How the transformation of a Memphis park will bridge the gap of race and class
When finished, Tom Lee Park will be a representation of what Memphis can be: one united city
Over the past few years, public, private and non-profit partners in Memphis have been working on the transformation of 250 acres of land along the Mississippi River into five distinct, vibrant and connected parks. The largest of these is Tom Lee Park, which will be a “civic jewel” that will “reunite the city with the river and be a place for community life to flourish at the water’s edge.”
Carol Coletta is the President and CEO of the Memphis River Parks Partnership, the organization tasked with overseeing the ongoing riverfront transformation. In December, she authored this article, originally published in the Memphis Commercial-Appeal.
Late last year, Memphis celebrated a groundbreaking for Tom Lee Park that has been a century in the making.
Almost 100 years ago, in 1924, the city’s very first comprehensive plan deemed the riverfront “one of the city’s most prized assets” — “the front yard of Memphis” — and called for the development of a grand gateway and arrival point.
Thirteen subsequent city plans repeated the call to showcase the riverfront. Although attempts were made to fulfill the ambition of these plans — most notably Mud Island River Park in 1982 and Beale Street Landing in 2014 — the resulting projects were mostly disconnected from the city and the rest of the riverfront.
While Memphis was moving slowly or not at all, cities everywhere were ambitiously reclaiming their waterfronts in ways that were connected and catalytic. Nashville, Louisville, Tampa, New York, and Chicago are just a few of the cities that have understood the lure of water and made it easy, safe and fun for people to enjoy it cityside.
Three years ago, Mayor Jim Strickland formed a Riverfront Steering Committee to take stock of all the previous riverfront plans and reconsider the opportunity Memphis has to reconnect with its river.
Since the completion of that review, two former Confederate parks have been remade and five miles of riverfront connected by the River Line Trail, knitting together the trail work already done by those who created Green Belt Park, the awe-inspiring Bluff Walk, and the magnificent Big River Crossing.
The next move is a big one — the transformation of the 31-acre Tom Lee Park into signature public space on our riverfront.
Big plans for Tom Lee Park
The case has been made for Tom Lee Park as the logical next move for the riverfront in contemporary times. It is, as the planners said so many years ago, the city’s front door, delivering for so many their first impression of Memphis.
It’s adjacent to downtown, making it the most accessible piece of riverfront of significant size and the most catalytic for nearby development. Its location is pivotal to join the riverfront north to south and the riverfront to the city west to east.
The park will continue as home to a much-loved Memphis in May, while being a generous, welcoming, no-admission-required space the other 358 days a year. This newly green acreage at the edge of the Mississippi will deliver obvious physical and mental health benefits, while showcasing leading-edge environmental interventions.
But the new Tom Lee Park’s greatest value is to make a place where Memphians can, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “live in dialogue.” When he said those words in a 1962 speech to Cornell College, King was specifically describing the need for places that bring whites and blacks together.
You might think almost 60 years later, this would be a quaint idea. Unfortunately, it is not, although today’s monologue in Memphis is more likely to break along the lines of income versus race. In this Black city, however, race still has an overarching effect on space.
Without spaces like the Tom Lee Park we are building — spaces with enough access and allure to attract people across the inequities created and reinforced by policy and practice — Memphis will continue to grapple with the problem King so aptly described six decades ago.
“Men hate each other because they fear each other,” he told his audience at Cornell College. “They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.”
Tom Lee Park will be a beacon for all of Memphis and Shelby County
Memphis is a city, like so many, that has slipped easily into separation. We see it in the patterns of poverty, housing, and school performance. We know it when we hear which side of town is considered “safe” and which side, unsafe. We applaud public and private investments that sometimes unwittingly perpetuate the divisions among us.
We participate in its making in many small ways, as when we abandon the store that’s looking a little tired for the new one that attracts “preferred” customers, magnifying and reinforcing growing schisms, even in our most mundane and universal activities.
Among great public spaces, Tom Lee Park is in a unique location, but the reason is rarely discussed. Yes, it is on the Mississippi adjacent to downtown, where development momentum has been strong over the past few years and household income is growing.
But it is also six blocks from the poorest zip code in the state and within walking and biking distance of the crescent of persistently poor neighborhoods sitting just outside downtown.
Tom Lee Park is one of the few places in Memphis and Shelby County that is easily accessible and equally welcoming to people across race and income. It is a place where we can, if we choose, “live in dialogue.”
Even though we are separated in too many ways, there is so much more that unites us than divides us.
Tom Lee Park is a place whose very name calls forth a story of one man’s literal reach across deep divisions of race and class at enormous risk to himself.
The park will stand as a daily reminder of that, giving us the place to be one Memphis.
And there is no smarter investment we can make.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
