Construction for the re-imagined Tom Lee Park—a 31-acre park in Memphis along the Mississippi riverfront—reached its halfway point this week, the Memphis River Parks Partnership announced. Designed by Studio Gang and SCAPE, the park will open in 2023 as a centerpiece of the Memphis riverfront.
Bill Dries wrote about the benchmark in the Daily Memphian: “Construction and landscape crews in the riverside park are working on a seven-day-a-week schedule, filling in what was a flat dirt surface […] lines of trees are blooming and hills are taking shape with some black tarps outlining the areas for gardens and native grasses along walkways.”
The announcement represents a major step in the creation of a more accessible, connective, and equitable public realm for all Memphians, as the Partnership’s CEO Carol Coletta wrote in a recent piece for Common Edge. “When the new Tom Lee Park opens in the summer of 2023, its ambitious design will make a statement right at the city’s front door that all Memphis residents need city parks located in places where they can imagine themselves going,” Coletta wrote. “Places that belong to no one group of people, but to everyone.”
For more day-to-day updates, follow the Partnership on social media at @memriverparks and SCAPE at @scape_studio.
Learn more:
- Read the Daily Memphian’s Bill Dries: “Tom Lee Park ‘open for business’ as remodel reaches halfway point.”
- Visit the project website.
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Photo: Connor D. Ryan for Memphis River Parks Partnership