Categories
At Large Opinion

Warning Shot

Some of you may remember that back in 2015 the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) announced plans to shut down the I-55 bridge over the Mississippi in Memphis for nine months. TDOT said it needed to do so in order to install a “roundabout” interchange on the Memphis end of the bridge. The entire project was to begin in early 2017 and last through November 2019, effectively screwing up traffic across the bridge and through South Memphis for two years.

It didn’t happen. And that’s mainly because some people with common sense (including this newspaper’s staff) raised hell against it, pointing out that shutting down the “old bridge” was a nightmare scenario, one that would funnel 100,000 vehicles a day (double its then-current traffic count) across the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and expose the entire Central U.S. to a potential shutdown of commerce should something happen to the one remaining bridge.

Over in West Memphis, state Senator Keith Ingram’s hair was on fire. He rightly pointed out that the shutdown would “devastate local economies throughout Eastern Arkansas and would cripple emergency services in the event of an accident or natural disaster.”

The late Phil Trenary, president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, cited a post-9/11 study that showed that closing both of the city’s bridges would have a negative economic impact of about $11 billion to $15 billion per year, adding that the impact on business would be “significant to not only the local economy but to the national economy.”

The Flyer’s Toby Sells wrote a comprehensive cover story on the subject. We editorialized against the shutdown vociferously and often. Eventually, thanks to building public, political, and business opposition, the TDOT plan was mothballed, hopefully forever. The area’s leaders came to recognize that Memphis would be in big trouble if we ever got down to one bridge.

Oops.

As we all know, thanks to the discovery of a fissure in a structural beam on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, the feared “down-to-one-bridge” scenario has happened. And as was predicted in 2015, traffic is backed up on I-40, through the city, and on the south I-240 loop, as 80,000 vehicles a day are funneled across a narrow highway bridge built 70 years ago to handle one-fourth that amount of traffic.

Imagine if the break on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge had been discovered in, say, June 2017, during TDOT’s proposed shutdown. Or worse, imagine if something should go awry on the I-55 bridge now. Can you say Helena, Arkansas? Or Dyersburg, Tennessee? Those are the nearest two Mississippi River crossings. Local — and national — commerce would suffer a horrific hit.

But thankfully the TDOT bridge-closure didn’t happen in 2017. People raised hell. The bureaucrats were stopped. Now, with any luck, the “new bridge” gets fixed in the next couple months, and we get back to normal. But we need a new normal. There’s a lesson to be learned here, and the time to act on it is now.

We have two bridges, both over a half-century old, both facing deterioration and maintenance issues. It’s obvious that Memphis needs a third bridge across the Mississippi. And it isn’t just about Memphis. It’s about the entire interstate commerce system through the middle of America, North and South, relying on a rickety, aging infrastructure that was built for the 1960s and 1970s. A new bridge addresses current and future issues. It could integrate with the I-69 corridor and maybe even incorporate space for future high-speed rail. Why not think big?

It’s not like we’d be asking for the moon. St. Louis has six major bridges across the Mississippi. Davenport, Iowa, has three. Hell, Dubuque, Iowa, has two bridges. We’re tied with Dubuque, people. It’s in our interest and in the country’s interest to plan for the future, not to wait until the two extant bridges fall completely apart. Officeholders and business leaders from Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi need to get together and form a commission to explore the best way to get this moving.

Patching a crack with overlaid slabs of steel is a temporary solution, a band-aid that doesn’t address the overarching issues of a deteriorating infrastructure. Moving toward getting a new bridge should become a priority now — not when we’re forced to deal with another bridge shutdown. We’ve been shown a glimpse of the future. It’s time to face it, realistically.

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News News Blog

Two Indicted in Trenary Murder

Phil Trenary/Twitter

Two men were indicted on first-degree murder and other charges in the September shooting death of Philip Trenary, Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich announced Thursday afternoon.

Trenary, once president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, was shot and killed after a Chamber event on Thursday, September 27th. On September 29th, Memphis Police Department (MPD) officials announced they charged McKinney Wright Jr., 22; Quandarius Richardson, 18; and Racanisha Wright, 16.

On Thursday, Wright and Richardson were indicted on first-degree murder charges and on charges of attempted especially aggravated robbery. Richardson was additionally indicted on charges of theft of property over $10,000 and intentionally evading arrest in a motor vehicle risking injury or death.

Both are in custody without bond in the Shelby County Jail.
Shelby County Jail

Richardson, right. Wright, left.


Here is the history of the case so far, according to Weirich:

“The incident occurred shortly before 7:30 p.m. on September 27th, 2018, in the 500 block of South Front Street where Trenary was walking on the sidewalk and talking on his cellphone.

Witnesses said a white pickup truck stopped nearby and that a man exited the passenger side, approached Trenary from behind and shot him in the head.

The truck, which had been reported stolen, was located by police the next day in the Frayser area, but the driver refused to stop and drove away at a high rate of speed. The truck crashed at McLemore and Mississippi, injuring several occupants of two other vehicles.

Richardson was arrested at the scene, while Wright and a 16-year-old female (Racanisha Wright) were arrested the following day. Her case was handled in juvenile court.

Trenary was president and chief executive officer of the Greater Memphis Chamber.
The criminal court case involving Wright and Richardson is being handled by Deputy District Attorney General Ray Lepone and Assistant District Attorney Melanie Cox.”

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News News Blog

Robertson Picked as Interim Chamber CEO

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Robertson

The Greater Memphis Chamber board of directors named National Civil Rights Museum leader Beverly Robertson to be the group’s interim president and CEO, the first female to hold the position.

The move comes after Phil Trenary, the Chamber’s previous leader, was shot and killed earlier last month.

“In addition to her extensive experience at the helm of an internationally recognized nonprofit organization, Beverly’s leadership experience in both corporate America and small business make her a perfect fit for the organization,” Chamber chairman Richard Smith said in a statement. “She understands the needs of our membership and our community and we believe she is the right person at the right time to continue the work that we’ve started. Our city has tremendous momentum and I expect under Beverly’s watch, the Chamber will continue to be a strong voice of positive change in our community.”

Robertson is a native Memphian. She worked for 19 years at Holiday Inn Worldwide. Later, she was asked to be the NCRM’s interim executive director and, ultimately, spent 17 years in the position. During her tenure there, she raised more than $43 million.

“I love my city and I believe that Memphis’ best days are ahead,” Robertson said. “I am honored to work with the strong leadership team that Phil put in place at the Chamber and I look forward to working in collaboration with our business and government leaders, helping to retain and attract good jobs and to help The Chamber realize one of its primary goals of opportunity for all.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Caught in the Devil’s Triangle

As the Memphis summer stubbornly surrenders to October, I’m sitting at a sidewalk table on South Main, drinking coffee. Tourists wander by, enjoying the morning sun, looking for the National Civil Rights Museum or Sun Studio or the Peabody. Who knows? It’s a glorious day. They’re on vacation, passing through. I’m probably going to be on Facebook in that photo one of them just took — a bit player in their memories of Memphis.

It’s been a strange and sad week hereabouts. The after-effects of the senseless murder of Memphis Chamber director Phil Trenary linger like a bad dream. Watching the surveillance video of Trenary was gut-wrenching. We see him walking along Front Street, chatting on his cell phone, headed home from a happy event at Loflin Yard. As we watch him stride out of the camera’s eye, we know what he didn’t know — that he had only minutes to live. It’s a gut punch, one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever watched. I wish whatever peace and strength can be found in these sad days to his family and friends.

To be honest, everything has seemed a little disjointed and awful recently. The country seems broken, like some essential element has gone missing. The truth itself has become a devalued currency — cheapened by the endless parade of prevarication and bluster and avarice that populates the seemingly 24-minute news cycle. We are exhausted, and the disconnect between American political tribes has never been greater.

Last Thursday morning, Americans watched a woman, Christine Blasey Ford, give testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that SCOTUS candidate Brett Kavanaugh had assaulted her in high school. That afternoon, Kavanaugh spoke loudly and emotionally in his own defense.

Twenty million Americans watched the hearing. It was like a Rorschach test for the country. Those on the right saw Ford as disingenuous, a woman intent on destroying a good man, a Democratic party operative whose only motive was to delay Kavanaugh’s rightful confirmation. Many others, including me, saw Kavanaugh’s performance as a perjurious charade, with one lie cascading after another. His body language, his tears, his sniffs and snorts, his anger all seemed calculated and fake — total bullshit. I was reminded of the time when I was in high school and my father saw an inscription in my yearbook that mentioned “slamming Buds.” He said, “You better not be drinking beer.” Oh no, I said. That’s just what we call each other, “slamming Buds.” I’m sure my father knew I was full of crap, just as I’m sure Kavanaugh knows that “boofing” and the “Devil’s triangle” aren’t terms for flatulence and a drinking game with quarters, and that he was a belligerent drunk on many occasions.

Will Kavanaugh’s lies — big and small — keep him off the Supreme Court? Sadly, I doubt it. Will an FBI investigation and additional testimony from his friends and classmates that utterly destroy Kavanaugh’s self-created image of a church-going choir boy and dedicated student-athlete have a real effect? Sadly, I doubt it. The Republicans are going for the trifecta — control of all three branches of government — while they have the chance, and nothing is going to stop them.

For good reasons, one-party control of the government was not at all what our Founding Fathers had in mind. They wanted a system of checks and balances when it came to wielding power. But checks and balances don’t work if there is no balance, if one party holds all the checks, if the three branches of government become a version of the Devil’s triangle. And nobody, not the Founding Fathers or any of us, was prepared for an amoral, loose-cannon president like Donald Trump, or for the pervasive influence of easily manipulated and targeted social media. We are in a fix, my friends.

But enough angst for now. My coffee cup is empty, and solutions to our national ennui and our local problems seem no closer than they were after my first sip. An election nears, however, and in my opinion, the great American experiment with democracy is approaching a crossroads.

What to do? It’s not an original thought, but it’s all I’ve got right now: Register to vote and cast your ballot like our country’s future depends on it.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Phil Trenary: Keep His Vision Alive

“We wake up every morning and decide what we are NOT going to do today.” Phil Trenary must have told me that a thousand times during my time at the Greater Memphis Chamber.  It was not a testament to laziness, but the perfect prescription for effectiveness at an organization like the Chamber, which Phil led as president and executive director from 2014 until his untimely death last week.  

Phil breathed new life into a heritage organization. It didn’t always get the publicity of a revived Overton Square or the rebirth of Crosstown or a remodeled brewery Downtown, but the changes Phil brought to the Chamber were just as extraordinary and just as important for the transformation of Memphis. 

Phil was pivotal to the growth of the Chairman’s Circle, creating an activist group of CEOs that would endeavor to work in the trenches toward the goal of pushing Memphis to live up to its potential. The first major move of the Chairman’s Circle included removing government funding from the Chamber, which allowed the business community to begin to partner with and advocate for our local governments, a role that had been distinctively absent for decades. 

Because of Phil’s leadership in bringing these advocates together, Memphis has seen increased funding for pre-K, collaboration on economic development, and a stronger Memphis presence in Nashville, working for our community’s priorities with the state legislature and governor. 

Phil made sure that the Chamber was focused on economic growth, not for economic growth’s sake, but because he wanted the best outcomes for the people in our community just as much as he wanted to attract new business. He knew that in order to see true growth, dealing with issues such as poverty, education, and creating higher-paying jobs was essential to move our city forward. What kind of business organization thinks like that? One led by Phil Trenary. 

Shortly after the I-40 bridge protest in the summer of 2016, the Chamber found itself picketed by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens. What did Phil do? He went outside and talked with them. As Phil put it, “They want what we want, and if the Coalition thinks they need to protest us, then that is our fault for not telling them what we are doing.”

The loss of Phil Trenary will be felt most acutely, of course, by his family. My heart, my prayers, and my love go out to all of them. But, make no mistake about what we are not going to do today — and for all the tomorrows to follow. We are not going to let the life of a man who loved our city become a cautionary tale of those who hate it. We are not going to allow a man who lived for bringing jobs and businesses to Memphis, to become, in death, a reason for them to stay away. And we will not allow a person who was so focused on the good in our community to become a shorthand for the tragedy that can also be found here. 

We are going to continue to believe in Memphis, the way Phil Trenary believed in Memphis. We are going to continue to see that all of us want the same thing for our community and it’s on us if we can’t work together to understand that.

Shea Flinn is the former senior vice president of the Chairman’s Circle of the Greater Memphis Chamber.

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News News Blog

Strickland Says Trenary’s Death Hits Close to Home

In the wake of the fatal shooting of Greater Memphis Chamber president and CEO Phil Trenary, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said Friday that gun violence is a problem in Memphis, as it is across the country.

Memphis Magazine

Phil Trenary

“I will say, this particular one hits a little closer to home because I knew Phil,” Strickland said in a Friday morning press conference. “We were friends and we worked so well together for the last two and a half years.

“Phil loved Memphis. He was one of the best cheerleaders this city had and he contributed so much to our community. I mourn his death.”

Strickland said he also mourns the deaths of the other Memphians who’ve lost their lives to gun violence. Like many big cities, the mayor says Memphis has too much of it.

Strickland said the city has a long-range plan to tackle gun violence in the city. A large piece of that plan is hiring more police officers, offering more jobs, and giving offenders second chances.

“We’re making progress on that,” the mayor said. “But, it’s a tough, American problem.”

Strickland said MPD is “working very hard to find the perpetrator or perpetrators” involved in Trenary’s death. Trenary was shot at 579 South Front Street Thursday evening after attending a charity event at Loflin Yard.

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The suspect is a black male with dreadlocks who was wearing a blue shirt at the time of the shooting, according to MPD. Lt. Karen Rudolph said Friday morning that investigators are still working to gather details relative to this investigation.

“At this point, it does appear that the victim was alone when the shooting occurred,” according to police.  “The suspect, a male black wearing a blue shirt parked along the sidewalk on South Front, got out of his vehicle and approached the victim at which time the victim was shot. It is still unknown whether if this was a robbery or a personal vendetta.”

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

UPDATE: De-annexation Bill Killed for Session

NASHVILLE — In a surprise action, the state Senate’s State and Local Committee has voted 5-3-1 (with chairman Ken Yager voting aye) to approve a motion by Senator Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) sending the controversial de-annexation bill (HB 779/SB 749) to summer study.



Voting in the minority on the motion were the bill’s Senate sponsor, Bo Watson (R-Hixson) and Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksville), a key co-sponsor. It was Green’s absence on Tuesday that had postponed a vote until Wednesday’s reconvening of the committee.



The action means that all possible action on the bill is over with until, at earliest, the legislative session that begins in January 2017.



“We really had no idea this was going to happen. But it was the best possible result, obviously. This is really a victory for the entire state,” said Phil Trenary, the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce head who had been in Nashville last week and this week opposing the bill.

Though the suddenness of the committee’s action took Trenary and other onlookers by surprise, it had become obvious that the bill was in for rough sledding once it hit the Senate committee, where chairman Yager (R-Kingston) supervised a systematic vetting of its contents and numerous witnesses had criticized it in detail.

Some indication of what was to come was the fact that numerous amendments weakening the bill’s force were passed in committee on Tuesday by lopsided votes.

Though six witnesses on Tuesday testified to the commmittee in favor of the bill, it had become obvious from previous testimony of bill opponents last week that resistance to it was serious, influential, and in depth.

Not only Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland but the mayors of two other affected cities, Chattanooga and Knoxville, had warned of the bill’s potentially ruinous effects, fiscal and otherwise, on targeted cities. Representatives of the state’s business community, including Pitt Hyde of AutoZone, and two ranking officers of First Tennessee Bank, seconded that point of view.

Even senators considered friendly to the idea of allowing urban de-annexation procedures had visibly cooled to the provisions of the de-annexation measure sent over from the House after swift ands lopsided passage there.

Those provisions had limited the bill’s effects to only five urban areas which had pursued state law in annexations that the bill, in a provision whose constitutionality was in doubt, considered “egregious.”

Other objectionable provisions included the bill’s allowance of a low ceiling — 10 percent of an annexed area’s population on a petition — to call a de-annexation referendum.

PREVIOUSLY (3-29-16): The ongoing debate in the General Assembly on a bill to allow de-annexation by areas of Memphis and other Tennessee cities that were annexed since the passage of Public Law 1101 in 1998, was renewed Tuesday in the state Senate’s State and Local Committee.

Two amendments to the House bill were approved last week by the Senate committee — one clarifying certain issues of debt obllgations remaining for any de-annexed residents and another expanding the reach of the bill to all municipalities statewide, not just Memphis and the four other urban areas alleged to have pursued “egregious” annexations since the 1998 date.

Both those amendments were regarded as concessions to the delegation that testified in the committee against the bill last week — which included Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, and Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, as well as AutoZone founder Pitt Hyde and two officials of First Tennessee Bank.

Jackson Baker

Phil Trenary

Last week’s testifiers made the point that the de-annexation bill received by the House was overly punitive and potentially financially ruinous to the cities affected. (Strickland testified that de-annexation by all the areas annexed by Memphis since 1998 could cost the already cash-strapped city the loss of property tax revenues ranging from $27 at minimum to a maximum of $78 million.)

Chairman Yager began the renewed hearing on Tuesday before a standing-room-only audience, noting that the witnesses against the bill last Wednesday had been opposed to it and professing a desire “to be fair-minded on an issue this polarizing,” then announcing that six new witnesses favoring the bill would be heard.

The first was Patricia Possel of South Cordova, who said, “The city of Memphis tried to silence us,” and went on to note that her area had been annexed July 1, 2012, more than four years before the next scheduled election in South Cordova.

She called the situation “taxation without representation,” and spoke, in a trembling voice, of the murder of a neighbor, Susan McDonald, in 2015 — clearly, an indication to her that crime had followed upon her neighborhood’s annexation by the city as something of a direct consequence.

Finally, she said, there had been “no disclosure” of any kind to her or other homeowners, at the time of their purchasing property, that they were located within one of Memphis’ annexation preserves, about to lose its independence.

Next up was Terry Roland, the chairman of the Shelby County Commission, who announced that he had heard “bad numbers” being testified to by representatives of the city last week and wanted to present “the straight skinny.” According to his own figures, the de-annexation from Memphis of South Cordova and Windyke-Southwind, the last two areas annexed, would result in a financial gain to Memphis of $3 million — not, as had been claimed, a deficit of $13 million.

Roland also spoke, as he has for years, of the constant departure of citizens from Memphis because of high and unreasonable property taxes. He said that 68,000 people had left Shelby county for DeSoto County, Mississippi in the years 2001-2010.

Roland did concede that if all 10 areas annexed by Memphis since 1998 were able to de-annex themselves (as the original House bill provided), the city would end up the loser, financially, but he made it clear he considered that prospect far-fetched.

The two Shelby County witnesses were followed by John Emerson of Alamo (who had been introduced by Yager earlier as “the father of de-annexation” and who pronounced it absurd that representatives of cities habitually spoke as if there a law of nature that urban municipalities could only expand and never contract.

Three residents of Chattanooga suburbs that had been annexed followed, with variations on some of the themes already addressed. (One of them announced that he did not turn on TV to watch “baseball, football, or Dancing With the Stars,” but was a regular watcher of congressional hearings and stayed up late to watch them. He had determined from that practice that public political debates and processes were essentially shams.)

From that point, the stream of amendments that was interrupted by the close of last Wednesday’s hearing ensued again — the first of them authorized by chairman Yager himself and directly addressing the complaint that Strickland had made of the original House bill — that, while it did require newly de-annexed citizens to continue paying their share of the city’s general obligation debt on a pro rata basis, it did not stipulate anything regarding residual pension and OPEB obligation on the part of those residents.

The Yager amendment would include pensions and OPEB obligations on a pro-rated basis.

Senator Bo Watson of Hixson, a suburb of Chattanooga, and a sponsor of the de-annexation bill, challenged the logic of including those debts, which Watson suggested were “pay-as-you-go” by their nature and that ex post facto assessments would be improperly doubling up on charges to the residents.

He was backed up on those allegations by Senator Todd Gardenhire, another Chattanoogan, who testified from his point of view as a former member of a U.S. Department of Labor committee on pension obligations. In the course of seconding Watson’s assertions that including the new assessments would be double-billing de-annexed residents, Gardenhire got off a series of negative observations regarding the past fiscal performance of the city of Memphis.

Most of those observatios recapitulated criticisms made by state comptroller Justin Wilson about city bookkeeping practices during the administration of former Mayor A C Wharton. “The city of Memphis was not run like a business,” Gardenhire said.
Even so, the amendment was passed by the committee 6-1. It began to seem possible that the optimism for a favorable resolution expressed last week by Strickland and Chamber of Commerce president Phil Trenary might be justified.

That sense was furthered somewhat by discussion later of other new amendments, notably including one by chairman Yager that would raise from 10 to 20 percent the percentage of residents necessary to validate a petition for a de-annexation referendum. This one ultimately passed 7-0, and among those committee members agreeing with Yager that “the bar should be raised” on requirements for a de-annexation petition was state Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville), a nominal supporter of the bill’s intent.

Not everything was roses. An amendment from state Senator Reginald Tate (D-Memphis) limited the Memphis areas eligible for de-annexation to South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke failed for lack of a second. And another, contemplated by Yager, requiring 66 percent, rather than a simple majority, for passage of a de-annexation referendum, was withdrawn by the chairman.

Asked afterward to assess Tuesday’s actions on the bill, the Trenary said the amendments made the bill “more realistic” but said he still continued to oppose it and was hopeful that the legislature as a whole ultimately would.

Roland’s reaction was one of satisfaction also, and he expressed the hope that the effect of the bill might still be limited to the two recently annexed areas of South Cordova and Southwind-Windyke. “They’re the only ones that are organized,” he pointed out.

An ultimate vote by the committee on the amended bill was delayed out of courtesy to the bill’s main sponsor, state Senator Mark Green of Clarksville, who was absent. (It was Green who last week compared the alleged “egregious” annexations by Memphis and other cities to a Russian occupation of Poland, and Norris wondered somewhat archly on Tuesday how the residents who moved to “Poland” in recent years should be counted in determining the right ceiling for a referendum petition.)

It is hard to imagine Green being altogether favorable to the amendments accepted Tuesday, but, in any case, whatever his opinion or the committee’s vote on the bill, the bill is not likely to be headed to the floor of either House or Senate anytime soon.

Categories
Cover Feature News

We Can’t Drive … I-55!

Pretty soon, Memphis and the Mid-South will be down to one bridge over the Mississippi. At least it will if the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) gets to implement its current plan.

TDOT wants to close the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge (what most Mid-Southerners call the “Old Bridge”) for nine months in 2017. Officials say the closure is necessary to expedite work on a new interchange at E.H. Crump Boulevard and Interstate 55. That new interchange is needed because the current one is unsafe and ineffective.

TDOT Commissioner John Schroer

TDOT Commissioner John Schroer calls it “the worst interchange we have in the state of Tennessee.”

But opposition to the TDOT plan is building. TDOT has fielded calls from politicians and many in the business community who are concerned that the closure would cause traffic gridlock and negatively impact the regional economy.

So far, the most visible opposition to the plan is a change.org petition from Arkansas state Senator Keith Ingram that says the closure “will devastate local economies throughout Eastern Arkansas and will cripple emergency services in the event of an accident or natural disaster.” Sources on both sides of the bridge say behind-the-scenes organizing is underway for more formal opposition to TDOT’s plan.

Senator Keith Ingram

Schroer says he considered another plan for the project that had a five-year construction timeline and no bridge closure, but maintains the current plan is the best, safest, and most cost-effective. Schroer says the Hernando de Soto “M bridge” can handle the traffic.

Many think Schroer couldn’t be more wrong, and the idea of limiting the Mid-South to one bridge over the Mississippi pushes their thoughts to worst-case-scenario territory.

The Plan

When asked what he thinks of closing the Old Bridge, Schroer says, “I hate it.”

“It certainly isn’t an option we wanted to pursue, but sometimes you have to look at all your options and pick what is the least evil of them all, the least disruptive for a duration of time, and what is the safest as well,” Schroer says.

Schroer says TDOT picked through a lot of plans, pointing to the fact that all considered plans were listed alphabetically and the plan on the table now is labeled Z-1.

Schroer says he made the final choice on the design and the closure, and they were “probably the toughest decisions I’ll have to make in eight years in office here.”

Courtesy TDOT

This map shows the roundabout (in yellow) and the sweeping curve (in orange) of TDOT’s proposed interchange at E.H. Crump Boulevard and I-55

Z-1 will replace the current cloverleaf design at Crump and I-55 with a roundabout for local traffic and a long, elevated, sweeping curve to keep I-55 traffic flowing without slowing to (or below) the posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour.

The cloverleaf design was built in the mid-1960s. It was meant to handle 28,500 vehicles daily, with 8 percent truck traffic, according to the Federal Highway Adminstration [FHWA]. Today, traffic averages 60,330 vehicles daily with 26 percent trucks. By 2035, the interchange will see 84,500 vehicles per day, according to FHWA projections.

Brandon Dill

Trucks enter the current cloverleaf ramp to I-55, where interstate traffic must slow to 25 miles per hour

Local streets also directly intersect with I-55 at that interchange. “The project needs are to improve interstate safety and traffic operations by improving interstate speeds, managing heavy truck crashes and large traffic volumes, and reducing overall crashes,” an FHWA statement says.

Crash data specific to the Crump/I-55 interchange were not available. But data for the Tennessee stretch of I-55 show 851 total crashes between 2009-2011. Of those, there were five fatalities, 196 injuries, and 650 wrecks that yielded only property damage.

The price tag for the new interchange project has grown from $35 million when it was announced in 2010 to about $60 million now. TDOT officials say the cost rose as the project was reviewed by government and construction officials. Those conversations changed construction methods, materials, and the overall design.

If the plan moves ahead on schedule, the contract for it will be opened for bid this winter.

Phase 1 construction will begin March 2016 and last through February 2017. During that time, TDOT will close the ramp for southbound Riverside traffic, which will be routed from Riverside to Carolina Street to Florida Street to Crump. Crews will build a temporary ramp for I-55 southbound and build noise walls for the French Fort neighborhood.

The ramp for southbound Riverside traffic to the I-55 bridge will also be removed, as well as the ramp for westbound Crump traffic to the ramp for I-55 South. That traffic will also be detoured to Florida Street.

Phase 2 construction will shut down the Old Bridge from March 2017 to the end of November. TDOT will keep one lane across the bridge open for emergency vehicles only during the closure.

The timing was selected to expedite the project, TDOT officials say. “We did that so we can keep this project going during the nine-month construction season of 2017,” says Nichole Lawrence, TDOT’s community relations officer for West Tennessee. “If we start in the summer, then construction will go into the winter, and there will be some dead time.”

The decision to close the bridge was made March 13th, according to the FHWA, after the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department (AHTD), the Arkansas and Tennessee Divisions of the Federal Highway Administration, and construction industry representatives met to discuss the project — with and without an interstate closure.

“Based on the review, the group determined that the project could not be built safely without the closure of I-55 for approximately nine months during the projected three-year construction project,” a statement from FHWA says. “The basis for closure is the limited space available to safely construct the interchange while keeping the road open.”

Paul Degges, TDOT’s deputy commissioner and chief engineer, says those construction issues relate mainly to building the sweeping, elevated curve of the new I-55 ramp. Degges says the new ramp will have to be built farther from the bridge than the current ramp, and that the large construction machinery is not safe to operate around traffic.

I-55 will be closed for an 11.5-mile stretch from the I-55/I-40 split in West Memphis to the McLemore Avenue exit in South Memphis. Southbound I-55 traffic will be detoured across the Hernando de Soto Bridge and then to I-240 Midtown, then to I-55 South near the interchange at Elvis Presley Boulevard. Northbound I-55 traffic will be detoured at that same interchange to I-240, then to I-40 West across the Hernando de Soto Bridge.

The cloverleaf will be demolished. Riverside Drive will be closed from Crump to Carolina. Southbound Riverside traffic will be detoured to Carolina, to Florida, to Crump. Crump will be closed to westbound traffic at Third Street and be detoured north or south on Third.

Phase 3 construction will last from December 2017 to November 2018. Riverside will remain closed from Carolina to Crump. I-55 will be reopened and will be running on new southbound lanes.

Phase 4 construction will last for about three months in the spring of 2019, slated to be completed by May. The project will be “open,” according to TDOT, as crews complete final paving operations.

The total construction project is projected to last three years and two months.

The Opposition 

West Memphian Jim Russell is retired and spends a lot of time tending the irises at the Memphis Botanic Garden. But that may end soon.

“If TDOT’s going create all sorts of traffic problems, I’m not going to do that anymore,” Russell says. “I’m not going to get into that mess every day just to get to where I want to go.”

But Russell has bigger issues with the bridge closure. He has Parkinson’s disease and often has to get across one of the bridges for medical appointments. Last winter, he was stuck on the Hernando de Soto Bridge for hours after accidents stopped traffic on both bridges. Russell worries that if he needs immediate medical help he wouldn’t be able to get it, even with the promise of the emergency lane on I-55.

Concerns like Russell’s have been echoed by many on both sides of the Mississippi River since TDOT announced its plan. Those concerns are gaining momentum, as leaders consider the effects of the closure on individuals, businesses, and neighborhoods around the interchange and the potential broad economic impact on the Mid-South region — and the country.

TDOT is now working on an economic impact study of the bridge closure. But Phil Trenary, president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, can already put that figure in the ballpark. A post-9/11 study showed that closing all of the city’s bridges would have a negative economic impact of about $11 billion to $15 billion per year, Trenary says. The impact on business would be “significant to not only the local economy but to the national economy.”

Trenary says that closing the bridge is a recent idea, and the chamber is forming a coalition to start a formal discussion with TDOT. “We want to understand what the options are,” Trenary says. “What options can we put on the table that can achieve most of our objectives, like improving the traffic flow without closing the bridge.”

Troy Keeping, president and general manager of Southland Park Gaming and Racing, says the closure’s impact on his company could have a tax impact for Arkansas in the neighborhood of $7 million to $10.5 million. Keeping says the impact is far beyond that number, though, as he sees many Memphians shopping at the West Memphis Walmart and many from both sides of the river crossing the bridges to work and play.

TDOT’s plan is “very shortsighted,” Keeping says, and can likely be done without a closure, much like the current road project underway at the I-40/I-240 juncture.

“[TDOT has] kept that [section] open during the entire construction period, and there are large amounts of traffic through there,” he says. “[TDOT has] been able to reroute the traffic, and they should do the same thing on [the I-55 interchange project].”

“It’s going to cause great inconvenience to a lot of people,” says 9th District Representative Steve Cohen. “It will create traffic problems for Memphians who use the expressway either in Midtown or going downtown. It’s going to really clog it up and make traffic difficult — unbearable — for a long time.”

Schroer told Cohen that closing the bridge was the only way forward on the project. Cohen says he asked Schroer to at least expedite the work.

Jim Strickland

Jim Strickland, Memphis City Council member and a candidate for Memphis mayor, said he had not yet talked with TDOT as of last week but was skeptical that the bridge has to be closed. Other interstates aren’t shut down for months at a time for repairs, he says.

“At a minimum, TDOT needs to fully explain their current position,” Strickland says. “Why do we need to shut the bridge down? Is there no other way to design the interchanges? I have not heard these answers.”

The Wait-and-See Crowd

FedEx Corp. spokesman Jim McCluskey says his company is keeping an eye on the project.

“We are working with local and state officials to assess the effect of the bridge closure and evaluate alternate routing options that will lessen the impact for transportation carriers,” he said in a statement. “FedEx is focusing on and committed to providing the best level of service possible to our customers during this major infrastructure project.”

Lauren T. Crews, managing partner of City South Ventures, has been working for years to transform the abandoned U.S. Marine Hospital in the French Fort neighborhood into a multi-use residential and retail campus. He says he likes the interchange’s current design, but he wishes that TDOT had not announced changes to it years ago.

“When some entity comes along and announces that they’re going to do something but they don’t do anything, it just sort of shuts you down; there’s no progress that can be made,” Crews says. “It shuts the entire community down, as far as any improvements to be made. You can’t borrow money. You’re not going to find investors who are interested if they don’t know where the road systems are going to be.”

Brandon Dill

French Fort neighborhood

Crews say the situation has led to a decay in the French Fort neighborhood. Blight has claimed many buildings, and property values have declined. He sees brighter days ahead for the neighborhood with the coming of the roundabout, which would connect French Fort to downtown. “When you come into this community — if you can get the roundabout done — it may not look like Beirut over here,” Crews says.

The Supporters

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton says he is satisfied TDOT has done due diligence on the project and that they’ll do everything possible to minimize the impacts of the closure.

“I am looking forward to the completion of this project, because it eliminates one of the city’s last ‘malfunction junctions’ on our interstate highways,” Wharton said in a statement. “While the closure will be inconvenient, it’s only temporary, and the benefits of this project are far-reaching and long-term.”

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell says the closure will be inconvenient but that the project’s time has come. “It’s something that has to be done, and this is the best option we have,” Luttrell says. “To extend it over a multi-year period would be a mistake. We just need to move on with it and close it down.”

U.S. Rep. Stephen Fincher says infrastructure projects have allowed Memphis to become a leader in transportation and that he commends Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam for making the investment in Memphis.

“I am confident that TDOT will do everything in its power to ensure this project is carried out as smoothly and as safely as possible,” Fincher said in a statement.

Traffic City

Tony Bologna, a Memphis architect and developer, said he dreads those nine months when the bridge is closed in 2017.

“It’s going to cause a big overload on the M Bridge if you divert everything that way,” Bologna says. “If there’s a minor accident on that bridge now, traffic is already backed up for miles.”

Transportation consultants CDM Smith studied the new interchange project and said closing the bridge will add 46,850 new vehicles daily to the Hernando de Soto Bridge, for a total of 81,220 vehicles. Along Midtown I-240, the group said the I-55 bridge closure will add around 40,000 new vehicles, increasing daily totals to around 132,000 vehicles.

But TDOT officials say I-40 and I-55 will look much different (and traffic there will run much more smoothly) on the Arkansas side by the time the Old Bridge is closed. Traffic capacity there has been reduced for years by a seismic retrofit project by the FHWA, and by I-40 improvements that led the Arkansas Times to wonder, “Will Interstate 40, between North Little Rock and West Memphis, be under construction forever?”

TDOT’s Jane Jones, director of project development, says, “We’ve been working with the ASHTD, and we’ve had assurances that their work will be completed [before the bridge is closed] and the seismic retrofit project will be completed. And we’ll have system improvements along the detour route before all that takes place.”

Where It Stands

TDOT Commissioner Schroer says the five-year plan with no closure was not as safe, not as efficient, and “financially a horrible option.” In that scenario, the bridge would be open with one-lane traffic headed in both directions. Roadblocks and temporary closures would be the norm, Schroer says, as equipment and construction materials are moved in and out of what would be an open construction site.

Schroer points to the project’s road-user cost number, a standard measurement in the road-building industry to define the cost of projects for drivers based on gasoline costs, loss of productivity, lost wages, and more.

The five-year, non-closure plan has a user-cost of $871 million, Schroer says. He says the three-year project with bridge closure will have a user-cost of $350 million.

Asked if there was anything anyone could do to change his mind on closing the bridge, Schroer says, “It’s not a case of changing my mind. It’s about making the right decisions, and, in this case, we made the right decisions.”

Schroer says he knows Memphis motorists will probably curse his name when they’re stuck in traffic but that they’ll forget all about it when the new interchange opens up.

While the decision may be a done deal for Schroer, for many others on both sides of the river the decision process is just getting started. Some are awaiting TDOT’s economic impact study for the project and will likely use it as a springboard to begin a formal opposition process.

When told that TDOT’s decision on the closure was “final,” at least in their minds, Senator Ingram remembers another Memphis road project from decades ago.

“TDOT probably didn’t think the Overton Park expressway was going to be stopped, either,” he says.