The River Garden at Mississippi River Park has a few unexpected additions. Since the park at the Wolf River Harbor was revamped as a more active setting about a month ago, a hawk and a bobcat have taken up residence.

The bobcat has become a mascot of sorts for the Memphis River Parks Partnership, which has named him Bob (although Bob has also been seen on Mud Island).

Meanwhile, the first statistics tracking who uses the park shows 40 percent are visitors coming from the neighboring Tennessee Welcome Center, another 40 percent from Downtown and Midtown and the remaining 20 percent from the broader Memphis area.

The numbers, presented at the partnership board meeting this week, are percentages only for now with raw numbers still to come.

Partnership president Carol Coletta said how the park is run and the experiments it tries will be used to “codify” how to operate other riverfront parks, especially upcoming plans for the much larger Tom Lee Park to the south of Mississippi River Park.

Bill Dries: Tom Lee Park remake goes beyond park borders

“We are trying to invent a new way of doing things in our field operations,” Coletta said as she outlined some basics like park rangers greeting all who come to the park.

“There is no trash in this park ever – zero tolerance,’" she said of another standard.

The park’s pavilion was originally planned to be made from a recycled intermodal container. But that was abandoned once the work in the park was underway.

But half of a recycled intermodal will be moved into the park starting Monday near the border with the Tennessee Welcome Center to offer “small scale food,” Coletta said.

That includes quick snacks and coffee or water during a six-month trial period that is also aimed at Downtown office workers who park on the lots by the park and walk up the bluff to offices on Front Street and beyond.

Bill Dries: Mississippi River Park nears November re-opening

“We really believe this is the answer for Tom Lee Park,” Coletta said of the problems with the restaurant at Beale Street Landing on Tom Lee Park’s northern end.

After several attempts at different formats, Coletta shut down the restaurant shortly after becoming president of the partnership. The space is now used for discussions and similar meetings about riverfront concepts.

Coletta said the plan is still taking shape for Tom Lee Park. Studio Gang, the concept plan firm from Chicago, and SCAPE, the landscape architecture firm from New York, have taken some “twists and turns” on the way to a February debut of the first renderings, models and elevation images of plans for the park.

That includes a path to “reconsider Beale Street Landing,” Coletta said, as well as the support services for boats that use the dock at the landing and a new entrance for the park.

The renovation of Tom Lee Park is still scheduled to begin June 1, the day after the annual Memphis In May International Festival ends. A clean up of the park by MIM that normally follows will give way to construction.

The partnership is also preparing for a $70 million riverfront capital campaign that will include seeking an increased amount of operational funding from city government during the spring budget season as well as a goal of raising $1 million from the partnership’s board.