TOM LEE PARK ON TRACK TO WELCOME 500,000TH VISITOR THIS MONTH

The new Tom Lee Park, which opened on the Mississippi River in Downtown Memphis over Labor Day weekend 2023, is on track to welcome its 500,000th visitor this month.

Location analytics from Placer.ai depicted in a heat map show that since September — including winter months when park visits are traditionally down — local visitors have come from across Memphis, with hot spots indicating the home neighborhoods of parkgoers dispersed almost uniformly across the city. More than 410,000 people from 128 ZIP codes across the country visited Tom Lee Park in the first seven months alone, and attendance has exploded as spring has arrived in Memphis.

“It’s wonderful to see how Tom Lee Park brings Memphians — and visitors from around the world — together simply to enjoy our Memphis riverfront,” said Carol Coletta, president and CEO of the nonprofit Memphis River Parks Partnership.

Tom Lee Park includes the Sunset Canopy, where people can play pickleball and pick-up basketball using equipment they can borrow free of charge from the Hanover Welcome Center. The 23,000-square-foot Life on the River playground, which was named this month as one of the 11 of the Most Unique Playgrounds in the U.S., gives kids of all ages a chance to play on the otter slides, a crawl-through caterpillar and a climb-on sturgeon.

The Partnership delivers extensive fitness and educational programming and offers internships and apprenticeships as career development opportunities. Field trips designed for learning brought more than 8,000 students in grades 3 and 9 to the riverfront this spring alone. The park also includes walking trails, quiet nooks and the hammock grove — all overlooking the Mississippi River, the nation’s most storied river.