Looking at Memphis in May's future, festival bosses fear moving off the river (original) (raw)

Memphis in May has reached a crossroad.

Does it move, shrink, expand or stay as is?

More than 100,000 residents and tourists crowd the music stages, barbecue tents and Downtown’s nearby hotels, bars and restaurants for eight days every May, spending over $137 million.

But the festival’s home in Tom Lee Park is about to get a remarkable face-lift. Festival organizers doubt a fixed-up park would hold Memphis in May. The event might have to shrink or move.

“When we saw the final designs we became very concerned,” said Jim Holt, Memphis in May International chief executive. “It’s a beautiful pedestrian park. It’s not ideally suited for large festival events.’’

Other open spaces could contain Memphis in May, such as Shelby Farms. But some festival insiders are skeptical. They insist the festival appeals to thousands of tourists precisely because of Tom Lee Park’s sweeping view of the Mississippi River and the Downtown location near hotels and Beale Street nightlife.

“If you mess with it and people stop coming, Memphis in May eventually will go away,” contends Lyman Aldrich, a Memphis real estate broker influential in the grassroots group that began Memphis in May in 1977.

Upscale plans for Tom Lee Park

Plans unfolding for Tom Lee Park haven't been a front-and-center conversation for most Memphians or the city’s leadership. But they have put two important nonprofit agencies at odds.

Memphis River Parks Partnership, a nonprofit agency, has no control over Memphis in May, though it has grand dreams for Tom Lee Park. It is a flat, 30-acre strand planted in grass next to where Riverside Drive swoops down off the bluff into the center city. Riverside offers a magnificent view of the green park, broad river and Mud Island harbor on one side, high-rise buildings climbing the bluff on the other, all of it bookended by the appealing architecture of the 1916 Harahan train bridge and the M-for-Memphis arcs designed into the Hernando DeSoto Bridge carrying Interstate 40 traffic. The park group wants to put that river view to use.

Intent on creating a popular spot year-round for tourists and residents, the river park partnership, led by urban expert Carol Coletta, considers the vista offered by Tom Lee Park in itself a sight unmatched on the 2,348-mile-long Mississippi River. Turning the grassy strand into a leafy urban park could make it a destination for travelers coming off Interstate 40 or touring the chain of trails linking East Memphis to Downtown and, via the 4,973-foot-long Harahan Bridge’s new $17 million pedestrian boardwalk, spanning the river into West Memphis, Arkansas.

“We have the potential to make a statement about our city and our brand,” Coletta said. “It is really a rare opportunity when we have a river like ours and a riverfront owned by the city and it is clean, and full of potential, but it just sits there most of the year looking like a moon space devoid of trees.”

Coletta’s group hired Chicago architect Studio Gang and ordered plans for a 60millionworld−classurbanparktobefinancedlargelybylocalphilanthropists.Thearchitectsenvisionatree−shadedgatewaynextto5−year−oldBealeStreetLanding,a60 million world-class urban park to be financed largely by local philanthropists. The architects envision a tree-shaded gateway next to 5-year-old Beale Street Landing, a 60millionworld−classurbanparktobefinancedlargelybylocalphilanthropists.Thearchitectsenvisionatree−shadedgatewaynextto5−year−oldBealeStreetLanding,a43 million passenger terminal and river cruise ship dock. Tom Lee would be contoured to resemble the river’s actual oxbows, pools, riffles and cut banks. Groves of trees would separate four swaths of open land. Four-lane Riverside would be narrowed to two lanes. Construction is slated to begin later this year.

DOWNTOWN MEMPHIS:'Giant step forward': Gov. Bill Lee proposes $10M for Tom Lee Park improvements

Tom Lee Park's redo is a piece in the long-running Main to Main Intermodal Connector Project. Some $40 million worth of projects, chiefly funded by federal grants, are meant to tie Memphis and West Memphis’ waterfronts with parks, bike trails, the Harahan boardwalk and the current Promenade, the harbor-side walkway deeded by Memphis founders.

Memphis in May needs flat land

“Can Tom Lee Park accommodate Memphis in May? That’s the million-dollar question,” Memphis City Council member Martavius Jones said. “If it can’t come back and Memphis in May has to move, my phone’s going to ring off the hook.’’

It might seem as if a renovated Tom Lee Park could handle the festival. After all, crowds fill the park only a short time.

“We all know Memphis in May plays a key part in the civic life of Memphis for eight days every year,” Coletta said.

But after seeing Studio Gang’s plan in November, Memphis in May International leaders were stunned. “We need flat, flexible spaces,” Holt said. “This design is heavily landscaped and heavily contoured.”

Festival organizers fear the revised park would disrupt Memphis in May’s singular attractions, the Beale Street Music Festival and the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Staged over two weeks, the events do not overlap but require similar logistics — ample electric power outlets, acres of level ground for multiple music stages and several hundred barbecue cookers, and easy access for nearly 100 semitrailers hauling music and barbecue equipment in and out.

“This design just does not make sense for us," Memphis in May board member Pat Kerr Tigrett said, noting she spoke as a concerned citizen rather than a board member.

With the park and festival groups at odds, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland appointed as mediator Janice Holder, a retired Tennessee Supreme Court justice. Holder has not yet made a public statement.

If she finds a solution both sides fully like, my hat will be off to her. Because this looks like an either-or. Tom Lee Park can't contain both a world-class park and the current festival. A shrunk festival could stay, but that seems like no solution for festival organizers.

Holt took the music stage recently and said as much to the big crowd awaiting delayed Grammy Award-winning rapper Cardi B.

“He got up there and told them, ‘If you want the Beale Street Music Festival to stay in this park, let me hear you.’ The applause was thunderous,” Memphis Tourism chief executive Kevin Kane said.

"I think if we did everything on that (Studio Gang) plan, probably Memphis in May would have to be drastically different,’’ Kane said. “I don’t know if we can get that many people in there the way we do now.’’

Why not grow Memphis in May?

If the Memphis River Parks Partnership can reimagine Tom Lee Park, should we also reimagine Memphis in May?

“There’s no question it could be much bigger than it is,” said Aldrich, the Memphian influential in the original Memphis in May.

But when a new economic development alliance headed by Strickland commissioned a how-should-we-grow study, the consultant recently recommended tourism but gave only a brief nod to Memphis in May.

What’s overlooked is the festival's broader potential. It is chiefly a Mid-South affair now, though the festival has national, even global, appeal.

In 2012, National Geographic Travel editors listed Memphis in May — with the crowds, splendid music, acres of barbecue tents, all bordered by the river, the Beale Street Historic District and the city’s charming skyline — among the world’s must-see sights. You might shrug this off as an oddity, but remember, while recounting Roman ruins, African wilderness and European majesty, this affluent magazine told its well-educated readers, there’s this river city in America you have to see.

This is amazing. It is a tribute, really, to Memphis in May. Back when the festival began, The Peabody was in bankruptcy. The Orpheum showed dirty movies. Beale Street was dead. Block after block nearby had been razed for urban renewal. Clark Tower had recently opened in East Memphis. Offices and merchants poured out of the central business district, part of the white exodus following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Memphis did not kill the civil rights leader, but his death off South Main aggravated racial wounds here.

Memphis in May was intended to bring black and white Memphians together, bring them together over the city’s singular music and barbecue, and inspire an idea that Downtown should not be left in ruin. This wasn’t the vision of political leaders or corporate executives. This was the vision of some quite ordinary young people, black and white, who got together in 1977 and wildly succeeded. Today, 12,000 people live in and around South Main in new houses, lofts and apartments. Another 10,000 dwellings are in the pipeline, part of $3 billion in proposed investment. Memphis and its waterfront have a unique flair, which is what National Geographic saw seven years ago.

Clearly, Tom Lee Park could be remade into a leafy destination park enhancing the center city’s appeal. But if the renovated park can’t accommodate Memphis in Memphis as it is now, could you move the festival out and still attract distant travelers? Aldrich doesn’t think so.

Few music fans from Boston, Tokyo or Berlin would care to sit near the Liberty Bowl or in Shelby Farms. While those venues are attractive, he said, they don’t seem uniquely Memphis like the riverfront.

“It’s the river that’s bringing the tourists. It is one of the greatest vistas anywhere on the Mississippi,” Aldrich said.

Barbecue teams could be strung out along Riverside Drive, but that would lose the charm of being compact and close to Beale. Mud Island might take the music festival, but the tram line would not easily accommodate tens of thousands of passengers, and the equipment trucks would congest the A.W. Willis Bridge for the half of the island developed into upscale residences. West Memphis could take the festivals, but that would pull tax revenue out of Memphis.

“Memphis in May needs to stay in Tom Lee Park,” Aldrich said. “The location is what makes it successful. It’s the cheapest form of economic development we have. We put, what, 200millionintothePyramidforBassPro?Weput200 million into the Pyramid for Bass Pro? We put 200millionintothePyramidforBassPro?Weput170 million or whatever it was (in public incentives) into Electrolux. We don’t put anything into Memphis in May. Maybe some security. But we have this huge asset that’s grown up and it's generating $137 million in economic activity, and we aren’t really doing anything to grow it.”

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Ted Evanoff, business columnist of The Commercial Appeal, can be reached at evanoff@commercialappeal.com and (901) 529-2292.