2015 Mojo Awards
Citizens to Preserve Overton Park
The first Mojo of Midtown Award goes to the Citizens To Preserve Overton Park. They were a small but passionate group, sometimes derisively referred to as “Little old ladies in tennis shoes” (though there were some men among them), who fought and won a lengthy legal battle against Federal, State, and Local governments and the Memphis business establishment. At issue was whether Interstate 40 would be built through Overton Park, taking twenty-six of the park’s three hundred and forty-two acres, dividing the park and the adjacent neighborhoods.
The case moved quickly at first, leading to a 1971 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States requiring that it be demonstrated that there were no “feasible and prudent” alternatives to the I–40 route. But the Supreme Court ruling was barely the beginning. It took more than ten additional years of determined work by CPOP, involving extensive litigation in the lower courts and complex administrative proceedings, before proponents of the route through the park were persuaded to give up and the expressway was exchanged for some $320 million in Federal funds that could be used for other transportation purposes. Thanks to CPOP, what might have divided the Park from Midtown is now only a memory. Instead Overton Park is what it was designed to be; the centerpiece of Midtown.
Cooper-Young Festival
The Cooper-Young Festival was created in 1988 as a fundraiser, with proceeds going to stimulate growth and interest in the area. Sixteen hundred people showed up and the event lost money. But community organizers believed, and tried again. In 2014 one hundred and thirty-five thousand turned out to see what was happening in Midtown, to taste (and smell) every kind of delicacy, to dance in the street to live music and to enjoy a dazzling array of locally-created art. The Cooper-Young Festival is now the biggest single day event in Shelby County. Tamara Cook, with the Cooper-Young Business Association, remembers Cooper-Young in 1999 as a place with “two restaurants and a handful of retail stores.”
Now there are fifty-two shops and businesses, almost all of them independently owned. Cooper-Young’s antique stores are known as the best in town. And numerous restaurants serve the thirty-six hundred people who live in the area. Plus a lot of visitors. “Locals can walk to dinner and shopping,” Tamara Cook says. “But we get lots of people from Cordova and Germantown.” The Midtown Memphis Development Corporation honors the Cooper-Young Festival with a Mojo of Midtown Award for attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors over twenty-seven years and for sending them home with a great feeling about Midtown.
Levitt Shell
The Midtown Memphis Development Corporation is pleased to honor the Levitt Shell with a Midtown Mojo Award for bringing free, open-air concerts to all the citizens of Memphis. Built in 1936 by the Works Project Administration, the Overton Park Shell had a long and colorful history including an early performance (July, 1954) by Elvis. But by 2005 the Shell was in disrepair and in danger of being torn down. Then came help from the Mimi and Mortimer Levitt Foundation of New York. Together with a dedicated group of Memphians the shell was renovated and revitalized. Since the debut concert in 2008 the Levitt Shell has surpassed all expectations.
Each year more than one hundred and twenty-five thousand have turned out for more than fifty free concerts, performed by professional touring musicians. New and exciting events are on an even more ambitious 2015 schedule, starting in May. Thanks to the continuing generosity of the Levitt Foundation, and Memphians, the Shell’s future is secure and sustainable. Today eighty-five percent of the funding for the concerts comes from local businesses and individuals. The Shell is operated by a Memphis-based non-profit, Friends of the Levitt Pavilion Memphis. Thanks to the Levitt Shell all Memphians can look forward to warm evenings on a green lawn under a sky full of stars. With great live music.
City of Memphis Bike Lanes
As recently as 2010 Memphis was ranked one of the worst major cities in America for bicycling. Now we are on the way to being one of the best. Credit Mayor AC Wharton for recognizing an opportunity to change the way we get around and then hiring a coordinator to put the idea in motion. The City now has five designated neighborhood bicycle routes, including one in Midtown. The bike lanes on Madison Avenue did not happen without complaint or controversy but the plan is working. Ridership is up significantly and accidents involving bicycles are down.
There are now two hundred miles of bike lanes, trails, and routes in Memphis altogether with another one hundred miles planned in the next twenty-four to thirty-six months. And a path that would connect the city with West Memphis over the Harahan Bridge is an exciting plan for all bike riders in Memphis. Imagine riding over Big Muddy.
Ben Woodson - Overton Square
The Midtown Memphis Development Corporation honors the late Ben Woodson and his partners Charles Hull Jr., James D. Robinson, Jr. and Frank Doggrell, III (all under age twenty-five at the time) for making Midtown a magnet for Memphians through the development of Overton Square. “Memphis needed an entertainment place,” recalls Ben Woodson’s widow Lucy. In 1969 businesses were abandoning Downtown Memphis and Beale Street had not yet risen from the ashes of “urban renewal.” Overton Square’s launch coincided with another major event, one that had been pushed by Woodson and his partners; legalized liquor-by-the-drink.
“Fridays got its license to serve liquor by the drink on the first day it was legal,” Lucy Woodson says. One of the partners even drove from Nashville to Overton Square carrying the license. Woodson secured the first Fridays franchise outside of New York and it became the anchor. Over time Overton Square was home to eleven restaurants and twenty-seven shops employing more than eight hundred people. Among them; The Public Eye, Solomon Alfred’s and Bombay Bicycle Club. Tallulah’s and Sycamore added the allure of upscale shopping. Before Overton Square, Cooper and Madison was a quiet corner in a part of town that sometimes saw itself as a bit bohemian. After Overton Square took root, Midtown Memphis became a destination.
Bob Loeb - Overton Square
The Mojo of Midtown Awards honor Bob Loeb for recognizing that Overton Square could have a second act and for investing the money, time and belief into making it happen. One example of the transformation: A 2013 survey by a Memphis publication had Overton Square barely on the radar of places where someone would take an out of town visitor. The same survey in 2014 placed Overton Square at the top of the list. But it didn’t happen overnight. Loeb spent a year studying the area and hearing naysayers predict it wouldn’t work. “There’s no guarantee of success,” says Bob Loeb. “But we expected it to be successful.”
Today Overton Square is home to almost two dozen restaurants serving everything from Indian to Tapas to German to Southern. Among the shops; health and fitness, gifts and an old-fashioned candy store. The return of Lafayette’s Music Room brought a great venue for live music. And all this added to four live theatre spaces and a multiscreen movie complex. Right now Loeb properties has one hundred thousand square feet under lease or development and is anticipating one hundred percent occupancy soon with big things on the horizon including a new hotel and multi-family residential units. Bob Loeb says he is glad to see other investors putting resources in the area. “We want Overton Square to be not just successful but sustainable.”