Memphis Landmarks Commission

The Memphis Landmarks Commission meets Thursday, February 28, 2008 at 5:00 pm in City Council Chambers (Lobby) to consider a number of current Certificate of Appropriateness applications. One of them is Beale Street Landing (08-067) in the Cotton Row District. Click for more...

Click here to download the Agenda for the meeting and the Staff Report for Beale Street Landing (PDF, 1.8MB).

Click here to download the Memphis Landmarks Commission Design Review Guidelines, August 1988 (16pp., PDF, 5.8MB).

[Read the complete article...]

Benny Lendermon on Smart City

Benny Lendermon, CEO of the Riverfront Development Corporation, was recently interviewed by Carol Coletta on her radio program, Smart City.

Click here to listen to the Lendermon portion of the program We have compressed the file enough that you should be able to listen even on a dialup connection. The MP3, if you wish to download it, is under 5 MB.

[Read the complete article...]

Work finally set to start on Beale Street Landing

Waterfront plans revised after historic group had objections
Commercial Appeal [link]
By Tom Charlier

Satisfied that modest design changes will protect the Downtown cobblestones area, Tennessee historic-preservation officials have cleared the way for construction to begin on the Beale Street Landing project.

The Tennessee Historical Commission dropped its objections to the $29million riverboat dock and waterfront amenity after the city's Riverfront Development Corp. agreed to change color schemes and relocate and downsize one feature of the landing.

With the revisions, the project will not "adversely affect" the cobblestones area, which is part of the city's historic landing on the Mississippi River and within the Cotton Row Historic District, commission executive director Patrick McIntyre said in a letter last week.

The commission's consent was needed because federal grant money will help fund the project.

The decision removes the last barrier to construction, which will begin "real, real, real soon," said RDC president Benny Lendermon. Completion is expected in 2010.

"We're really pleased to get this resolved as quickly as we did," Lendermon added.

The landing, situated at the foot of Beale between Tom Lee Park and the cobblestones, will feature an elaborate docking facility serving excursion and cruise boats and other vessels no matter how high or low the Mississippi might be. It also will include terraced pods designed to help bring people closer to the river.

Critics, however, have described the project as an extravagant boondoggle.

The RDC, a nonprofit group overseeing improvement projects along the city's frontage on the Mississippi, had been planning to begin work more than two months ago when the historical commission ruled that the original design would have adverse effects.

State officials said the vertical profile of the landing was out of character with the downward-sloping cobblestones.

Although the commission outlined six conditions for dropping its objections, the key changes clearing the way for the project included:

Making the color of the dock and ramp structures "earthen rust" rather than the originally planned red.

Moving the "island," or pod, closest to the cobblestones to the east, closer to Riverside Drive, and reducing its size by 15 percent. As a result, it won't stick out as much over the cobblestones.

A prominent critic of the landing said the revised design represents an improvement.

"It kind of calms it down, makes it less intrusive," said Virginia McLean, president of the group Friends for Our Riverfront.

She's not sold on the landing yet, though.

"It's going to cost a lot of money," McLean said.

[More on the decision here.]

[Read the complete article...]

BSL Design Revisions - TDOT/SHPO Approvals

On December 5/6, the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) approved, and the State Historic Preservation Office conditionally approved, a set of proposed design changes for Beale Street Landing.

Quoting TDOT's letter, "[t]he assessment proposes several design changes including shifting and reducing the height and size of Island A, softening the transition between the project and the historic cobblestones, innovative interpretation techniques, and changing the red accent color to rust."

The complete Design Revision Submission, as prepared by the RDC, together with the TDOT cover letter dated December 5, 2007, can be downloaded as a 2.11 MB PDF file compatible with Adobe Reader v5 or later. Click here.

The Tennessee Historical Commission's "conditional" non-adverse-impact letter dated December 6 can be downloaded here (PDF, 105KB).

For more information about the Consultation Meeting that led to this, click here.

Note: The Librarian has made a non-substantive, technical change to the Design Revision document. An oversized and complex architectural drawing on page 10 made the document bulky and clumsy to read. We have substituted a 150dpi JPEG rendering of the same diagram. We also made it compatible with older versions of Adobe Reader.

For the convenience of those who cannot download the full document, the most important pictures from it are reproduced below.

Page 10. Architectural drawing shows the largest pod moved back toward Riverside Drive by approximately 40 feet.


Page 11


Page 12


Page 13


Page 14


Page 15


Page 16


Page 17

[Read the complete article...]

Editorial: New day, new way for mayor?

Commercial Appeal [link]
Sunday, December 2, 2007

MEMPHIS MAYOR WILLIE HERENTON sounded like a man with a renewed sense of purpose.

After meeting with most of the members of next year's City Council at The Rendezvous last week, Herenton said he plans to revive discussions about some issues that have long been on his to-do list.

"I'm going to be revisiting some of the dramatic and bold statements I've made in the past," Herenton told reporters after his get-acquainted session with the new council. "They fell on deaf ears before."

The golden oldies Herenton plans to put on his play list again include riverfront development, fairgrounds redevelopment, football stadium construction or renovation and that classic stand-by, consolidated government.

It was classy (and politically savvy) for Herenton to meet with the incoming council members.

There will be nine newcomers next year, eight of whom attended last week's session. Obviously, it was smart for Herenton to try to get off on the right foot with people he'll be working closely with over the next four years.

But if he's serious about bringing some of those sticky-wicket issues up for discussion again, meeting with council members was the easy part.

They probably share many, if not all, of his goals.

The real challenge is selling some of those ideas outside the sympathetic confines of City Hall.

The mayor wants riverfront development? He'll need to engage with groups like Friends for Our Riverfront, the Overton family heirs who own the so-called "Promenade" property and others who are intensely interested in what happens along the city's waterfront.

He wants to redevelop the fairgrounds? It would help to get the support of the various neighborhood groups surrounding the property.

A new or renovated stadium? Might be a good idea to work something out with University of Memphis officials and those boosters who are aggressively lobbying for an on-campus stadium instead of one at the Liberty Bowl site.

Government consolidation? That might require going into the lion's den to deal with suburban mayors who have long opposed that idea.

And, if Herenton wants the results to be any different this time around, he must do more than briefly share space in the same room with people who disagree with him.

For example, it wouldn't change much if Herenton were to show up at a meeting with those suburban mayors, tell them why he's right about consolidation, then head off to his next gig.

He needs to actually sit down and exchange ideas, to listen to other people's points of view and then try to persuade them. In a word, it'll require diplomacy.

A similar strategy is needed for virtually all of the other big-ticket items on that list.

After 16 years as mayor, Herenton has had plenty of time to accomplish the things he could do without anyone else's help. The goals he hasn't been able to achieve yet are the ones that require cooperation from other stakeholders -- in some cases, many stakeholders.

To build the kind of legacy Herenton has indicated that he wants, he'll need to reach out to people in ways he has never done before. Doing that might not come naturally or easily for the long-serving mayor, but it's probably the only way he'll be able to make real breakthroughs.

As the well-worn saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If Herenton wants to finish his mayoral career on a high note, he would do well to take that to heart.

[Read the complete article...]

Tennessee preservation group wants educational kiosks on Beale Street Landing

Commercial Appeal [link]
by Tom Charlier

State historic-preservation officials might drop some of their objections to Beale Street Landing if educational kiosks and other interpretive features are added to the project, an official said Wednesday.

Tennessee Historical Commission executive director Patrick McIntyre said the kiosks could explain to tourists and newcomers the past importance of the cobblestone landing to the Memphis riverfront.

The comments by McIntyre came at a meeting in which local and state officials and interested groups discussed ways to reduce the project's effects on the cobblestones, which lie within the Cotton Row Historic District.

Earlier this fall, McIntyre's office ruled that the landing "as currently proposed will adversely affect the historic property through the introduction of out-of-character elements into its setting."

The decision effectively blocked this month's planned start of construction on the $29 million project by the Riverfront Development Corp. (RDC)

Linking Tom Lee Park and the cobblestones, the landing would serve as a riverboat docking facility and an amenity providing terraced access to the water's edge on the Mississippi. Critics have described it as a costly, impractical and unnecessary.

After the meeting, RDC president Benny Lendermon said interpretive features will be included in the landing.

On Wednesday, McIntyre elaborated on the state's objections to the project. He said the "uplifted" landing is out of character with the downward sloping cobblestones, and the construction would occur on areas once part of the cobblestones.

Some of the concerns voiced by citizens in attendance included the need to restore the cobblestones, which have deteriorated and now cover less area because of work done by the city more than 15 years ago.

Lendermon said the RDC has secured $6 million from Congress for the cobblestone-restoration work. But that project also must win approval from historic-preservation officials, and they won't take action on it until issues with the landing are resolved.

"We're ready to move forward," Lendermon said.

Some critics of the project also said it should be relocated, while others argued for a more distinct separation between the landing and cobblestones.

Lendermon said the RDC will work with preservation officials and review the concerns expressed at the meeting before submitting proposed project modifications to the Tennessee Department of Transportation, which is overseeing the process.

[Read the complete article...]

Kickin' Around the Cobblestones -- in Downtown Memphis

Rocks On Our Mind And In Our Heads
Memphis Flyer [link]
by John Branston

On a day when most Memphians concerned themselves with such mundane matters as rain, work, school, crime, foreclosures, and the fights and shootings that broke out at four city schools, 40 of us met at City Hall Wednesday to hear a two-hour discussion of rocks.
The rest of you can be excused for wondering if we have rocks in our heads.

The rocks in question are the cobblestones at the foot of downtown. The rock hounds included two reporters, representatives of the Tennessee Department of Transportation and various state and local historic preservation groups, and supporters and foes of the proposed Beale Street Landing.

The rocks are next to the landing. To a handful of people, the rocks are a historic treasure comparable to Beale Street or the Mississippi River itself. The $29 million landing might have "an adverse impact" on the rocks, which are slated for additional millions. Hence Wednesday's meeting.

"The current design reflects a primarily recreational use of boarding and disembarking pleasure boat and cruise ship passengers," says the state report. "In doing so, the design overwhelms any sense of the historic commercial use of the riverfront."

This is the problem with projects like Beale Street Landing and the proposed new stadium at the Fairgrounds. They absurdly inflate the importance of something that matters little if at all to most people and prevent progress on smaller and easier projects with potentially far greater benefits.

For decades, the cobblestones were so treasured that downtown workers and visitors used them as a bumpy and treacherous parking lot. Now they might be "adversely impacted" by the "verticality" of Beale Street Landing. As Benny Lendermon, the head of the Riverfront Development Corporation, noted, the elevation of the river fluctuates 57 feet. In high water, most of the cobblestones are submerged. In low water, big touring riverboats can’t get in the harbor.

Hence the proposed landing at the north end of Tom Lee Park. It will be used by recreational boats, small day-tour boats, and big, fancy, cruising boats like the Delta Queen. That is, if the Delta Queen doesn't go out of business in 2008 because the government has deemed it a fire hazard, as The New York Times reported Thursday.

The design of the docking part of the landing is unique. After some sharp discussion Wednesday, it was determined that "unique" means nothing like it has ever been built before. RDC engineer John Conroy said its structural soundness has been certified.

The people from state government who hosted Wednesday's meeting are not "big-picture" deciders. They are, as one of them explained, a "pass-through" agency. They will go back to Nashville and weigh the historic considerations and announce, sooner or later, if and how the project can proceed.

Beale Street Landing, whose cost may now fluctuate like the river elevation, is to be funded by a combination of local, state, and federal funds. Some of the federal funds come from the Department of Homeland Security, because there are ferry-boats involved.

And you thought Homeland Security was just to protect us from terrorism.

[Read the complete article...]

Smart City and Friends

How a blog and a citizen activist are shaping the riverfront debate
Memphis Flyer [link]
by John Branston

Tom Jones and Virginia McLean are making the Riverfront Development Corporation irrelevant.

Jones is the cofounder and main writer for the Smart City Memphis blog (smartcitymemphis.blogspot.com). McLean is the founder and chief activist of the nonprofit Friends for our Riverfront (friendsforourriverfront.org).

They are often on opposite sides of riverfront issues, including the proposed $29 million Beale Street Landing. Jones has emerged as its most articulate and well-informed defender. McLean, equally hip to the latest ideas and trends in parks and cities, is the RDC's most passionate and dogged critic.


Both of them run on shoestring budgets and receive no money from local government or the RDC. Jones, a former newspaper reporter, was a spokesman and policy-maker for Shelby County government for some 25 years. McLean is an heir to the Overton family that was one of the founders of Memphis.

Their websites are timely and frequently updated, and they have become bulletin boards for unusually thoughtful comments, speaker listings, and even occasional news items. When a state official weighed in on Beale Street Landing this month and delayed the project, Jones and McLean were ahead of most if not all of the news pack spreading the word and collecting different points of view.

The RDC, in contrast, often seems muscle-bound. Created six years ago to focus public and private resources and cut red tape, it has a staff of former city division directors and City Hall cronies making six-figure salaries. It also has a blue-chip board of directors including public officials and downtown bigwigs. And it is consistently outhustled, outsmarted, and outmaneuvered by Jones and McLean and their helpers.

While Jones and McLean embrace the Internet and rough-and-tumble debate in real time, the RDC's website is outdated and trite. "Steal away to a day's vacation in the city's front yard," says the home page. "Nowhere else can you feel the rush of the Mighty Mississippi as its breeze flows through your hair and its sunsets warm your soul." The most recent "news" is a June 12th press release and a year-old item about the Tom Lee Park memorial. The description of the master plan still includes the aborted land bridge to Mud Island and pegs the total public cost at a staggering $292 million, which "will spur $1.3 billion in private investment in real estate alone" and bring "a minimum" of 21,000 new jobs and 3,400 new residential units to downtown.

Meanwhile, Jones and McLean are slugging away about the latest delays to Beale Street Landing and the next meeting of the Shelby County Commission. Within the last year, each of them helped bring national experts to Memphis for well-attended discussions of parks and citizen activism. The RDC, meanwhile, made a by-the-numbers Power Point presentation to the Memphis City Council aimed at justifying its own existence as much as informing public officials.

The RDC is not without is success stories. Its park maintenance is exemplary. Its concert series and improvements at Mud Island have made the park more attractive. Its structure involves business leaders and nonprofits in a way that government cannot, although the group's standard claim that it saves money is difficult to prove.

But the riverfront — Tom Lee Park in particular — often seems antiseptic and sterile, like a set-piece instead of a true park. On Sunday afternoon, for example, hundreds of people came to Overton Park in Midtown to beat on drums, whack golf balls, ride bikes, pick up trash, have picnics, toss balls, exercise dogs, visit art galleries, stroll babies, and do whatever. Midtown has no development authority, but funky Overton Park is surrounded by neighborhoods that feel invested in it.

Beale Street Landing looks more and more like a bet-the-company deal for the RDC. Without a big project — the land bridge (aborted), the promenade (still stalled), the relocation of the University of Memphis law school (coming soon) — why not turn its duties back over to a reenergized park commission and city administration? The Memphis riverfront, from The Pyramid to Mud Island to the trolley to proposed Beale Street Landing, doesn't lack for big investments. It lacks vitality, a decent public boat launch, walkable cobblestones, a skate park or something fun to watch, a working fountain next to the Cossitt Library, and enough shade and sprinklers to give tourists a fighting chance against the heat.

If those things happen, it will be because of citizens like Jones and McLean and their readers as much as the RDC.

[Read the complete article...]

Beale Street Landing Consultation Meeting

Updated: The minutes are now posted (click below for full article).

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) - Environmental Division today sponsored a Consulting Parties meeting for the proposed Beale Street Landing Project. The TN State Historical Preservation Office (TN-SHPO), also known as the Tennessee Historical Commission, has commented that the current design would have an "adverse effect pursuant to 36 CFR 800.5."

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss ways to avoid the adverse effects to the Cotton Row Historic Preservation District that are thought to be associated with the current design of the proposed project.

The adverse effects associated with the current design were outlined in a document that was handed out at the meeting today. Click here (1.7 MB, PDF) for the document.

Updated: Click here (1.6 MB, PDF) for the official minutes that were taken of this meeting. Comments and recommendations from all sides are included.

[Read the complete article...]

'Memphis Fast Forward' political ties, accountability questioned

Commercial Appeal [link]
By Alex Doniach (Contact)

A debate among County Commissioners erupted Wednesday about whether to put $1 million in county funds toward an economic development campaign that has pledged to produce thousands of new jobs and millions in new tax revenue.

The development plan, one piece of the economic growth strategy "Memphis Fast Forward," will attempt to create 49,395 jobs by 2011.

The Memphis Fast Forward initiative is spearheaded by Memphis Tomorrow, Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton and the Memphis Chamber of Commerce.

But on Wednesday, some commissioners said they weren't confident how the funds would be spent.

They also expressed concerns about using taxpayer dollars for a plan that would give money to MPACT Memphis, a nonprofit that Commissioner Henri Brooks said has direct ties to New Path, a separate organization that endorses political candidates.

Brooks said New Path co-founder Darrell Cobbins is a former president of MPACT Memphis. He currently sits on the board of advisers.

"MPACT has a direct relationship with New Path; New Path endorses candidates," Brooks said. "We are not going to give money to political organizations."

Commissioner Sidney Chism agreed that the commission should stay clear of any efforts connected to New Path.

"All I want to do is make sure that we keep politics out of a funding effort that we've got something to do with," Chism said.

The economic development plan is broken down into 15 strategies that rely on the participation of local organizations, such as the Mid-South Minority Business Council, the Memphis Regional Chamber and MPACT Memphis, to create jobs and attract people to Memphis.

The City Council and state government have already pledged $1.5 million each. The private sector has given about $5 million.

Memphis Tomorrow president Blair Taylor reassured commissioners Wednesday that MPACT Memphis is a nonprofit that, by federal law, is not allowed to endorse political candidates.

She also said the commission's funds could be left out of MPACT Memphis' piece of the project.

And Commissioner Mike Carpenter reminded the commission that New Path is a separate organization that is not listed on the plan.

"Let's not get into, in this process, a lot of cherry-picking about what things get funded and what things don't," Carpenter said. "We've got to move this community forward and we've got to move it in a big way and in a fast way."

But there were other concerns about the plan. Commissioner Steve Mulroy found little support in a motion to keep county dollars away from the controversial Beale Street Landing project, which is included in the plan.

Brooks and Commissioner Wyatt Bunker said they were still unclear about how the county's $1 million would be used.

In light of the concerns, Chairman David Lillard delayed the vote until the full commission meets Monday.

Editor's note: The following extract was taken from page 22 of MEMPHISED: Memphis Area Economic Development Plan, prepared by Market Street Services on behalf of the Memphis Fast Forward. This is the program that Shelby County is being asked to help fund. Click to see the entire page.

Click here to download our scan of the entire, 40-page Memphis Area Redevelopment Plan. Warning: 6 MB PDF file, requires Adobe Reader version 6 or later. (7 MB copy for Reader version 5 here.)

[Read the complete article...]