Tag: riverfront

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Brooks Museum Unveils New Rooftop Features For Riverfront Location

Credit Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

The Memphis Brooks Museum Of Art designers have unveiled the design for a free-to-access rooftop park that will be featured at the riverfront location.

According to the museum, the pathway will offer views and vantage points previously unavailable. It also stretches “nearly a quarter of a mile,” and is meant for “more than observing.”

The space, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, will also feature connecting art, architecture, the Memphis skyline, as well as views of the Mississippi River.

“A continuous pathway connects discrete pavilions scattered across the roof, encouraging visitors to explore the museum’s unique location at the intersections of river, city, and art,” said the museum in a statement.

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art executive director Zoe Kahr, said this space will “bring together every corner of our community.”

“It’s just one of the many ways we;re creating pathways into the museum and connecting with the downtown urban landscape,” said Kahr.

Museum board president, Carl Person, echoed these sentiments saying that the roof is designed to bring people together. “Nowhere else in Memphis can get you 360-degree views like this, and the roof is just one of the free civic spaces in the Memphis’ art museum,” said Person.

The rooftop will also feature paintings chosen by an international landscape architecture firm, OLIN. The paintings will feature “regional, native, and robust plants,” and “a mixture of scales, colors, and textures.”

This announcement comes shortly after it was announced that Friends for Our Riverfront filed a lawsuit against the museum and the city of Memphis. The museum broke ground on the museum facility in June 2023. According to the museum, the $180 million project is expected to open to the public in late 2025. 

In the lawsuit, Friends for Our Riverfront said that the museum’s move from Overton Park to the riverfront location is the city of Memphis’ “most recent violation.”

“What seemingly began as a consultant’s recommendation for a relatively small ‘cultural amenity’ on the river bluff at Union and Front Street has ballooned into a massive building project that covers an entire block, leaves no space for a greenway, and violates an easement that provides free access to all Memphians,” said the organization.

A Chancery Court hearing on the matter is scheduled for September 20th.

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News News Blog News Feature

Details Emerge on Snuff District Lake, Floating Dock at Cobblestone Landing

Credit: Wikipedia

A lake could be created next to the Snuff District and a floating entertainment dock could be headed to Cobblestone Landing, according to legislation proposed by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis). 

Cohen said he proposed the two “Memphis-centric projects” for the 2022 Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) on behalf of the city of Memphis. These projects are part of riverfront improvements proposed by Mayor Jim Strickland in December. 

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

Those plans would build two new riverboat docks on the Mississippi. But it would also create a two-million-square-foot lake for swimming, paddling, and fishing in the north end of Wolf River Harbor next to the burgeoning Snuff District in Uptown. It would also include a new “floating entertainment dock” at Cobblestone Landing.  

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

A statement from his office Wednesday afternoon said the bill would allow “the Wolf River to create a lake adjacent to the historic downtown Snuff District,” done, apparently, by damming the Wolf River. It would also accommodate a floating entertainment dock at Cobblestone Landing.

“Both projects will transform our city and appeal to residents and tourists alike,” Cohen said in a Wednesday statement. 

Details on the floating dock are scanty. Information from the bill says only the project is hoped to ”entice visitors and the Downtown workforce down to the harbor’s edge at Cobblestone Landing.”

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

To create the lake, labeled Sunset Lake in a city YouTube video, a dam would be built in the harbor a mile and half north of its entrance at the tip of Mud Island. The lake’s water elevation would be determined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which, according to the bill, “have been supportive of the project concept.” The water quality of the lake would be “improved” to “allow enhanced recreational usages including kayaking, swimming, and fishing.”

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

“The new lake will allow visitors to have access to the riverine environment of the Mississippi River which is found in more remote reaches of the river but is available in Uptown/Downtown Memphis,” reads the bill material. 

The bill says the lake would be sandwiched between the $62 million project to repurpose the snuff factory to the east (with 294 housing units and 10,000 square feet of retail space) and the hundreds of residents of Harbor Town on the west, ”who will benefit from access to such a great public amenity.” A “strong possibility” exists that visitors to the lake could access it by Downtown’s Big River Trail.

Credit: City of Memphis/YouTube

Strickland unveiled his riverfront proposals to the Memphis City Council in December. He mentioned them again in his State of the City address in January. 

“We have a unique opportunity to expand Beale Street Landing and Greenbelt Park docks, as well as, create a lake and a series of additional docks and other improvements along the riverfront to increase economic development in the area and improve the quality of life for residents,” he said. 

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Hungry Memphis

CIMAS Kicks Off Supper Club Series

CIMAS interior at the Hyatt Centric Beale (Credit: Diamond PR)

Have a hankerin’ for some wild game? Then hop on over to the Hyatt Centric’s CIMAS restaurant tomorrow night at 6 p.m. for the launch of its new Supper Club series.

The series of dinners will take place several times per year in seasonal formats. The first dinner – Wild Game & Wild Cider – is centered around the “fall season and prime Tennessee sporting season,” and will be hosted by James Beard award nominee James Rigano and Angry Orchard cider maker Ryan James Burketts.

Wild Game & Wild Cider will unfold over seven courses of game plates, including tuna crudo and spice and slow-roasted Hudson Valley duck breast, paired with limited vintage, small batch bottles of cider. The event is open to both the public and hotel guests. Seats are $110 a person. Find out more about reserving a spot here.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Kickin’ Around the Cobblestones — in Downtown Memphis

On a day when most Memphians concerned themselves with such mundane matters as rain, work, school, crime, foreclosures, and the fights and shootings that broke out at four city schools, 40 of us met at City Hall Wednesday to hear a two-hour discussion of rocks.

The rest of you can be excused for wondering if we have rocks in our heads.

The rocks in question are the cobblestones at the foot of downtown. The rock hounds included two reporters, representatives of the Tennessee Department of Transportation and various state and local historic preservation groups, and supporters and foes of the proposed Beale Street Landing.

The rocks are next to the landing. To a handful of people, the rocks are a historic treasure comparable to Beale Street or the Mississippi River itself. The $29 million landing might have “an adverse impact” on the rocks, which are slated for additional millions. Hence Wednesday’s meeting.

“The current design reflects a primarily recreational use of boarding and disembarking pleasure boat and cruise ship passengers,” says the state report. “In doing so, the design overwhelms any sense of the historic commercial use of the riverfront.”

This is the problem with projects like Beale Street Landing and the proposed new stadium at the Fairgrounds. They absurdly inflate the importance of something that matters little if at all to most people and prevent progress on smaller and easier projects with potentially far greater benefits.

For decades, the cobblestones were so treasured that downtown workers and visitors used them as a bumpy and treacherous parking lot. Now they might be “adversely impacted” by the “verticality” of Beale Street Landing.
As Benny Lendermon, the head of the Riverfront Development Corporation, noted, the elevation of the river fluctuates 57 feet. In high water, most of the cobblestones are submerged. In low water, big touring riverboats can’t get in the harbor.

Hence the proposed landing at the north end of Tom Lee Park. It will be used by recreational boats, small day-tour boats, and big, fancy, cruising boats like the Delta Queen. That is, if the Delta Queen doesn’t go out of business in 2008 because the government has deemed it a fire hazard, as The New York Times reported Thursday.

The design of the docking part of the landing is unique. After some sharp discussion Wednesday, it was determined that “unique” means nothing like it has ever been built before. RDC engineer John Conroy said its structural soundness has been certified.

The people from state government who hosted Wednesday’s meeting are not “big-picture” deciders. They are, as one of them explained, a “pass-through” agency. They will go back to Nashville and weigh the historic considerations and announce, sooner or later, if and how the project can proceed.

Beale Street Landing, whose cost may now fluctuate like the river elevation, is to be funded by a combination of local, state, and federal funds. Some of the federal funds come from the Department of Homeland Security, because there are ferry-boats involved.

And you thought Homeland Security was just to protect us from terrorism.

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Opinion

Smart City and Friends

Tom Jones and Virginia McLean are making the Riverfront Development Corporation irrelevant.

Jones is the cofounder and main writer for the Smart City Memphis blog (smartcitymemphis.blogspot.com). McLean is the founder and chief activist of the nonprofit Friends for our Riverfront (friendsforourriverfront.org).

They are often on opposite sides of riverfront issues, including the proposed $29 million Beale Street Landing. Jones has emerged as its most articulate and well-informed defender. McLean, equally hip to the latest ideas and trends in parks and cities, is the RDC’s most passionate and dogged critic.

Both of them run on shoestring budgets and receive no money from local government or the RDC. Jones, a former newspaper reporter, was a spokesman and policy-maker for Shelby County government for some 25 years. McLean is an heir to the Overton family that was one of the founders of Memphis.

Their websites are timely and frequently updated, and they have become bulletin boards for unusually thoughtful comments, speaker listings, and even occasional news items. When a state official weighed in on Beale Street Landing this month and delayed the project, Jones and McLean were ahead of most if not all of the news pack spreading the word and collecting different points of view.

The RDC, in contrast, often seems muscle-bound. Created six years ago to focus public and private resources and cut red tape, it has a staff of former city division directors and City Hall cronies making six-figure salaries. It also has a blue-chip board of directors including public officials and downtown bigwigs. And it is consistently outhustled, outsmarted, and outmaneuvered by Jones and McLean and their helpers.

While Jones and McLean embrace the Internet and rough-and-tumble debate in real time, the RDC’s website is outdated and trite. “Steal away to a day’s vacation in the city’s front yard,” says the home page. “Nowhere else can you feel the rush of the Mighty Mississippi as its breeze flows through your hair and its sunsets warm your soul.” The most recent “news” is a June 12th press release and a year-old item about the Tom Lee Park memorial. The description of the master plan still includes the aborted land bridge to Mud Island and pegs the total public cost at a staggering $292 million, which “will spur $1.3 billion in private investment in real estate alone” and bring “a minimum” of 21,000 new jobs and 3,400 new residential units to downtown.

Meanwhile, Jones and McLean are slugging away about the latest delays to Beale Street Landing and the next meeting of the Shelby County Commission. Within the last year, each of them helped bring national experts to Memphis for well-attended discussions of parks and citizen activism. The RDC, meanwhile, made a by-the-numbers Power Point presentation to the Memphis City Council aimed at justifying its own existence as much as informing public officials.

The RDC is not without is success stories. Its park maintenance is exemplary. Its concert series and improvements at Mud Island have made the park more attractive. Its structure involves business leaders and nonprofits in a way that government cannot, although the group’s standard claim that it saves money is difficult to prove.

But the riverfront — Tom Lee Park in particular — often seems antiseptic and sterile, like a set-piece instead of a true park. On Sunday afternoon, for example, hundreds of people came to Overton Park in Midtown to beat on drums, whack golf balls, ride bikes, pick up trash, have picnics, toss balls, exercise dogs, visit art galleries, stroll babies, and do whatever. Midtown has no development authority, but funky Overton Park is surrounded by neighborhoods that feel invested in it.

Beale Street Landing looks more and more like a bet-the-company deal for the RDC. Without a big project — the land bridge (aborted), the promenade (still stalled), the relocation of the University of Memphis law school (coming soon) — why not turn its duties back over to a reenergized park commission and city administration? The Memphis riverfront, from The Pyramid to Mud Island to the trolley to proposed Beale Street Landing, doesn’t lack for big investments. It lacks vitality, a decent public boat launch, walkable cobblestones, a skate park or something fun to watch, a working fountain next to the Cossitt Library, and enough shade and sprinklers to give tourists a fighting chance against the heat.

If those things happen, it will be because of citizens like Jones and McLean and their readers as much as the RDC.