Equity ideals, dramatic transformation snag Fast Company World Changing Ideas Award top-three honor for Tom Lee Park in Downtown Memphis
Fast Company magazine has been taking notice of the remarkable change that’s been happening on the Memphis riverfront, and today Fast Company honored Tom Lee Park as a finalist in the Urban Design category of its World Changing Ideas Awards competition. Fast Company announced the award winners today.
The winner in the category was Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park, a mixed-use life science complex in the heart of Houston. At $5 billion, that 37-acre project will cost almost 90 times more than the similarly sized Tom Lee Park.
Tom Lee Park has transformed the Mississippi River riverfront in Downtown Memphis from a formerly flat, barren 30 acres into what has been called the nation’s preeminent waterfront park. The park is surrounded by racially and economically stratified neighborhoods, presenting Tom Lee Park with the rare opportunity to create public space with the potential of serving people from all walks of life.
Since its opening nine months ago, Tom Lee Park has drawn almost 500,000 visitors from more than 128 ZIP codes.
Fast Company also recognized Tom Lee Park as it opened. In his Sept. 7, 2023, article This $61 Million Riverfront Park Turns Memphis into a Natural Wonderland, journalist Nate Berg wrote, “In Memphis, Tennessee, a remarkable new public park has just opened. Filling 3O acres along the edge of the Mississippi River with active, social, ecological and architectural spaces, it could reframe the city’s fading connection to the riverfront. It could also set a new standard for what waterfront parks can do.”
Fast Company says its World Changing Ideas Awards “honor the businesses and organizations that are developing creative solutions to the most pressing issues of our time in clever and unexpected ways. The winners and honorees represent the kind of innovation and ingenuity necessary to make the world more accessible, equitable and sustainable for everyone.”
About Memphis River Parks Partnership
Memphis River Parks Partnership is a nonprofit public-private partnership that works with and for the people of Memphis to trigger the transformative power of the river. The Partnership connects the people of Memphis to their river through five park districts along five miles of the Mississippi River. The park districts include Tom Lee Park, a 31-acre park on the riverfront in Downtown Memphis, named to honor the heroism of Memphian Tom Lee, who couldn’t swim but saved 32 people when a sternwheeler capsized in the Mississippi River in 1925. More information is available at memphisriverparks.org.
