Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Mud Island Public Use Study Meeting Thursday

Downtown Friends,

I'm emailing you today to tell you about a study that's going on downtown that you may have heard of: the Memphis Riverfront project.

In a nutshell, Mud Island River Park will be overhauled soon. Today, I went to the first of 2 meetings to solicit public feedback.

One of the big topics up for discussion is putting a large skate park on Mud Island. I'm very excited to support this concept as it would positively support the city in a number of different ways. On the flip side, some folks are either against the park, or are in favor of putting it underneath I-40. This is bothersome.

I also had one other big concern about the meeting. I was in the minority. The majority of folks were parents and young children. Very few of them actually live downtown.

If you have time on Thursday, I really encourage you to go to the meeting and be heard. Until I attended the meeting tonight, I had no idea of the magnitude of this project.

Literally, they are asking citizens to place mock-ups of attractions on a map of the existing Mud Island river park. The choices include things like a skate park, an aquarium, a walking bridge (yes!!), shopping, dining, green park space, the Zippen Pippen, and a carousel... just to name a few.

For more information, check out www.MemphisRiverFront.com.
You can also check out this blog article to read more about the skate park: http://gatesofmemphis.blogspot.com/2009/05/sk8mud.html.

I encourage you to go Thursday and give the perspective of a young Memphis professional-- someone who LIVES in Memphis. The meeting is this Thursday, May 14th from 5:45 to 7:15 PM at the HIRP Landing at 101 Island Drive.

Thanks for listening!
:~) Angie