The $43 million Beale Street Landing opened in June 2014. The project includes a playground, interactive water park, riverboat dock, gift shop and restaurant featuring a Southern-style menu.
A surface parking lot adjacent to the Beale Street Landing that has been converted into a series of basketball courts to better activate the riverfront park space.
Tom Lee Park is a 30 acre park that stretches one mile, but not more than 400 feet in width at any point along the Mississippi River. Most of the park is the result of an early 1990s project to reinforce the bluff with a mile long dike, with a 20-acre strip of new land included by filling in a portion of the river with sand and dirt.
The Tom Lee Memorial in Tom Lee Park. The park is named in honor of Tom Lee, an African-American who saved the lives of 32 passengers on the sinking steamboat M.E. Norman in 1925.
Ashburn-Coppock Park includes an observation area with grand views of the Downtown Memphis riverfront.
Located on the southern edge of downtown, Martyrs Park is dedicated to the Memphians who treated the sick during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878.
The yellow fever epidemic on 1878 killed 5,150 Memphians who stayed in town. 30,000 of the city’s 50,000 citizens fled the city.
Big River Crossing is a 4,973 feet long cantilevered through truss bridge that connects Memphis, Tennessee with West Memphis, Arkansas. Known as the Harahan Bridge, it is the second longest pedestrian/bicycle bridge in the United States.
Owned and operated by Union Pacific Railroad, the bridge is named in honor of railroad executive James Theodore Harahan and was initially completed in 1916.
From 1917 to 1949, the bridge included roadways cantilevered off the sides of the main railroad structure. The $30 million conversion of an abandoned roadway section of the bridge was completed in 2016.
Article by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com