Mayor Jim Strickland recently announced that he’s seeking $700 million dollars of state money for a number of sports projects, including the replacement of the Mid-South Coliseum with a 901 FC soccer stadium.

While I and a lot of other people are happy that our soccer team is going to get a great new stadium, I am unhappy that we’d place the stadium at the site of the Coliseum.

But maybe Jerry “The King” Lawler is right — there is no future for the Mid-South Coliseum and that the only thing that’s certain is change.

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It’s also possible that Lawler doesn’t know that the Coliseum has always been about progress and change. This spaceship-looking building was the first public assembly building in our region designed and built for racial integration, way back in 1964, when I was a girl growing up in Orange Mound. To my friends and me, the Coliseum was a big sign that change was coming. It was close enough to walk to when the circus came to town, or to watch wrestling on Monday night, or when the Tigers were playing. Without barriers.

It was ours. Orange Mound’s. Memphis’. Everybody’s. The Coliseum served a one-of-a-kind role in creating community, with joy and jobs, for all of Memphis.

The truth is, we came together in that building like no other place in Memphis, before or since.

The House that Larry Built, the House that Jerry Built, the Birthplace of Hoop City, the Palace of Graduations, the Roundhouse, the People’s Building, the Coliseum!

But that was then, and this is now. Let’s be realistic.

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Maybe we should have already figured out what to do with the building. Many people say that. After all, the Coliseum closed 15 years ago.

But consider:

The Tennessee Brewery was closed for more than 60 years, but it reopened in 2017 as a mixed-use redevelopment.

Historic Melrose High School, my alma mater, has been closed for 50 years, but construction just recently broke ground on Melrose High that will create new uses for the building, including a public library and senior housing.

The old Sears Crosstown building was dormant for 25 years, but it reopened in 2017 as Crosstown Concourse, an improbable public-private partnership that most people said would never happen.

Memphis has developed a reputation for reusing old buildings. Think what Memphis would look like if we’d given up on those special places after 15 years.

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Each of these, in fact, took many years and lots of hard work, with haters all the while saying the redevelopments couldn’t happen, that we need to get rid of these eyesores. Even the new event center across Early Maxwell took more than 20 years to break ground after it was first proposed.

To think that reactivating the Coliseum would be easy, while all these other projects were hard — that’s unrealistic. This stuff is hard.

But why is the Coliseum worth it?

Memphis is suffering.

Now more than ever, we need to put community first. The new sports center will be wonderful, but it is primarily built for tourists. People from out of town. I can guarantee you that local folks will have a hard time booking their community events, because out-of-town events will fill up the calendar. The new stadium will also be a great amenity, but one focused primarily on its reason for existence — the 901 FC soccer team.

There will be a gap. A community gap.

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We have an opportunity for the Coliseum to come in and fill that gap. The community gap. Like it always has.

The Coliseum Coalition is committed to restoring the Coliseum in a way that serves the community and pays the bills. For the past year, we’ve been doing pre-development work that will serve as a realistic guide for a new life for the Coliseum. Do we think the building will be exactly the same? No. It can’t be. In its first life, the building was used only three or four days a week, and by the end of that first life in 2007, those days did not pay all the bills. The Coliseum has to be more. A patient, persistent, creative Memphis will figure this out.

And the soccer stadium can still be built at Liberty Park. Perhaps at the site of the old Coca-Cola plant, which has sat empty since Coca-Cola left the community three years ago. The site is a little over a football field away from the back of the Coliseum, is nearly the same size as the lot where the Coliseum sits, and badly needs reinvestment. The City owns it and is already clearing the site.

Does Memphis need a professional soccer stadium?

And the kicker? We’ll save $10 million dollars on the cost of demolition of the Coliseum that could be put to more pressing needs in our city.

Will we waste $10 million dollars by refusing to move the new stadium 100 yards, or even consider other locations?

Just like we can’t give up on Memphis, we can’t give up on the Coliseum. A lot of people want to. But we have to stare our problems in the eyes, be creative, then make brilliant visions happen. We can have both the 901 FC soccer stadium and the Mid-South Coliseum.

Memphis deserves both.