Open Space: A Riverfront Park System
Nothing identifies Memphis more than its riverfront with the Mississippi, and its subsidiary Wolf River Harbor. Taking advantage of this great natural feature is embedded even into the city’s inception, with the bequeath of the Overton Heirs Blocks for public purpose uses overlooking the river. Over the years, a collection of parks have been created along the river. However, they have been disconnected, and with that disconnection, have lacked the added value of being accessible to that larger segment of the public who enjoys a pleasant walk, run, or bike ride through a variety of parks along the river.
This is changing with the construction of the riverwalk extending along the bluffs overlooking Tom Lee Park and continuing to the Cobblestones. However, much still needs to be done. The string of small parks to the south (Chickasaw Heritage Park, the National Ornamental Metal Museum’s open space, Crump Park, and Martyrs Park) need to be connected to the system. Point Park on Mud Island must become the capstone of the system, linking the southern park components to the center open spaces, and then on to the northern components of Greenbelt Park, and a new Lake park around a reconfigured Wolf River Harbor. This system should have special bike and pedestrian ‘tributaries’ back into the adjoining neighborhoods, to trolley stops, and into Downtown. An attractive link should be established from Tom Lee Park to the National Civil Rights Museum in the south end. Beale Street should be connected to the river system by the development of a handsome streetscape development with a strong graphic information component. Downtown should be connected to the system by the development of a wider walk or boardwalk overlooking the Cobblestones, a great new commercial Harbor, a pedestrian bridge to Point Park on Mud Island, linkages to Main Street along Union Avenue, and a Land Bridge connection along Jefferson Avenue.
Passive Park Functions
A linked series of parks along the river lends more to the enjoyment of the river, and its water edge, than to a focus on the provision of sports fields and ball diamonds. Organized sports requiring specialized playing areas are best accommodated in large, more neutral spaces with plenty of parking. Better suited to the river system are passive, informal, and event-based activities that take advantage of more narrow, linear properties with continuous water edges, beautiful views, and direct connections to Downtown and visitor attractions.
Informal Active Uses
Biking, walking, jogging, rollerblading, kayaking, and boating are natural active uses related to a linear water-related system. Informal sports such as volleyball, or, and the great Mississippi. It is the announcement of Memphis to the river. It is the postcard image that every visitor carries away.
Northend Parks
The proposed Land Bridge transforms the existing, largely vacant and industrial Wolf River Harbor not only into a vibrant Downtown Harbor, but also into a placid and beautiful Lake park north of the new Harbor. The Lake park is shaped to provide a variety of experiences, from narrow passages with small islands acting as stepping stones for pedestrian/ bicycle bridges, to wider water suitable for small sail boating. The Lake is ringed by a forested public edge with a continuous public bicycle/pedestrian path system. The Lake park provides the focal amenity to new residential neighborhoods along its edges. The south end is edged by an urban plaza acting as a transition for the Lake into the Downtown environment of the Harbor. The north end terminates at a location ideal for a floating village center, where Main Street ends at a water’s edge promenade and boat dock.
The Lake park is connected back into adjoining open spaces and parks at the north end through the village center to a new trail system along the Wolf River natural habitat; eastward into the Greenlaw neighborhood at Washington Park and the Gayoso and Marble Bayous; and westward through the existing Harbor Town park system to Greenbelt Park along the Mississippi River. Creation of the Lake allows for the stabilization of water levels; hence the banks. This is a critical step in making the Lake park a viab pick-up games of football or soccer, tossing a Frisbee, and catching a baseball should be incorporated into many of the parks, so long as the flexibility of the park for other uses is maintained.
Passive Uses
More passive uses such as picnicking; watching river traffic, and boating; enjoying a sunset; sitting under a tree reading a book; admiring a flower garden; listening to music in a park; taking children to a playground; walking the dog; catching the breeze on a warm day — all of these are appropriate and needed experiences to be offered by a great park system.
Festivals and Special Events
Informal and passive activities can more easily coexist with special events and large festivals. Memphis in May can spread over Tom Lee Park, but for the rest of the year the park should provide a great setting for other activities. Band shells and performance areas can be incorporated into a large park. However, these special facilities should be designed to accommodate other informal activities so that they aren’t vacant, barren places when not in use.
Components of the Park System
South End Parks
The many small parks in this area can become interesting destinations along a river trail system if they each receive some design and maintenance attention relative to their special characteristics. Most of these parks are on high ground over looking the river, and as such, have great views. With a little work, these views could be enhanced, and the parks could each tell a piece of a story about Memphis and the Mississippi.
Chickasaw Heritage Park with an interpretative graphics system or pavilion could, with the National Ornamental Metal Museum, become a more attractive tourist destination. Some selective pruning and tree removal could create a few, framed views of the river from the top of the mounds.
Crump Park, a small park near a hotel, but otherwise isolated from the nearby neighborhood, has excellent views downriver. Again, some selective pruning and tree removal, along with a welldesigned seating area, could provide a great place to bring a lunch and enjoy a view.
Martyrs Park has sweeping views of the river, and an historic marker and memorial. It is also one of the few parks directly adjacent to a small residential neighborhood. This park could benefit from more tree canopy and enclosure to provide shade and a greater sense of place. It could also accommodate a children’s play area that could create an amenity to the adjoining neighborhood. With additional graphics, it could help build up a series of interpretive sites along a river trail.
Ashburn Coppock Park provides spectacular upstream views of the river. Interpretive graphics and better seating would create another attractive park destination along the trail system.
Tom Lee Park is the largest of the parks in the southern part of the river system. It is also the most used. As the site of Memphis in May, the city’s largest festival, and one of the South’s premier events, the park is principally a large open field next to the river. Flexibility and unencumbered space is obviously needed to host such a large event. However, during the rest of the year, the park’s lack of shade and variety is less attractive for casual use. Without sacrificing the flexibility needed to stage the Memphis in May events, the park should be redesigned to provide a series of outdoor ‘rooms’ where openness is combined with shade, and a variety of framed views and spaces are provided. Near the river’s edge, three dimensional viewing locations would be a desirable element, obvious and accessible to tourists debarking from the park’s riverboat landing, and to the visitors attending the Memphis in May festival. The bluffs to the east of the park, and the development of Riverside Drive as a parkway should be incorporated into this redesign in order to create a series of steps, ramps, overlooks and pedestrian street crossings that connect the neighborhoods on top of the bluffs to the park.
The north end of the park should be designed to accommodate a landing for the large touring riverboats. This landing would connect Tom Lee Park to Beale Street, and the Cobblestones. The design of the landing must accommodate access to the large boats for services and passengers at all river stages. The landing should create a significant public plaza and Harbor overlook. The design of the landing and plaza, must be of a scale and a dramatic quality that will make the Beale Street landing a new landmark.
Critical to the continuity of the southern park system is the trail connection between Martyrs Park and Crump Park. This connection extends under the I-55 Bridge, and the two railroad bridges across the Mississippi. These three bridges in themselves are powerful structures, and are worthy of an interpretive display along the trail. However, the extension must also traverse across the private property of the Church of the River, and in front of its sanctuary, which is designed to focus on a dramatically framed view of the river. Obviously, the spiritual power of this view would be ruined by a trail connection in front of it carrying stream of bike riders, rollerbladers, and joggers out for their Sunday exercise. Here the trail should be lowered and located along the edge of property so that its traffic is hidden from the sanctuary’s view. Routing the trail around to the back of the sanctuary creates a crossing conflict between the trail’s users and the church parking lot, as well as creating a prosaic and out-of-direction trail segment.
Downtown Parks
The Cobblestones
Adjoining Tom Lee Park is the unique Cobblestones, a one thousand foot-long stone landing dating from the 1840′s. The Cobblestones extends along Downtown’s edge with Wolf River Harbor. It is the most important remnant of Memphis’ historic waterfront where riverboats unloaded their cargoes of cotton, raw materials, and passengers. It now is generally a parking lot for excursion boat passengers. Relatively steep, unfriendly to pedestrians, marred by power poles, and in disrepair, the Cobblestones needs to be brought into the riverfront park system as a renovated historic artifact, still working as an active boat landing, but overlooked by a broad walkway designed as a pedestrian friendly promenade. If Riverside Drive can be reduced to two lanes of traffic as proposed in this report, the Cobblestone Walk should be expanded in width as much as possible. In addition, a boardwalk is proposed to provide a quiet place to sit and as an overlook of the new revitalized Harbor and the Cobblestones. The boardwalk could be attached to the face of the cobblestone walk retaining wall, set slightly lower than the walkway to make a comfortable destination, recreating the seamless connection that the Cobblestones once had with Downtown.Harbor and Confederate Park
The Cobblestones and boardwalk connect at the north end of the Harbor with Confederate Park and a proposed amphitheater-style gathering place. A restored Confederate Park would overlook this end, maintaining one of the key ‘windows’ of Downtown onto the Harbor, and the Mississippi. A new more informal amphitheater/plaza terminates the north end of the Harbor. It would be designed to provide a terraced viewing plaza for the activities of the Harbor, and informal location for occasional special events such as fireworks displays and concerts.Point Park
Opposite the Cobblestones and framing the new Harbor is a new park on Mud Island. This park is the ‘crown jewel’ of the riverfront park system. It provides a large green, shady oasis from which to casually enjoy the great views along and across the Mississippi River. Around its perimeter, a grand promenade is envisioned giving views to the city, the Harbor, and the river. The water edges of the park would be designed to accommodate the annual forty to fifty-foot rise and fall of the river by a set of handsome landscaped terraces and walls, providing intermittent access directly to the water. At the extreme southern end of the park, a specially designed plaza would be created, celebrating the point that overlooks the conjunction of Downtown, the Harble recreational amenity and catalyst for redevelopment of the north Downtown neighborhoods.
The new neighborhoods along the eastern edge of the Lake must accommodate both the existing passenger and freight rail line, but also a flood barrier for the five hundred year flood. This barrier could be provided in several ways: the construction of a modest wall system along the edge of Harbor Town at Greenbelt Park; 2) a six to eight foot high wall incorporated as much as possible along the rail line through the neighborhoods adjoining the eastern edge of the Lake; or 3) raising the rail line to create a low levee in combination with portions of a flood wall. Where gaps occur in the floodwall for street connections, a removable or swing/rolling panel system would have to be provided. Street connections causing gaps in the flood barrier system have to be carefully considered and focused on a few, well-placed connections rather than creating a number of crossings. he design, development, and construction of any riverfront project in Memphis is driven by one overriding fact, the fluctuation in the level of the Mississippi. Floods and the control of the riverbanks have led to the current environment at the riverfront today. The control of the river has required bold action and regional cooperation. The Riverfront Master Plan also recommends a bold strategy, as a way to make the riverbanks safe for public enjoyment. The construction of a Land Bridge will not only stabilize the Wolf River Harbor and define a new Downtown Harbor, the top of the Land Bridge will become new riverfront real estate, providing development necessary to extend Downtown out to the Mississippi.