The Commercial Appeal from Memphis, Tennessee • 16

MEMPHIS SUNDAY JUNE 28139ft THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL building the expressway was) such a monumental mistake that the people who know anything about it aren't going to forget it Every time I go borne on Poplar and traffic is backed up from East Parkway to Cooper I think about it Alan Hanover a Overton Park case) was a case in which a 1 small number of people with little or no real clout were able to defeat a proposal that was supported by a majority of the business and political Charles Newman ft route proponents met all requirements "We were caught at a time of environ-mental panic that seemed to': take hold of everybody and cloud their vision I think the city the county and the country think it hurt downtown said Hanover one of the reasons you have so many vd-: cant buildings downtown lie reason people come downtown is probably because of the roads no easy way to get there Because of that built offices out: east a vicious )pei aooi current projects to inl-prove downtown access rather than rehashing the expressway case v-i John Dudas a vice president of Belz Enterprises and former executive director of the Center City Commission said the better the access is to an area the better it will do economically The Midtown interchange and Sam Cooper Boulevard as welLas the (proposed) North Second Street project will all help improve the access to the center city area We would like to see as many of these projects on track as Belz has been a driving force in downtown redevelopment since the late 1970s reopening The Peabody and helping create Peabody Place and Harbor Town The proposed North Second Street prmect would provider north-south connector between downtown and the interstate spur that runs west from 1-40 to US 51 in Frayser Ritz said AA lot of people would say the Interstate 40 thing was the cause of the decline of downtown If it had been built not sure downtown would have come back any Ritz said he believes an uninr terrupted 1-40 from the Mississippi east to Fayette County would have sped development of offices and commercial cens ters along 1-40 in east Shelby County the type of develop- A' ily think there were tetter roads said you go anywhere in Memphis in rush ment that occurred along south loop of 1-240 reall From Page A1 I Overton A slower pace of downtown revitalization than might have been the case if the road had been built Not surprisingly the Overton Park case is frequently invoked as an example of wrong 2 or right with Memphis espe-' daily when talk turns to the area traffic woes In recent months the debate 2 has been revived as citizens discuss plans to extend Kirby Parkway through the county-I owned Shelby Farms recrea-tion area The proposed Kirby Parkway extension has been Hikened to the Overton Park case because Kirby would be a high-volume road through public land Although engineers "and developers insist Kirby is Shelby Farms proponents want the road near 'heavily used recreation land anover and Newman were courtroom combatants in the late 1960s gnd early 1970s when the 'Overton Park case went to the Supreme Court Hanover 69 vwas special counsel for the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) which -pushed for the road Newman 61 was the Memphis attorney for Citizens to Preserve Over-iton Park Inc the group that the expressway The two lawyers work for downtown firms and pass the Dark each day traveling to and 'from homes in the Poplar Avenue corridor of older East Memphis Although more than 25 years have elapsed since the high landmark ruling in 'favor of anti-road forces Hanover and Newman are still adamant in their views Hanover said he believes the case has endured because such a monumental mistake that the people who know any--thing about it going to forget it Every time I go home on Poplar and the traffic is backed up from East Parkway io Cooper I think about Said Newman: was a case in which a small number of people with little or no real jclout were able to defeat a proposal that was supported by a majority of the business and political The opposing views of Hanover and Newman mirror a division of the broader commu- Flla photo by Barney Setters Magnolias provide a touch of beauty to a section of Overton Park Avenue that Is otherwise in shambles In this March 26 1970 photograph Many houses were torn down to make way for the proposed east-west leg of Interstate 40 Vergos said about time about ti way administrators had carried out provisions of 1966 legislation make it we would have built the expressway through Overton Park I believe would have you destroyed said council member Vergos who lives in Hein Park "You would have delayed downtown development if not killed it altogether because the first people who supported these downtown events (such as the Memphis in May festival) were probably Midtown Sue Williams a former presi designed to difficult but not impossible for interstates to be built through parks The 1966 legislation contained a provision that said federal money pay for roads through parks among other places unless the transportation secretary determined that no other feasible or prudent alternative to the park route existed After a district court trial in the fall of 1971 the project was sent back to the federal De- partment of Transportation which asked the state to consider other alternatives District Association is a lifelong resident of Stonewall one of the streets that 1-40 would have crossed west of Overton Park think for the three or four minutes people would save the city would nave been poorer for said Williams aiiauvuD uiai wiiaugcu uic would be no Evergreen as you proposed road design but not know ft today Vollintine-Ever-lts location Despite concerns ffrn urnniri strnooiino about the high cost of matching funds and maintenance TDOT hrough the Nixon Ford and Carter administrations the state advanced variations that changed the would be struggling entral Gardens would be there but it would be broken president and longtime Memphis political boss Edward Crump had been dead less than a year when the saga began The old City Commission forerunner of tne City Council hired Harland Bartholomew Associates in January 1955 to draw up plans for a Memphis expressway system in anticipation of federal money to build a new national highway system The resulting plan by the St Louis engineering and planning firm called for an interstate loop around the perimeter plus an east-west route going through the vicinity of Overton Park The plan included another major piece that never materialized: a riverfront interstate freeway traversing Riverside Drive and Mud Island to connect with the northern leg of the interstate loop The east-west and riverfront routes would have met in a full clover-leaf interchange on Mud Island land now occupied by the Harbor Town community In April 1957 the public got its first glimpse of the interstate plans when The Commercial Appeal published maps including the east-west route through the park About 300 Erotesters attended a state ighway department meeting That fall citizens formed a committee and claimed 10000 signatures against the park route In early 1960 the Chamber of Commerce and downtown jvacant for more than 20 years interests got behind a push to Supreme Court nity into at least three camps Some believe1 the failure to complete 1-40 through the park dealt a heavy blow to the transportation system and economic development Some are embarrassed that a six-lane expressway through a premier park was ever seriously consid-iered much less enthusiastically backed by state and local business and political leaders Others fault the warring factions for not finding middle ground he Overton Park case left its mark on the city in many ways good and bad and not just along the 4-Imile stretch of right-of-way from Claybrook on the west to Bon Air on the east Outside the 'park the right-of-way was cleared of buildings and left after the president build the east-west route other social forces in place that have caused shifts in shopping and commercial develop said Dr Martifi Lipinski chairman of the civil engineering department af University of Memphis die was cast already People had moved out to the suburbs starting in the 1950s1 Henry Turley a developer of Harbor Town and other down town projects said hopefiil about planned projects that will help improve access tq downtown including the extension of Sam Cooper Boulevard from its current western terni nus to East Parkway lament the fact that gone 30 years without getting that road bililt but I la ment the fact that we build an Turl said very happy that proceeding in a sensible way The Sam Cooper Boulevard extension calls for a six-lane parkway much of it with land scaped median with a bridgd over railroad tracks that frequently stop traffic on Broad The parkway would follow thfe right-of-way acquired in the 1960s for 1-40 but leave some of the land for alternative uses such as housing I he 1955 Harland Bartholomew Associates report mapped out an exs pressway system to accommo-1 date Memphis traffic through 1980 But the east-west le built and other nearly 20 years past parts atig that expr- dent of the Evergreen Historic a Midtown" She said residents appreciate the new construction come with redevelopment of the former 1-40 corridor since 1991 But if the old homes had never been razed she said think we probably would have been in even sounder shape today We had a very strong stable neighborhood Ritchie Smith whose landscape-architecture firm did Overton master plan in the mid-1980s said Overton Park would have been ruined as well 40 would have been a disaster for Overton Park and the Evergreen neighborhood and other neighbor- hoods it would have said Smith would have more or less destroyed the zoo and any chance for the zoo to be revitalized in its current stqte and would probably have resulted in the zoo going else- where remainder of the park would have been severely impacted because the main green space would have been edged up against the six- or eight-lane Smith said hour sometimes a mile of traffic backed up I have to travel in and out of Memphis and kind of The current alignment of I-40 is about 3 miles north of the ill-fated Overton Park route At the posted speed limit the extra distance adds about six minutes to each trip not much for a cross-country traveler but the equivalent of about 50 hours a year for an everyday commuter Fred Davis an insurance agent and Park Commission member who was on the City Council in 1968 said he always felt the park route was the best place for the interstate that time I wanted to run that expressway through the said Davis felt it was needed to give east-west access to downtown I was for it from the Attorney Hanover got in- volved in the expressway case because his firm handled condemnation lawsuits for Memphis interstate rights-of-way think a he said have a road that starts out on the east coast and goes all the way to the west coast and you have to get off for a couple of miles in Memphis It was laughable I think it would have hurt the park It have happened" Newman said a myth that a gap in 1-40 In the early 1980s the northern leg of 1-240 was redesignated as 1-40 one continuous ribbon of asphalt through the city Hanover sajd he felt park Its Dwight before the northern 240 The east-west of I-was leg link touted as a way to keep down- town businesses from fleeing to the suburbs When the highway department held its required public hearing in March 1961 the Overton Park route changed significantly Some prominent older Memphians including the widow of Mayor Watkins Overton spoke against the route which was supported by downtown boosters In the mid-1960s the state began buying leading up to tne park from the east and west About 2200 people had to move as the state cleared 408 single-family homes 84 duplexes 266 apartments 44 businesses five churches and a fire station In April 1968 the City Council approved the park route after initially opposing it US Secretary of Transportation John Volpe approved the plan on Nov 5 1969 The same day the state paid the city for the right-of-way within the park A month later Citizens to Preserve Overton Park Inc a group that included conservationists and heritage-minded Memphians filed a federal court lawsuit seeking to stop construction The lawsuit was dismissed in US District Court and on appeal to the Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals But on March 2 1971 the Supreme Court sent the case back to US District Court in Memphis for a full hearing on whether high- proposed ever more expensive proposals to tunnel beneath Overton Park Before Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 vowing to ax the Interstate Substitution Program as a waste of taxpayer money the city got then-Gov Lamar Alexander to ask the federal DOT to remove the park expressway from the interstate system and declare Memphis eligible for the substitution funds After 26 years on the drawing board the segment was removed Jan 16 1981 Under the Interstate Substitution Program the city became eligible to receive funding equal to the cost of the interstate project that was re- he tunnel was the moved Tl most expensive option considered Mike Ritz who was director of the city-county Office of Planning and Development in 1979 said although many cities canceled planned expressways the Memphis 1-40 segment was the last to be removed before Reagan took control was a raid on the US said Ritz who works in commercial real estate for Loeb Industries was wash Paul Morris senior planner in the Office of Planning and transportation planning section said the pro- Km has spent about $284 mil-i on road projects and about $4 million remains About $43 million has been spent on transit projects chiefly the downtown trolley Substitute fonds wind up paying for projects designed to correct problems left by the uncompleted Overton Park expressway The anticipated remedies extension of Sam Cooper Boulevard and rebuilding of the Midtown and East Memphis interchanges of 1-40 240 have taken so long to design that not enough substitute funding left to pay for them idtown received no direct benefit from the substitute fimds except for improvements in the Mem- Area Transit Authority us system but residents don't seem to mind stopped construction of the road The Memphis Park Commis- fiion symbolically closed a door Jon the expressway project recently when a permanent barricade of concrete posts and landscaping was placed where the interstate would have entered the park from the east i The barricade blocks the old bus lanes across from where Broad intersects East Parkway The trans-park section of 1-40 would have followed the bus lanes successor of a streetcar line built to bring beople to the park soon after its founding in 1901 John vergos who represents Midtown on the City Council said the renewed discussion about the Overton Park expressway is timely because the pity is finally coming to grips with problems lingering from the case A $257 million extension of $am Cooper Boulevard to East Parkway is in the city budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 An environmental impact statement has been completed for a long-awaited $80 million overhaul of the 1-40240 Midtown interchange and $167 million in improvements to the eastern 1-40240 interchange grbeing designed for the state Vergos believes the Overton Park case also holds lessons for the citizens and road planners debating the extension of Kirby Parkway through Shelby Farms all coming to kind of a with aib these proj- pinnyl Traffic fixes Three projects are currently on the drawing board to provide a smoother flow of through Memphis's midsection a nagging problem since the Midtown segment was shelved the 1970s The state planning major revisions to the Midtown intersections of MO and Interstate 240 In the mild project the City of Memphis would extend Cooper Boulevard west to East Parkway along the original 1-40 rignt-of-way east of Overton Please see PARK Page east-west traffic of Interstate 40 and East Memohis i Iff LA I- Park Staff mar1.