Whatever happened to that project to add a pedestrian and bike entrance at Poplar and Cooper to Overton Park?
For the second installment of our occasional series, called “Whatever Happened To,” we’re checking in on a proposed street-improvement project intended to make Memphis more bike- and pedestrian-friendly. Announcements for the Cooper-Poplar Connector — the project to make a bike-and-pedestrian-friendly crossing from Cooper across Poplar and into Overton Park — came as early as 2014, nearly eight years ago.
In March 2016, the project won a $25,000 grant from the First Tennessee Foundation (the bank has changed hands twice since that announcement). The grant was set to help the project unlock federal funds, which it did.
At the time, we reported that the Connector “was designed by Ritchie Smith Associates and calls for a second crosswalk on the west side of the intersection, a protected bike crossing at the traffic signal, a new landing pad on the park side for bikes and pedestrians, and a new path that will connect to the park’s trail system.” To get an update on the project, we talked to Nicholas Oyler, Bikeway and Pedestrian Manager for the city of Memphis. — Toby Sells
Memphis Flyer: Whatever happened with the Cooper-Poplar Connector at Overton Park?
Nicholas Oyler: Let me make sure we’re on the same page of what this project is. It’s targeting the intersection of Cooper and Poplar. We’d be building a new entrance plaza to Overton Park on the north side of Poplar. It would have a new, little paved area with some minimal landscaping. There would be a paved path that connects this plaza over to Veteran’s Plaza and other existing sidewalks that lead into the park.
It would also improve pedestrian and bicyclist crossings on Poplar so that you can be able to get across Poplar a lot safer and more comfortable than you can today. The city just installed bike lanes on Cooper leading up to Poplar. Then, they kind of stop abruptly. Once this plaza and that connection goes in, it will be made more seamless and it’ll feel a lot safer getting across.
Thank you for the refresher, sir. So, what happened with this project?
It’s received a federal grant to cover 80 percent of the costs. Anytime you have federal funds — and I am very grateful for the funding source; it really helps us out — it comes with a lot of hoops we have to jump through, a lot of paperwork.
On this project, we were caught off guard a little bit by the requirements we had to go through for the environmental review. The Tennessee Department of Transportation determined that we would need to do … more work on the environmental review than we had originally had anticipated, because it is in a park. So, that added to the scope a little bit and just another box we had to check. So that slowed it down.
But the good news is that we do now have the environmental clearance. We’ve received that in late 2018. Since then, the project has been in the design phase. At this point, we anticipate breaking ground in mid-2023.
