Overton Park Conservancy to chip in $250,000 for zoo parking lot design
Hailing what leaders called a “major financial commitment” toward resolving parking issues at the Memphis Zoo, the Overton Park Conservancy announced Thursday it will pay half the cost of designing and engineering the proposed improvements intended to keep vehicles off the park greensward in the future.
The private non-profit group that manages much of the 342-acre park in Midtown will ante up $250,000 to help fund the contract for Powers Hill Design. The firm was selected in January to draft plans for the improvements called for in a July 2016 City Council resolution, including a reconfigured parking lot and a new parking area carved out of the north end of the greensward.
The council on Tuesday is slated to vote on whether to accept the contribution.
The zoo is expected to chip in $250,000, as well, but efforts to confirm the contribution Thursday were unsuccessful.
The design work should begin this spring and, allowing time for public meetings, be finished by late summer or early fall.
Until then, the cost of constructing the improvements won’t be known. The zoo and conservancy would have to agree on how to fund that work, also.
The parking project is intended to resolve years of controversy over the zoo’s use of the greensward — the 12-acre lawn in the center of Overton — for overflow parking during the 60 or more days a year when its lots fill up. Critics say the parking damages the lawn and crowds out other users, while zoo officials say it’s necessary to accommodate all the people headed toward the most-visited attraction in the Memphis area.
The $250,000 figure represents more than one-fourth of the conservancy’s annual operating budget, executive director Tina Sullivan said. The group, which manages much of the park under a contract with Memphis, gets its money from private donors, facility rentals and a $150,000 annual allotment from the city.
“We have a small reserve fund, and it’s coming from that,” Sullivan said.
“This contribution underscores the conservancy’s commitment to completing this project.”
Despite the conservancy’s agreement to help fund the design work, potential conflicts remain between it and the zoo concerning the size of the individual parking spaces to be installed. The council resolution requires spaces of 10-by-20 feet, but critics say that’s too large and would result in extra paving of greensward acreage.
Reach Tom Charlier by email at thomas.charlier@commercialappeal.com, by phone at (901) 529-2572, or on Twitter at @thomasrcharlier.