Tag: Shelby Farms

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News News Blog

Greenline Connector to Crowdsource $75,000

A rendering of the Hampline shows the two-lane design and physical barrier that distinguishes the project from standard bike lanes.

  • A rendering of the Hampline shows the two-lane design and physical barrier that distinguishes the project from standard bike lanes.

With Memphis on the coattails of being named last year’s Most Improved Bike City by Bicycling Magazine, the city’s first two-way cycle track bike lane is seeking financial help from a crowdsourced fund-raising campaign.

The two-mile Hampline will connect bicyclists from Overton Park to the Shelby Farms Greenline, running through Binghampton. The project, which has been in the works since 2010, will have a lane in both directions and will be separated from the main road by a barrier to increase safety for cyclists. The line will have two miles of murals and sculptures, as well as art galleries and an amphitheater.

The development needs $75,000 from the public, but the additional $175,000 needed to break ground will come from private contributions and organization donations. In total, the Hampline is estimated to cost $4.5 million.

To donate, visit the project’s fundraising page.

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Opinion

Do Dogs Just Want to Run Free?

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My view is evolving. My view of dog parks, that is. I’ve been watching as the “Dog Bark” — that is not a typo — takes shape at Overton Park.

On the one hand, I think it’s a great idea and overdue in my book, having been spooked by big dogs while walking a small dog and having stepped in dog poop in the Overton Park playing field and greensward more than a time or two. The Dog Bark will have separate fenced areas for large and small dogs. Workmen were out Thursday morning laying down the surface, and this looks like the Hyatt Regency of dog parks. The grand opening is set for June 2nd.

On the other hand, I wonder if dogs and their owners are like motorcycle riders who don’t wear helmets and beach lovers who don’t wear sunscreen. They want to ride or run free and let their inner rebel out. The dog owners in my neighborhood have a little community that meets at an unfenced park in Midtown. The dogs — mostly big ones — seem to like it that way. The dog park behind the Board of Education on Avery looks kind of stark, and most people have to drive to get there. Shelby Farms, of course, is the field of canine dreams because of its size.

The dog owners I see in Overton Park like letting them off leash in the Old Forest and on the playing field next to Rainbow Lake, which is an irresistible attraction to some mutts. But if the owners don’t scoop, they’re tempting a war with those who want to use the playing field for Ultimate or playing catch or simply walking from the Memphis College of Art to Rainbow Lake.

A leash ordinance and strict enforcement would not be in the spirit of Overton Park. This is the park whose friends successfully defied an interstate highway. Polite encouragement might work, but I predict there will be some dogs that will continue to run free outside the confines of the Dog Bark. Maybe they can evolve.

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Special Sections

The Frog Gates at Shelby Farms

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Shelby Farms and the old Penal Farm complex are just full of oddities. I’ve already written about mysterious gravestones, blue barns, and abandoned 1950s cars in the woods. But the other day, I spotted these strangely decorated gates in the western portion of the complex.

Yes, the two concrete gate posts are topped with brightly painted, cast-concrete FROGS. Now I have to say that for a former prison, Shelby Farms certainly has a lot of gates, but these are the only ones I’ve found (so far) that feature animals. And why frogs, I wonder?

They’re located on Nixon Road, just south of Mullins Station, right across from the building that now houses the Shelby County Archives. The gate itself doesn’t serve any purpose anymore, since the road now runs just a few yards to the east of it. But I really do like the frogs. I’m sure they brightened the days of the prisoners who trudged through these gates years ago to work the fields.

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Editorial Opinion

A Master Vision

We have seen the future, and it consists of, among other things, one million new trees. We frankly don’t know how much of that promise is literal and how much is figurative, but the scope of the proposed planting — disclosed with much else to members of the Memphis Rotary Club on Tuesday by

Rick Masson, executive director of the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy — is appropriately grand. After all, Shelby Farms Park, the subject of Masson’s prospectus, is the nation’s largest continuous urban park, and it has remained so despite numerous no doubt well-intentioned efforts over the past few decades to “develop” it or fragment it for commercial or quasi-commercial purpose.

All of those ambitious schemes, fended off by numerous defenders of the environment, became a thing of the past with the establishment in 2006 by Shelby County government of the SFPC, a public-private body which has now produced a “master plan.” The plan, approved by the County Commission in August, promises changes over the next 20 years that are sweeping and even breathtaking but are basically extensions of the natural-park concept which already exists.

The master plan is subtitled “One park, one million trees, twelve landscapes,” and it will proceed, said Masson, in four phases of five years each. The first of these, costing $100 million, will see the beginnings of the massive reforestation, the construction of a new Plough Park playground and bridges and other connectors between the park’s several “landscapes,” and the three-fold expansion of Patriot Lake, which is already the signature premise on the property and is destined to become more so, accommodating virtually every known form of water activity, a boardwalk, and an amphitheatre.

And, as the TV ads used to say, there is “more, more, more!” We can hardly wait to see it, and we congratulate Masson, the governing board and staff of SFPC, county government, the far-sighted county office-holders who saw things through to this point, the designing firms who have produced this vision, and the various donors, large and small, institutional and private, who have contributed to the fulfillment of it.

Up Against It

With roughly a month to go in what has already been a heated race for the presidency, it is probably futile to expect our nation’s politicians to forgo partisan rhetoric long enough to cooperate on a plan to rescue both Wall Street and Main Street, not to mention the rest of the world, from a looming economic catastrophe.

So far Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have each, perhaps understandably, had difficulty decoupling their own exhortations for national unity from the same old boilerplate recriminations against each other and against the opposition party.

Shame on the demagogues in both parties who couldn’t stop politicking long enough to agree on a plan when the issue came to a congressional vote early this week.

Next time will have to be the charm. This is a deadly game, and we won’t get three strikes.

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News The Fly-By

Keep It Simple

Temperatures are soaring in the mid-90s on Friday afternoon, and there’s nary a soul near Patriot Lake in Shelby Farms — unless you count a gaggle of geese.

I’m riding shotgun in a biodiesel-powered Volkswagen Bug driven by Laura Adams, deputy director of Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. Adams is giving me a tour and telling me what the park will look like once the changes outlined in design firm Field Operations’ plan are implemented.

At a meeting earlier this week, the Shelby County Commission approved the plan, which will create 12 park landscapes (like an “art mound” and a wildlife refuge) and plant a million trees.

Our first stop is Patriot Lake. It’s void of people now, but in the cooler evening hours, walkers and rollerbladers will fill the lake’s sidewalks while kayakers play boat ball on the large man-made lake.

“Patriot Lake will continue to be the heart of the park,” Adams says. “The plan calls for expanding recreational opportunities at Patriot Lake. The lake itself will be extended further west into the buffalo pasture. The buffalo will just move further over.”

Adams says an expanded Patriot Lake will allow for more competitive watersports, such as regattas. The plan also calls for a beach.

County commissioner Steve Mulroy suggested the park allow swimming near the beach area in order to attract park users from across the city.

Adjacent to Patriot Lake is Plough Park, a picnic area. Adams says Field Operations’ plan would only make modest improvements to Plough Park’s existing facilities, such as new playground equipment and shelters.

On the northern edge of Plough Park, Adams parks her car and we walk toward the amphitheatre. The octagonal wooden stage and surrounding wooden benches were built in the mid-’70s and suffer from natural wear-and-tear.

“It’s not used all that often now, but the plan calls for sprucing it up and making it more user-friendly,” Adams says.

Back in Adams’ car, we pass several man-made lakes, all of which are much smaller than Patriot Lake.

“The plan will improve hydrology in the park. When the lakes were built, they were designed with sloughs that carried water to the upland lakes. Some of that network is no longer working,” Adams says.

When we reach Mullins Station Road on the far eastern edge of the park, Adams points out the new Shelby Park subdivision across the street. It’s located along the planned greenway trail.

“The plan has provisions for more picnic and playground areas on this side of the park to service these neighborhoods,” Adams says.

As we pass the Agricenter, Adams says the future Shelby Farms Park will utilize as much alternative energy, such as solar and wind, as possible.

The preliminary Field Operations plan called for a Shelby Farms School where other government buildings are located. But Adams says the master plan does not include a school. Instead, it calls for the park to expand opportunities for workshops on environmental and health education.

Perhaps most important, the plan will make getting into and out of the park easier for bikers and pedestrians.

“Getting into the park has been a barrier for some people,” Adams says. “There’s been no way to get a bike into the park without a car, and there’s no public transportation into the park. The plan addresses that by utilizing the existing greenways surrounding the park.”

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Opinion

A Memphis Fable

I know this couple. So do you. Let’s call them Mr. Memphis and Ms. Shelby.

They’ve lived together a long time, but they never got married.

Like all couples, they fight sometimes, and they worry about making ends meet. In hard times, they love to say that they have no options but to increase their expenses and borrow money from their children and grandparents. Like most couples, they also have some assets. A long time ago, their grandparents gave them 5,000 acres, which they called Shelby Farms.

About 40 years ago, Mr. Memphis and Ms. Shelby decided to keep half their land for parks and sell the other half to build houses for their children and make some money for current and future needs. They hired the best bankers, developers, and park planners that money could buy, and they thought it through for at least five years.

By 1973, they were ready to do the deal. The master developer would be the Rouse Company, a developer of planned communities. The local developer would be Boyle Investment, developers of River Oaks and Ridgeway Center. The banker would be First Tennessee National Corporation.

The planned community would be inside the city limits of Memphis, which would get the sale price plus an estimated $11 million a year in tax revenue. The community would include housing for 25,000 people and offices on some of the prettiest rolling country in West Tennessee. The park would be more than twice the size of Central Park in New York City, plus there would be five more regional parks throughout the city and county as part of the deal. The two local newspapers thought this was a swell idea.

The Memphis Press-Scimitar said, “The idea of a model community has many appealing features. It has been described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. … Development would produce tax revenues which could be diverted to the establishment of the 2,100-acre regional park. Using the entire acreage for a ‘total recreational complex’ would entail an expenditure which we don’t believe the taxpaying public is ready to accept.”

The Commercial Appeal said, “We favor the proposal to sell 2,900 acres of the total 5,000 acres for a model community development and retain the remainder for public use. … The remaining 2,100 acres are ample for all manner of recreational facilities.”

Of course, not all of Mr. Memphis and Ms. Shelby’s children agreed, because some of them were going to make out better than others. And a grandpa named Abe Plough, who ran one of the biggest companies in town and had a lot of influence, said it should all remain a park, even though he hardly ever went to one himself. But some other grandpas with big companies, like Kemmons Wilson and Wallace Johnson of Holiday Inns, thought it was such a good idea that they bid against Boyle before dropping out.

By 1974, the deal had soured. There was a bad recession, sort of like today, with trouble in the Middle East, gas rising to the awful price of 55 cents a gallon, and the price of groceries up and the stock market down. And it turned out that some of the children of Mr. Memphis and Ms. Shelby had larceny in their hearts and went to jail.

The plan died, but the Memphis/Shelby family kept growing. Instead of moving to Shelby Farms, the children moved to Cordova and Hickory Hill and Germantown and Collierville. Getting them there cost a lot in new roads, sewers, schools, debt, and trees.

Meanwhile, Mr. Memphis and Ms. Shelby still had their 5,000-acre inheritance. They decided to “invest” in a prison, some buffalo, a landfill, Agricenter International, Ducks Unlimited (a nonprofit which pays no taxes), and — most recently — a conservancy.

When the recession ended and the economy got better in the 1980s and 1990s and this decade, and the Dow went from 700 to 14,000, and the price of a nice house went from $25,000 to $250,000, and companies like FedEx built big offices in the suburbs, Mr. Memphis and Ms. Shelby didn’t make a dime off their inheritance. They told their children that developing part of Shelby Farms was a crackpot idea by a wayward son named Joe Cooper, which was a lie, but you know how parents can be. The graybeards and big dogs at Boyle, First Horizon, the country clubs, and The Commercial Appeal knew better but remained silent.

So today Mr. Memphis and Ms. Shelby are hurting, and they don’t have many options. But they sure had opportunities.

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News The Fly-By

Q&A with Chris Marcinkoski,

Keep it simple. That’s the underlying theme behind Field Operations’ winning plan for Shelby Farms.

While the other two companies in Shelby Farms’ recent master-plan competition imagined grandiose visions of a massive interconnected lake system, a large amphitheater, and a bridge of flowers over Walnut Grove, Field Operations’ focus was on enhancing the park’s existing features.

The New York-based design firm was selected earlier this month based on public support for its plan. Throughout the month of March, all three firms — Field Operations, Tom Leader Studio, and Hargreaves and Associates — exhibited plans at the Central Library and the Shelby Farms Visitors’ Center. There is no estimated cost associated with the Field Operations plan.

Field Operations is also currently converting a landfill in New York city into a major public park. — by Bianca Phillips

Flyer: You plan to plant one million trees in Shelby Farms. Where will they go?

Chris Marcinkoski: The trees will start at the beginning of the park and go all the way to the Wolf River. The idea is to tie the park together and block out the roads at the same time.

What will happen to Patriot Lake?

We’re going to expand Patriot Lake so it’s able to accommodate a variety of non-motorized water sports, like rowing, sailing, and kayaking. It’ll be four-plus miles around and have wetlands on its edges. And we’ll have boardwalks, beaches, a boathouse, and small marina area.

Your plan also includes a school.

It would be a life and environmental-sciences-based institution. It uses the park as a laboratory for its curriculum. It’s not clear whether it would be a charter school or public or private.

The other firms’ plans included athletic fields. Will you be adding those to the final plan for the park?

There are already a lot of soccer fields and baseball fields and running tracks near the park. We wanted to focus more on nature rather than formal sporting programs that occupy a lot of the land.

Why relegate public art to the old landfill space behind the BMX track at shelby farms?

We have a great deal of experience in this office dealing with landfill conditions. We’re converting Fresh Kills landfill in New York into a public park on Staten Island.

We know there are limitations in terms of what you can do because there’s methane [in the soil]. Something like the “Art Mound” seems to make sense.

Does green energy factor into your plan?

The Agricenter is a place where we can take advantage of some new energy sources. There’s a potential of harnessing the methane from the landfill. There’s an aspiration to use as much green energy as we can. If we can have a zero carbon footprint park, that’s what we would like to do.

How does Shelby Farms compare to Fresh Kills project?

Fresh Kills is an isolated piece of infrastructure. You can go to Shelby Farms right now and take advantage of the park.

The main thing we want to do at Shelby Farms is create an identity. When we arrived in Memphis, we got a map at the car-rental place, and it still said that Shelby Farms was a penal farm. That’s a problem if people don’t yet know it’s a park.

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News

Shelby County Hazardous Waste Center Opens

As Rick Messere pulls up to the sheet-metal building tucked around a hidden corner on Haley Road near Shelby Farms, a group of men in bright yellow vests approaches his car. A few are pushing a plastic cart.

Messere pushes the button to pop his trunk. As the vest-wearing crew unloads about 30 cans of paint from his trunk, Messere rolls down his window.

“Do you take old batteries?” he asks.

“Yes, we do!” replies Lisa Williams with the Shelby County Roads and Bridges Department.

Messere unloaded three year’s worth of mostly empty paint cans and some old batteries on opening day at the Shelby County Hazardous Waste Facility Tuesday morning. He was one of about 60 county residents who took advantage of the center’s first day in business.

The center takes the place of the county’s annual hazardous waste collection event. Items such as paint cans, automotive fluids, compact florescent lightbulbs, and pool chemicals are collected at the site and shipped off for proper disposal. They’ll even accept electronics, like computers and cell phones.

The center, which is funded by a combination of public and private funds, and is open every Tuesday and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. It’s located at 6305 Haley Rd.

Acceptable items: aerosol spray cans, automotive fluids, anti-freeze, motor oil, batteries, oven and toilet cleaners, adhesives, stains and varnishes, electronics, cell phones, flammable liquids, drain cleaners, fluorescent tubes, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, paint, pool chemicals, moth balls, insect repellent, mercury, and thermostats.

— Bianca Phillips

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News

Memphis Pagans Take Pride

The days of witches being burned at the stake are long gone, but a few misperceptions about paganism still carry over from centuries ago. (They don’t worship the devil, for instance.)

The annual Pagan Pride Day (PPD) event at Shelby Farms, Shelter #7 aims to clear up any confusion about paganism through workshops, info booths, and a public ritual celebrating the Autumn Equinox. Vendors will be on hand peddling gemstones, jewelry, and other pagan items.

The event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is two cans of food for Friends for Life. Last year, PPD collected 279 pounds of food.

Pagan Pride celebrations are held annually around the world within four weeks of the Autumn Equinox. This year, there are over 130 events scheduled in 48 states, five Canadian provinces, and other locations worldwide.

For more, check out the Flyer’s searchable listings.

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News The Fly-By

Patriot Pond?

Vincent Ciaramitaro spends two to three days a week paddling at Patriot Lake in Shelby Farms. He plays boat ball, a variation of water polo, with the Memphis Whitewater club every Tuesday. He teaches new kayakers on the lake, and, sometimes, he enjoys paddling alone.

But over the past several months, he’s noticed something disturbing.

“We can paddle our kayaks underneath the pier without ducking our heads,” says Ciaramitaro. “When you can do that, it means the water level has dropped tremendously.”

With no water system feeding the man-made lake and persistent drought-like conditions, park officials estimate the 60-acre lake has lost about three to five feet of water over the last several years. Since January, Shelby County is about 14 inches below normal rainfall levels.

“The lake is so low, it’s really in a crisis,” says Laura Adams, executive director of Shelby Farms Park Alliance. “You can paddle around the lake with a four-foot paddle and touch the bottom in several places.”

Adams estimates the lake is now losing about an inch a day. The lake normally ranges from four feet in shallow places to 17 feet at its deepest.

The county is working on diverting a ditch near the Visitor’s Center to direct rainwater into the lake. Currently, the ditch drains into the Wolf River.

“However, that only works if it rains,” says Adams. “If we turned a pump on 24 hours a day, it could take a couple months to refill. That’s the best short-term solution, but it’s not very environmental.”

There is a pumping system in place at Patriot Lake, but it hasn’t been turned on in several years. Steve Satterfield, administrator of Shelby Farms, says there is no immediate plan to do so.

“We’re concerned about the cost of powering that pump and the amount of water that we’d be pulling out of our drinking aquifers,” says Satterfield.

Satterfield estimates it would take about 25 million gallons to refill Patriot Lake, which he says could cost $10,000 to $20,000. Jerry Anderson of the University of Memphis Groundwater Institute agrees that cost should be a concern but says Shelby Farms officials need not worry about the aquifer. “Our aquifer is big,” says Anderson. “We pump 200 million gallons a day just to drink.”

The Shelby Farms Park Alliance is currently looking into a hydrology study for Patriot Lake, as well as other lakes in the farms. The study would be part of the overall planning process for Shelby Farms.

“There’s a larger issue here. When you’re planning a major urban park in 2007, with climate change and everything else, should you be planning differently?” asks Adams.

In the meantime, Satterfield says the county will only consider pumping water from the aquifer as a last resort. “We’re not going to let the lake go dry,” says Satterfield. But right now, we don’t know if we should spend all that money to fill it with a pump just to have Mother Nature change her mind and decide to rain.”