The Commercial Appeal letter to the editor:
If Memphians can't make our riverfront a signature gathering place, what are we capable of doing?
Your Dec. 5 editorial, "Land bridge going nowhere," misses the fact that the riverfront master plan detailed an integrated set of key pieces, all having a purpose that serves the greater whole. Completing the master plan as Cooper Robertson proposed it would give us a riverfront unrivaled in the nation. Instead, it has been picked and parsed and seems destined to be at best a piecemeal version of the original vision. What a lost opportunity for our city.
Before it is forgotten, and just to set the record straight, no one ever proposed building the land bridge or promenade without the commensurate private development to pay for them. The plan always anticipated a long-term time frame for the market demand to develop. To assert anything else is simply wrong.
Although you call for improved "access" to the riverfront, anyone who takes a thoughtful look at the site realizes that the only way you get access is with continuous, ample pedestrian connections along the riverfront, such as those provided by Beale Landing, the promenade and, yes, the land bridge.
To reduce our ambitions for our riverfront to better maintenance and a few new "features" is to throw away transformative potential that can be realized in no other way. What a shame.
Carol Coletta
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Who are these so-called “special interests” you speak of? If you know them, please name them.
(A disclaimer: I could be considered one of those special interests, I suppose. I’ve owned 41 Union Ave. for 30 years.)
We have a magnificent river with one of the world’s great views across to the rural landscape of Arkansas. But the riverfront is another matter.
Thanks to investments by the City during Mayor Herenton’s Administration, we do have a bluff walk, and with leadership and persistence by the RDC, the bluff walk has been extended to the south and north.
But Tom Lee Park (not the view) is a very poor excuse for a gathering place. (You call a gathering place for the public something that costs $20 to enter, is severely damaged for months afterwards, and provides no shade or refreshments at any other time of the year? My, your standards are low.) And look at the way the bluff walk connects back to the city, particularly between Beale and Union. It is an abomination.
This nostalgia for the fire station, parking garages, and library along Front Street is laughable. I’ve looked out my window for 30 years at this landscape, and I promise you, it is nothing to be nostalgic about. It is a collection of buildings put there because the land was “free.” But the opportunity cost was incalculable. The result is a rag tag collection of buildings with no relationship to one another, no orientation to the riverfront and no practical public access. Why you resist the proposed Promenade is beyond me.
Your use of “concrete canyons” is perjorative. Let’s break it down. What do you propose instead: single family homes like we have on the bluff? Now, there’s a good way to build an urban core. Make it the suburbs. In fact, the subtext of much of the opposition to the master plan has been the opposition to density. But if you want a vibrant urban core that can support “live, work, play, shop” options like any real downtown, you must have density. You have to have people — and a lot of them.
The master plan was carefully crafted not only to improve public access and enjoyment of our river but also to pay for the improvements. The opposition has never — NEVER — proposed any realistic or reasonable plan to pay for any of their proposals. They are more pipe dreams of some bucolic open space better suited to the suburbs than to the city.
Another third rate park is not what downtown Memphis needs. (Check the use of Jeff Davis and Confederate Parks, then tell me how “attractive” they are.) The only way we are going to get first-rate public space along the riverfront is to figure out a way to pay for it with private development.
The current model for urban parks worldwide is Millennium Park in Chicago. It has set a new standard for great public space. It has an intensive set of uses that activate it year-round.
Arguing that we should simply settle for what we have takes a very small view of what Memphis can be.
Finally, any one who uses the riverfront with any regularity knows the enormous difference the RDC has made in its upkeep and maintenance. You apparently are not such a user.
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