City Council approves $5M for Tom Lee Park redesign
Memphis River Parks Partnership CEO Carol Coletta gives an update on the status of Tom Lee Park at a Dec. 14, 2021 meeting. The city has completed its $10 million pledge to help fund the $62 million redesign of the park. (Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian)
The city has completed its $10 million pledge to help fund the $62 million redesign of Tom Lee Park with a $5 million payment approved Tuesday, Feb. 1, by the Memphis City Council.
The city payment was to be in the form of Tourism Development Zone revenue generated in the Downtown area. But the sales tax revenue generated in large part by tourism was among the revenue streams that have been lower than expected in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The funding approved on a unanimous vote by the council is federal funding under the American Rescue Plan Act that allows local government to recover revenue lost because of the pandemic.
In other action Tuesday, the council gave final approval on third reading to an ordinance that allows the Peabody hotel to use a tourism surcharge of up to 5% on items bought on the hotel’s property.
The surcharge is an option of Tourism Development Zone status and is to be used for renovations to the hotel property.
The council also amended an ordinance to which it gave final approval two weeks ago that renamed Fourth Street between Union Avenue and E.H. Crump Boulevard for anti-lynching activist and civil rights icon Ida B. Wells.
The ordinance in its original form renamed Fourth Street as Ida B. Wells Barnett Street. The amended version changes that to Ida B. Wells Street.
The council also took back the final passage of an ordinance that recodifies the city code of ordinances approved at the Jan. 18 council session.
Council attorney Allan Wade wasn’t at the January council session and the item has been repeatedly delayed since January 2020 at Wade’s advice.
Wade called for the item to be pulled from the meeting minutes as he undertakes the review. The council will vote on a substitute version of the ordinance starting the process in two weeks.
Wade anticipated the recodification will be a series of ordinances — one for each chapter of the city code.
The council also approved Tuesday a rebranding of the city’s parks and neighborhoods division as Memphis Parks.
Memphis Parks Director Nick Walker proposed the new name for the division as part of a comprehensive plan for parks in the city.
Topics
Memphis City Council Tom Lee Park redesign American Rescue Plan Act Peabody Hotel tourism development zone City code of ordinancesBill Dries on demand
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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