Tag: Laura Morris

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Shelby Farms Park Conservancy Names New Executive Director

Jen Andrews

Jen Andrews, the first employee of Shelby Farms Park Conservancy back in 2006, has been named executive director of the organization, following the departure of long-time head Laura Morris.

Andrews, 32, was hired in 2006, when the conservancy was called Shelby Farms Park Alliance, and she soon became the director of development and communications. She’ll move into the executive director position on March 21st. Morris, who had served as executive director since 2010, announced her retirement last October.

The conservancy is currently leading a $52 million “Heart of the Park” plan to transform the 4,500-acre park with a larger Patriot Lake (expanding from 52 to 80 acres), a new visitors’ center, an event center with a restaurant, a music pavilion, wetland and forest walks, and more.

“This is my heart’s work. It’s a project I’ve been committed to for a long time and to be selected after an exhaustive national search process is a great honor,” said Andrews. “I’m excited to lead the park’s outstanding team, and my top priority is to make sure we deliver on the promises made in the master plan and on our community’s hopes and dreams for this treasured public asset.”

Tom Grimes, chairman of the conservancy board of directors, said: “Shelby Farms Park is a world-class park and deserves a world-class executive director. We are very pleased that the best candidate turned out to be the park’s own Jen Andrews. Her knowledge of the park is unrivaled, and her thoughtful, inclusive, and transparent leadership style is well-suited to lead Shelby Farms Park as the country’s next great urban park.”

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News The Fly-By

The Kitchen Raises Ire and Questions

CREDIT: Shelby Farms Park Conservancy

Tempers flared and questions arose when news surfaced last week that a new restaurant concept called The Kitchen was coming to town.

Multi-millionaire Kimbal Musk owns the Boulder, Colorado-based restaurant chain and plans to open The Kitchen inside a new visitors center at Shelby Farms Park in 2016 and a more casual concept called The Kitchen Next Door at Crosstown Concourse in 2017.

Many Memphians looked beyond local stories that heralded the chain as “acclaimed” (The Commercial Appeal) and “renowned” (Memphis Daily News) and found a long feature at medium.com about Musk’s plans headlined “The Musk Who Wants to Change the Way We Eat.”

The story painted an ugly picture of Memphis, going beyond the typical “fattest city” designation to call Memphis “a toxic combination of cholesterol and poverty.” Musk saw these problems as an “opportunity for change,” and he and The Kitchen were the ones to bring it, according to the story.

Shelby Farms Park Conservancy

Rendering of new Shelby Farms Park visitors center

In fact, he said coming to Memphis wasn’t about the money, even calling the move “questionable” as a financial decision, according to the story. “If we didn’t have the social aspect, we would go to Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, places like that,” Musk was quoted as saying. It was this idea that rubbed many the wrong way.

“Musk has an interesting vision and plan, and I hope he succeeds,” Memphian Caroline Mitchell Carrico wrote in the Medium story’s comments. “However, I also bristle whenever my city is portrayed as a backwater that is dependent on outside saviors.”

Backlash like this (and worse) permeated social media at the end of the week. It even prompted local entrepreneur Taylor Berger to pen a blog post called “Kimbal Musk Is Not An Asshole,” a sort of backlash to the backlash.

“Take it on faith, y’all, that Kimbal Musk is not here to pillage our city,” Berger wrote. “He is exactly the kind of person, with the kind of vision and power to execute, that we need right now if we have any hope of becoming a world-class city.”

Musk is widely credited for shepherding the farm-to-table dining movement and said in a news statement he is “thrilled” to bring it to Memphis.

“Memphis is a vibrant and diverse city that is on the verge of a Real Food (sic) renaissance,” Musk said in the statement.

That raised the ire of Tsunami chef and owner Ben Smith, who has been locally sourcing ingredients since 1998 and hosting a farmers market in his parking lot for the past three years.

“My initial reaction was, Wait a minute, man, there are some people who have been here for a number of years that have really focused on this farm-to-table thing,” Smith said. “The interaction and relationship between farmers and Memphis restaurants is already well-established and well-supported.”

Questions also arose about The Kitchen’s locations — both in taxpayer-supported venues — that could have gone to local talent.

Shelby Farms Park Executive Director Laura Morris said her group issued a request for proposals, made a presentation to the Memphis Restaurant Association, and formed an ad hoc committee to “spread the word” about the opportunity. But the park never got a deal on the table from local restaurateurs, she said.

The Kitchen did not get a special deal or special incentives, she said.

“Looking at the lease, I’d say it’s a little bit above market for the park,” Morris said. “We did pretty well.”

The Kitchen will lease the restaurant and the grab-and-go counter at Shelby Farms for $172,260 for the first five years, according to the lease. Rent will rise slightly in the next five years.

Morris said she was aware that not everyone is excited about bringing in an outside operator, “but it’s not like we put a Cheesecake Factory at the park.”

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News The Fly-By

Expanding Greenline To Midtown Will Involve Building Bridge

There’s a plan to extend the Shelby Farms Greenline to Midtown, but there’s a big hurdle — make that two big hurdles — in the way.

Two active rail lines are blocking the planned path of the greenline extending west from Tillman to its eventual end at Tobey Park.

“It’s the same rail line that runs adjacent to Wiseacre [Brewing Company on Broad]. The trail alignment runs in a diagonal to the existing rail lines there,” said the city’s bike and pedestrian coordinator Kyle Wagenschutz.

The solution is to build a bridge over the live rail lines, and the city has received a federal transportation grant for the initial design work. That money will fund an analysis of potential environmental hazards of building a bridge, any drainage issues, and how it will fit underneath the Poplar viaduct and over the railroad.

“At this point, there have been no funds committed for actual construction. We know it will be expensive, several million dollars,” Wagenschutz said. “We’re hoping the next time the federal funding cycle comes around, we’ll be able to request funds. But we have a couple of years.”

He said the city will likely begin the process of selecting a design firm for the bridge in the spring or summer. Right-of-way for the quarter-mile from Tillman to Tobey Park was included in the existing greenline’s right-of-way purchase from CSX Railroad. The current seven-mile greenline is built along an abandoned CSX rail corridor.

In March, construction is expected to begin on the greenline’s eastward expansion. Earlier this month, the Shelby County Public Works Division negotiated a contract with CSX Railroad to purchase the deserted right-of-way from Farm Road to the old Cordova train station on B Street.

“Residents in Cordova have been asking for a better connection to the park for quite some time,” Wagenschutz said. “I think this will be a great addition, particularly in helping to connect a large population of users to the park without them having to drive their cars over.”

Federal grants will cover 75 percent of the cost. Shelby County government allocated $650,000, and the remaining $550,000 was donated by the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. 

There were a couple of smaller hurdles in the path of the 4.1-mile eastward expansion. In one area, an older trussle bridge must be replaced, and other areas will require improved pedestrian crossings.

“The biggest issue is safe crossing of Germantown Parkway,” said Laura Morris, executive director of the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. “That was resolved by a design that the city and county engineers came up with to add back the red light at the railroad track [between Macon and Fisher Steel] that was once there when it was a live rail crossing. It will be timed with the two traffic lights close by at Macon and Fisher Steel so it doesn’t have any effect on the traffic.”

Pedestrians will cross the greenline at Germantown Parkway at two signals. First, they’ll cross onto a protected median in the middle of the parkway. They’ll have to push a signal button at the median and wait to cross the other half.

Eventually, the plan is for the greenline to extend east to Oakland, but some of the land along the former rail line to the east belongs to individual landowners.

“The next piece of [the greenline’s expansion] that will take you to the Fayette County line is going to involve patching back together the landowners’ portions of the right-of-way,” Morris said. “But we have had indications from many of the landowners that they would be willing to work with the county.”

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News The Fly-By

Sierra Club Proposed Alternatives to Shelby Farms Parkway

CREDIT: Courtesy of Sierra Club

Each weekday, rush hour traffic backs up along Walnut Grove and Farm Road inside Shelby Farms Park, turning part of the city’s largest urban green space into a busy and congested thoroughfare.

The proposed $38 million Shelby Farms Parkway, which is currently under review by the Federal Highway Administration, would divert that traffic around the western edge of the park. But members of the local Sierra Club Chickasaw Group say they have a simpler solution that would save the city millions of dollars and solve traffic problems sooner.

The Sierra Club opposes the Shelby Farms Parkway plan because they believe it takes away too much park land and feels too much like an interstate.

Last week, the Sierra Club held a series of public rallies near Shelby Farms to bring some awareness to the alternatives, which were first proposed by national traffic engineering consultant Walter Kulash of the Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago. Kulash was invited to Memphis last year by the Sierra Club to study alternatives to Shelby Farms Parkway.

Courtesy of Sierra Club

Right: Farm Road with right turn lane added

Those alternatives include: 1) building a longer left turning lane onto Farm Road from eastbound Walnut Grove, 2) building a longer left turning lane for southbound Farm Road traffic turning onto Mullins Station or adding a right turning lane, 3) creating a westbound auxiliary lane from Farm Road to Humphries, 4) extending the northbound merging lane from Farm Road to Walnut Grove, and 5) making adjustments to signal timing.

“When you are headed east on Walnut Grove and you get to Farm Road, that left turn lane is not long enough. It doesn’t hold enough cars, so cars end up waiting to turn left in a lane that should be a travel lane,” said Dennis Lynch, transportation chair for the state and local Sierra Club.

City engineer John Cameron said the Sierra Club’s proposals may provide some short-term relief but that they would only be a “Band-Aid for the situation.” He says traffic counts through the area will rise in the future and that the larger Shelby Farms Parkway project will be needed.

“If the parkway project moves forward, we don’t want to put a whole lot of money into Farm Road. What the Sierra Club is proposing would cost between a half-million and a million dollars just to turn around three to five years later and take it all out,” Cameron said.

Under the Shelby Farms Parkway plan, Farm Road, will be closed to through traffic and used as a pedestrian route. The Memphis City Council delayed a funding match for the parkway plan earlier this year, but Cameron said they’ll be seeking funding from the council again next year. Cameron said the parkway could be fully constructed in three to five years.

Laura Morris, executive director for the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy, said the conservancy is backing the most recent parkway design, which wraps the new road around the western edge of the park. Morris says it does not “damage the park and also relieves traffic.” Morris said she doesn’t oppose the Sierra Club’s ideas, but she doesn’t believe they’ll solve congestion in the future.

“We don’t disagree that temporary fixes like this could relieve some of the pressure right now, but we know that won’t be enough,” Morris said. “It might fix today’s problems but only by a small measure.”

Lynch doesn’t agree.

“We don’t think the parkway is needed and anything that can be done to keep it from being built is a good thing,” Lynch said. “I calculated that the cost to the people stuck in congestion. The value of their time plus the extra gasoline they’re using over five to six years comes to $32 million to $58 million. But it would only cost the city $1 million to make the improvements.”