Evanoff: Strickland takes Fairgrounds in new direction

Standing in front of a modest bungalow, on a street of homes built in the 1930s, Valerie Cook can hear the far off clang of metal as seagoing containers are lifted off rail cars in Norfolk Southern’s Harris Yard and loaded onto truck trailers.

This is Orange Mound, a Memphis neighborhood for more than 120 years, and a place she grew up in and lives in today.

Casually drive by and the elevated railroad tracks look like a permanent divide barring Orange Mound, one of the city’s oldest African American residential areas, from the lush tract of open grass just beyond Harris Yard inside the Mid-South Fairgrounds.

While the tracks may be a barrier to the green grass, Cook doesn’t view the railroad as an impenetrable divide.

So when Mayor Jim Strickland talks of turning the Fairgrounds’ grassy expanse into a youth sports complex, Cook thinks, yes, finally, the city has Orange Mound in mind.

“Kids growing up here have nothing to do anymore,” said Cook, age 50. “If they do do something it’s because their parents have taken them out of the community.”

Fairgrounds project

Strickland was booed by some Mid-South Coliseum fans when city officials proposed the Fairgrounds plan in early November and it was clear he wouldn't reopen and fix the 10,085-seat enclosed arena next to the grassy expanse.

He was chided by others for, in their words, selling out to developers, an accusation that strikes me as wide of the mark.

For more than two decades, one political generation after the next has talked of putting a youth sports complex on the Fairgrounds and building a little city around it of stores, restaurants and hotels.

Rather than turn this 155-acre grassy expanse on the edge of Midtown into a commercial district, Strickland has proposed a more modest – but still expensive – project.

Strickland and his administration are accused by some Memphians of failing to bring with them into office any idea of what the city could aspire to be. I know some Coliseum faithful say this.

Yet, I'd say we see his vision in the Fairgrounds. Strickland has taken a middle road. The previous administration intended to raze the Coliseum. Strickland wants to mothball it. And turn the grassy land over to developers? Show them to me.

The prime beneficiaries appear not to be real estate firms, or baby boomers with fond memories of Coliseum concerts, or Downtown with its high-dollar tourism projects. It's likely to be Valerie Cook and her neighbors.

Strickland's initiative

Strickland is now putting his own stamp on a project that can be considered entirely his.

Since he became mayor, challenges have come up he’s had to handle, like the homicide wave. Or he’s inherited matters, like Beale Street’s management.

The Fairgrounds is his. True, he inherited the idea. But he's dialed it back.

In Mayor Willie Herenton’s time, developers talked of a $250 million mix of homes, stores, a hotel, sports arena and a school on the public land. Mayor A C Wharton’s era brought forth a proposal for a $140 million urban village built around a youth sports facility, an idea scrapped in favor of a $233 million amateur sports complex, hotel and retail development.

Each of these ideas envisioned the Fairgrounds as an economic driver attracting pre-teen and teen athletic squads and their families to travel here to compete, support the new stores, restaurants and lodging and in turn create new jobs.

Strickland’s administration seems to have backed off on lodging and dining, saying a hotel and restaurants could come later.

The administration has proposed an $80 million sports building, a BMX track in Tobey Park about a mile north of the Fairgrounds, a possible renovation of historic Melrose High School into a museum about a mile south of the Fairgrounds, and a new kind of playground described as a junkyard museum.

The final bill: Up to $160 million.

Sales taxes

It would be the biggest construction expenditure the city has committed to since the City Council nine years ago set out to renovate The Pyramid for Bass Pro Shops, a project that ultimately cost $215 million. Only the $250 million FedExForum cost more.

If tax rates concern you remember sales taxes finance these big projects rather than property taxes. Each project – the youth athletic complex, sporting goods store, the basketball arena – has been labeled a tourism project. There’s a reason for that.

Because of a peculiar state law, part of the sales taxes that go to Nashville can be kept in Memphis and used to help pay off the construction loan on a public tourism venture.

Best use of $160M?

Is this $160 million the best use of money for Orange Mound, a part of the city where surveys show almost one of every two adults in ZIP Code 38114 have no jobs?

Well, it’d be nice to have weathered homes in the neighborhood fixed up, Cook said.

But anything for the kids, she said, would help the area, particularly since close-by Hanley Park has no restrooms, fountains or supervision.

In the old days, when she grew up on Zanone Avenue, she’d walk over the Airways Avenue bridge spanning the dual tracks far below to get to the Fairgrounds. It was a long walk for a little girl, but she remembered the grassy expanse in the Fairgrounds back then contained an actual county fair, a community swimming pool and the Liberty Land amusement park.

It was an entertainment district for the entire city and there were plenty of adults and older teens, she said, so kids could feel safe.

“Sometimes, it’s scary here today,” she said. “There’s so much crime.”



Ted Evanoff, business columnist of The Commercial Appeal, can be reached at evanoff@commercialappeal.com and (901) 529-2292.