The Overton Park Greensward is kept whole in a new plan that will permanently end parking there, add 17 acres of forested parkland, add 300 parking spaces for the Memphis Zoo, and, perhaps, finally solve a decades-old problem.
Leaders with the city of Memphis, Memphis Zoo, and Overton Park Conservancy (OPC), announced the new plan Tuesday afternoon. In it, properties will be reshuffled and repurposed to fit the needs of all involved.
For decades, the zoo has used the 12-acre Greensward for overflow parking. The issue simmered until 2014 when Citizens to Protect Overton Park (CPOP) organized the “Get Off Our Lawn” campaign that brought the issue into focus and to the fore. By 2016, OPC and the zoo joined in mediation to find a solution.
That solution aimed to reconfigure the zoo’s main parking lot to add 415 spaces, a number mandated by the Memphis City Council. This plan was paused to explore the cost of a new modular garage that would have been built on the surface lot on Prentiss Place.
In 2021, projections put the cost of the garage at $5 million, above the $3 million both the zoo and OPC had committed to the original plan to reconfigure the main parking lot. In October, the groups announced they’d scratched the plan for the garage and would revert to the plan to pave the lot and take 2.4 acres of the Greensward. As construction was slated to get underway, this plan was halted late last year to explore other options.
The new plan will:
• convert the zoo’s current maintenance facility (on the north side of the zoo on North Parkway) to zoo member parking
• add 300 new parking spaces for the zoo
• renovate and re-stripe the zoo’s current main lot (without expanding it)
• vacate the city’s general services maintenance lot (about 12 acres on East Parkway)
• add zoo maintenance facilities to that space on about six acres
• the remaining six acres will be converted to park space for visitors
• this space will have a new access point to the Old Forest trails
• establish a new walking trail around the north side of the Greensward, marking the separation from the field and zoo parking
• return 17 acres of forest land to the Overton Park
• this land was held by the zoo for future expansion, particularly an exhibit called the “Chickasaw Bluffs”
• return a few acres of land close to Rainbow Lake from the zoo to the park
• the zoo will give OPC $400,000
“This is a solution that we think works for everyone,” said Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland. “It adds significant new park space for Memphians, about 20 to 25 acres.
“It preserves 17 acres of old forest and provides the zoo with the parking it needs as the top attraction in Memphis. It provides the zoo a quality maintenance area for its operations. It also provides both the conservancy and the zoo the opportunity to avoid spending for what has become an almost $2.5 million expansion of the existing lot.”
Some were shocked and disappointed when the garage idea was retired. However, Doug McGowan, the city’s Chief Operating Officer, said the project was more an exploration than a dedicated plan. When asked if this new plan was guaranteed to stick, McGowen said, “I guess it’s about as guaranteed as you’re going to get.”
“You have all three organizations coming together saying this really brings us closer together in alignment, and that it forges the same vision of the park in the future,” McGowan said. “And the mayor and the council are behind it.”
Strickland said work on the project will begin as early as this fall, when some fences begin to come down. The city won’t leave the general services area until summer of next year, however. This means the zoo can’t move its maintenance operations and Greensward parking will continue at least through this year and probably longer.
When asked how the agreement came about, Tina Sullivan, executive director of the OPC said the groups simply continued to work on it.
“Our organizations have come together to create a plan that sees them as parts of a united whole,” Sullivan said. “The zoo and the conservancy share a common focus on conservation. Today reflects a convergence toward our shared mission and our community partnership.”
Zoo president and CEO Jim Dean called the agreement “transformational” for the zoo.
“The city’s General Services facilities will vastly improve our infrastructure at the zoo,” Dean said. “When completed, this project will not only solve our short-term parking requirements and help traffic flow. It will also provide a solution for our long-term parking needs.”
Once the work is finished and the last car leaves the Greensward, Sullivan invited “all of you to a picnic and a very competitive game of volleyball on that space.”