City, conservancy to develop plan for Overton Park
The irony’s not lost on Tina Sullivan that even as Overton Park welcomes more and more visitors these days a lot of groups are getting ready to move out of the place.
The Memphis College of Art, whose signature structure, Rust Hall, rises over the west side of the park, is closing in 2020. The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art announced last year it would likely relocate from Overton, and the city of Memphis’ General Services Division is expected to finish vacating its 13-acre compound on the park’s east side this summer.
The departures come as the Overton Park Conservancy, of which Sullivan is executive director, is getting ready to embark with the city of Memphis on the first master plan for the historic 342-acre Midtown park in 30 years.
“I think it makes it an important time to do the plan,” Sullivan said of the moves. “If we have to lose these institutions, it’s an opportunity to do some envisioning” on their future uses.
The conservancy, a nonprofit group that manages much of the park under a contract with the city, has been wanting to do a master plan for years. “But we put it on hold,” Sullivan said, until a long-standing controversy over the Memphis Zoo’s practice of parking cars on the Overton greensward was resolved through a recently approved project to expand parking facilities.
Conservancy officials this summer will begin the public-engagement phase of the planning process by reaching out to user groups and visitors through social media and activities in the park. The goal is to “find out what the community wants,” Sullivan said.
The conservancy has received grants of $85,000 from the Hyde Family Foundation and $50,000 from the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis fund the planning process. The money will pay for the hiring of a project manager — Latanyua Robinson, an Arkansas native with 25 years’ experience in engineering, business development and marketing management — and other master-planning contracts.
Since taking on management of the park in 2011, the
Tina Sullivan
conservancy has raised and invested $8 million to add improvements that include a playground, dog park and refurbished restroom facilities. The improvements have attracted growing numbers of visitors, conservancy officials say, but they have no solid estimates on attendance.
The master plan will be the first since one drafted for the city in 1988 by Ritchie Smith Associates. That 20-year plan dealt with traffic and parking issues and led to the elimination of several vehicular access points and the removal of car traffic from the old-growth forest, which later was designated a State Natural Area. It also resulted in the development of Veterans Plaza and the refurbishment of picnic areas and other facilities that had deteriorated.
“The park had bottomed out,” said Smith, one of the principals of the firm. “The plan has had major import in the revitalization of the park.” Reach Tom Charlier at thomas. charlier@commercialappeal.com.