NEW MAIN TO MAIN MAN
Commission exec to head pedestrian connector
Downtown Memphis Commission president Paul Morris will lead a $30M project that includes a pedestrian/ bicycle bridge across the Mississippi River.
Downtown Memphis Commission president Paul Morris has been tapped to lead a $30 million project including a pedestrian and bicycling bridge across the Mississippi River.
Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. has chosen Morris to succeed Mike Carpenter, who expects to step down in August after one year as the city’s coordinator of the Main to Main Multi-Modal Connector Project.
Carpenter became executive director of the Plough Foundation in June but stayed on as Main to Main leader to finish laying groundwork for construction.
Carpenter said the project is on the verge of clearing three key milestones that will enable him to pass the baton to Morris.
An operating agreement with Union Pacific Railroad for use of the Harahan Bridge has been approved by Memphis and Crittenden County officials and awaits execution by the railroad.
The city has submitted a grant agreement and final plans to the Federal Highway Administration to free up $15 million in federal funding.
Finally, project designers and engineers are working to complete construction bid packages to go out for pricing this fall. The pedestrian bridge is expected to be completed in late summer to early fall 2014.
The Main to Main project will link Main Street in Memphis with Broadway in West Memphis, connecting to Arkansas via the 97-year-old Harahan bridge to existing bicycle lanes in Memphis and providing long-overdue renovations, repairs
and improvements along Main Street.
Since preliminary plans were presented three months ago, some details have changed.
The project will extend south along Main Street to Carolina before turning west to approach the bridge. The city’s right of way on Carolina, beneath an unsightly railroad overpass west of Main, will get a facelift including disabled-accessible sidewalks, lighting and sharethe-road bicycle lanes. The previous plan called for the project to turn west from Main at G.E. Patterson and follow Front and Florida streets to Carolina.
Designers scrapped plans to put the pedestrian path on Interstate 55 frontage roads on the Arkansas side, based on state highway department objections that the roads are part of the highway. The path will be built outside the highway.
Carpenter also said engineers determined the metal structure supporting the Harahan Bridge’s old cantilevered roadbed was not strong enough to support the planned improvements. The support structure will be strengthened at an additional, but unspecified, cost.
Artist’s renderings of the project by Self Tucker Architects also reveal another detail: an imposing, semi-transparent barrier to separate trains and pedestrians.
Before taking the job at Plough, Carpenter led the city’s office of intergovernmental relations and split time between lobbying for the city and overseeing Main to Main. The Downtown Memphis Commission was paying $70,000 a year for Carpenter’s work on Main to Main and will now save that expense.
Morris will draw no extra salary to represent Wharton as the city’s project leader or client representative. “The mayor asked me to do it and I agreed. We agreed it was within the scope of my duties at the commission. Obviously we’re a major stakeholder in the project.”
Morris will report to Wharton. “It’s a City of Memphis project now, and it will remain a City of Memphis project.”
His duties will include expediting decisionmaking and coordinating communication among project management firm Allen & Hoshall, the public and project participants including city engineering and public works divisions, the federal government and local and state governments on both sides of the river.