motorized vehicles are allowed in its state natural area. — Toby Sells

Tina Sullivan

Flyer: Hasn’t the state already ruled against motorized vehicles in the Old Forest?

Tina Sullivan: I re-confirmed [last] week with a representative of [the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation] that they see no reason to consider re-opening those roads that have been closed for 30 years. Even if the Overton Park Conservancy (OPC) weren’t opposed to it, TDEC would still be opposed to it.

So what is the play here?

As often as OPC has said we would never support vehicular traffic on those Old Forest roads, the zoo has said just as often that parking at General Services does not work for their visitors, unless they can run vehicles on those Old Forest roads.

If that is a solution that the zoo is going to continue to pursue, then they’d be setting themselves up for direct battle with OPC and, potentially, with the state. So, yes, they’d have to pursue it at the state level, in addition to pursuing it at the local level.

What can we expect with the council’s vote on Tuesday?

I think that the council — as much as anybody — would like to see this resolved as quickly as possible. I think that the mayor’s plan is the best chance we’ve seen so far in getting this matter resolved. He didn’t throw it together quickly. It was a result of some pretty comprehensive analysis. I can’t imagine that the council would come up with — in the next week and a half — a dramatically different set of solutions that would solve this problem. The quickest and easiest way to get this matter behind us is to adopt the mayor’s plan.

Why are the Old Forest roads important to park users?

Kids are learning to ride bikes [on the roads]. There are senior citizens that rent tricycles from the golf clubhouse and ride them on the protected roads. We have so many 5Ks on those Old Forest roads.

Those roads have a very clear place in that kind of recreation for people across the city. We want to make sure we aren’t introducing something completely disruptive [like trams].

So, if you can imagine 1,000 runners on a Saturday morning competing with trams moving back and forth through a significant part of the road, it’s just not a compatible use.

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News The Fly-By

Week That Was: Greensward, Guns, and Wine

Mayor on Greensward

• Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland proposed to permanently end Greensward parking in a proposal issued last week after the mediation deadline passed between the Memphis Zoo and the Overton Park Conservancy (OPC).

Even though mediation did not yield an agreement, Strickland said his plan is a by-product of the mediation talks.

The final decision on the plan, though, will fall to the Memphis City Council, which was slated to vote on the matter Tuesday. However, council chairman Kemp Conrad, who said he supports the mayor’s plan, said he will ask his fellow council members to delay the vote for two weeks.

Strickland’s proposal includes reconfiguring parking spaces on the zoo’s existing lots, adding 100 spaces on the now-wooded north end of the Greensward, building a berm around the Greensward to block views of zoo parking, adding a new zoo entrance on North Parkway, building a new parking lot on what is now the city’s General Services area, and running shuttles form the lot to the zoo on city streets.

OPC was in favor of the mayor’s plan. But zoo president Chuck Brady called the plan “disappointing” and said that he wanted to “maintain the status quo.”

Wine in Grocery Stores

• On Friday, wine flowed from the shelves of Tennessee grocery stores for the first time.

Wine sales began after a nine-year battle in the Tennessee General Assembly. Tennessee is now one of 40 states that allow wine sales in grocery stores. No other state has changed laws to allow wine sales in grocery stores in the past 24 years.

Liquor store owners have long expected their businesses to take a financial hit as one of their main (and exclusive) products can now be found at the local grocery store. The legislature gave liquor store owners a one-year head start on the change, allowing them to expand their offerings with beer, mixers, light food, and more.

While it’s too early to call wine sales in grocery stores a success (sales are barely a week old), many industry insiders predicted it would be a massive surge in the wine business overall.

Guns on Campus

• Beginning last Friday, registered full-time employees of Tennessee’s public universities were allowed to carry concealed handguns on school grounds.

State lawmakers passed the bill to allow full-time employees to carry handguns on public university campuses in May. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam expressed concern about the legislation but allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

The University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee (UT) Health Science Center began registering employees who wish to carry on campus last week. Leaders of the Tennessee Board of Regents and the UT system opposed the legislation.

No Easy Answers on Gun Violence

• Congressmen Steve Cohen assembled a panel in Memphis last week to discuss curbing gun violence, after several gun-control bills failed in Washington last month.

Panelists and members of the audience suggested tougher penalties for those illegally carrying guns, “common-sense” background checks for anyone wishing to buy a gun, and ending gun sales to several groups, including those on the federal no-fly list.

“There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of guns [in Memphis],” said Memphis Police Department Deputy Director Mike Ryall. “The access to guns is so easy that it’s a constant feeding machine. We need to look into how guns get in the hands of bad people.”

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Memphis Gaydar News

Pride on the Greensward This Weekend

The folks at Overton Park’s Greensward are throwing a Pride picnic on Saturday, June 25th at 10 a.m. Attendees are asked to bring a picnic lunch and “a willingness to participate in silly games,” according to the event’s Facebook page.

Pain’t It Cool Body Art will be there painting faces and accepting donations for Hearts of Gold Pit Rescue.

June is LGBTQ Pride month across the country, and most cities are having their big Pride celebrations this coming weekend (which also coincides with the first anniversary of nationwide marriage equality).

Memphis’ official Pride event, hosted by Mid-South Pride, was moved to the fall several years ago due to the area’s wickedly hot summer weather. The official Mid-South Pride parade and festival is scheduled for September 24th on Beale Street. 

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News The Fly-By

Timing of Zoo Study Release Draws Criticism

Questions remain about a conspiracy (or a conspiracy theory at least) that has bubbled in the background of the Overton Park Greensward controversy for weeks.

Memphis Zoo officials claim they released the full report of their economic impact study to the media back in 2015, but some Greensward supporters claim the zoo only put out a news release at the time, not the full study.

That is important, some Greensward supporters say, because the zoo has used the big numbers — $83.8 million in annual revenue and 879 jobs — to get special treatment from city leaders to use Overton Park for parking. Then, as the Greensward controversy boiled, some supporters say the zoo hid the full report fearing questions that its methodology would prove a lesser economic impact.

But zoo officials say that’s wrong. Zoo spokesman Laura Doty and Kelli Brignac, a zoo-hired public relations specialist from Obsidian Public Relations, said the news release was given to media on May 6th, 2015, and a hard copy of the full report was released the next day.

However, news reports of the study in 2015 didn’t carry information from the study itself, only facts and quotes from the news release. This led many Greensward supporters to question why the full study wasn’t cited, including the assumptions of the study used to prove such high figures.

Those supporters then asked for the full report from the zoo and the University of Memphis, which conducted the study. But those requests were denied.

The zoo’s study was commissioned after a six-month period in the spring and summer of 2014, in which zoo officials said attendance slumped 17 percent as the Greensward was off-limits to parking. Then-Memphis Mayor A C Wharton had banned parking on the Greensward at the time and said parking was “not the highest and best use” of the space.

Attorney Robert Spence denied Greensward supporter Scott Springer access to the report in an April letter, stating that the zoo is a private entity and is not subject to the Tennessee Public Records Act.

Then, on May 13th, 2016 — nearly a year after the study was allegedly given to members of the Memphis media — the zoo released the full study on its website. The release was due to “overwhelming public support and interest” in the zoo and the study, according to a news release at the time. That news release said the zoo “releases” the economic impact study, not “re-releases” it.

“It is standard practice to release high-level findings of a study in an executive summary or news release,” said a statement from the zoo’s public relations team last week. “The zoo did make the study available, but at the time, few outlets reported it. [The zoo] re-released it after fielding requests for it again this year.”

But that explanation nor the information in the study itself is good enough for a group called Physicians for Urban Parks, a group of dozens of Memphis-area doctors advocating for green space.

“It has now become clear that the information [the Memphis City Council was] provided is not valid or defensible,” Dr. Emily Taylor Graves said. “The city council and the citizens of Memphis have been misled. Now that this has come to light, it is time for the city leaders and citizens of Memphis to re-examine their positions on the Overton Park issue.”

In a May 20th editorial, the Memphis Flyer stated that the zoo “finally” released the full version of the study this year. Zoo officials called for (and were granted) a correction to the editorial to say the study was actually made public last year.

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Editorial Opinion

Silver Lining

Ordinarily, we don’t address the same subject in this space for two weeks running, but there are exceptions, once in a while. Last week, you may recall, we wrote about the Memphis Zoo board’s economic impact study, vis-a-vis Greensward parking at Overton Park. We dealt briefly (and by no means definitively) with both the study and the reaction of critics who distrusted its conclusions that Greensward parking was not necessarily a bad thing.

The subject (which shows no signs of going away, in any case) reared itself again this week in remarks to a Rotary Club of Memphis luncheon at the University Club by former city councilman Shea Flinn, now senior vice president of the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce and, as described by chamber chair Carolyn Hardy, the man who “moves the needle” on economic opportunity incentives pushed by the chamber.

Flinn oversees the Chairman’s Circle, a public outreach group operated by the chamber, as well as a series of innovative projects he refers to as “moon missions.”

His approach to the Greensward question was somewhat inadvertent and came his way during the post-address question-and-answer period, via an audience query regarding one of the aforesaid moon missions, this one designated as “Advancing Green Space.” Flinn was asked to comment on that mission in light of the current Greensward controversy.

Flinn made it clear that a) he was not advancing an official chamber position; and b) he was not bursting at the seams with an urge to speak on the matter as a private citizen. In keeping with that caution, Flinn’s first response was to express optimism that, as a result of ongoing mediation efforts initiated by Mayor Jim Strickland, there would soon be found “an adequate solution” to the controversy. He then went further, suggesting that there was an obvious silver lining to the whole wrangle, “if we could step back from the passion and Facebook of it all.”

Flinn reminded his audience that, “20 years ago we actually celebrated the fact of zoo parking.” It was because, he added, at that time the Memphis Zoo and Overton Park had each lost much of their luster and were not attracting nearly as many local citizens and tourists.

What he was saying, in effect, was that there is a problem today only because both the zoo and the park have been upgraded to the point that there is green space worth fighting over.

Well, that’s one way to look at it.

We were struck by several of Flinn’s observations, including his warning that “the best intentions” do not necessarily lead to “the best process.” In any case, said Flinn, it would be “a mistake to see ‘green space’ as meaning only Overton Park.”

Regrettably, however, that is the one green space that most clearly needs to be protected, however the process unfolds.