Council OKs anti-vehicle barriers near Beale St.
Members of the Memphis City Council voted Aug. 28 to pay $788,000 for heavy posts called bollards to reduce the possibility of vehicles driving into people in the Beale Street entertainment district.
City Council members discussed the item during a committee meeting Aug. 28, then the full council approved the measure that same evening, nine votes to zero.
The council also discussed reviving a fee to enter Beale Street at busy times, but such a vote might not come for weeks, if at all.
Council members expressed concern that any fee that restricts access to the street could be perceived as discriminatory against African-Americans and provoke complaints and legal challenges.
“The problem is as long as it looks like a discriminatory act or practice, people in the city of Memphis are not going to like it,” council chairman Berlin Boyd said.
The heavy posts would be placed at the ends of the entertainment district — at Beale and Fourth and at Beale and Second. Additional posts would be placed along Second to protect people lining up to enter the street.
The vote on the barriers came on the same day that City Council members discussed a crowd control study carried out by Event Risk Management Solutions, led by Boise, Idaho-based consultant Peter Ashwin.
The study recorded 27 crowd stampedes on Beale Street between 2013 and 2018, with the biggest proportion — 35 percent — occurring between the hours of 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Another 30 percent occurred between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. The stampedes were triggered by shootings, fights or other factors.
The highest probability of stampedes occurs on Memorial Day weekend, the report concluded.
The study focused on crowd stampedes and other issues, and identified risks, including a lack of a regulated entry control system to monitor the number of people on the street.
The consultant made a total of 24 recommendations. Among them:
❚ To set the safe crowd capacity for Beale Street at 20,000.
❚ To designate Beale Street as a pedestrian-only street to protect people from being hit by vehicles.
❚ To consider reinstatement of a Beale Street admissions fee to reduce crowd sizes and stampede risk.
The City Council had voted 5-3 in November to stop the “Beale Street Bucks” program, which charged a $5 fee to enter Beale Street on Saturdays during the district’s busiest months.
The fee had led to legal opposition and complaints.
Safety concerns have continued, as illustrated this weekend when a brawl led to a stabbing on Beale Street in the early morning hours of Sunday.
The city has tried other measures, too, including police sweeps to move crowds off the street late at night. The practice was challenged in court, and in 2015, U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla ruled against this practice.
“The court declares that, since at least 2007, the city of Memphis violated the constitutional rights of thousands of persons who were subjected to the Beale Street sweep,” McCalla wrote. An appeals court later upheld the ruling.
Reach reporter Daniel Connolly at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercial appeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.