While Tom Lee Park was being redesigned, a team of filmmakers documented the changes — and discussions about what the park would become — across a four-year span.

The result is a new documentary that debuts Feb. 16 at Halloran Centre for the Performing Arts & Education with later plans to air on WKNO-TV and to show at film festivals.

“A Riverfront for Everyone” is a 25-minute look at the river park’s remake; it also tells the story of Tom Lee.

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Its debut is part of a “This is Memphis” fundraiser for the Partnership at the Halloran at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 16.

“This could be a role model for other cities. It could inspire them,” co-producer Molly Wexler told The Daily Memphian of the film. “It’s not a blueprint. But it could get them excited.”

Wexler produced the film along with Joseph Carr, Anton Mack and Matteo Servente — who make up Last Bite Films.

Wexler says it tells the story of how the park’s plans changed, as well as the reaction to the redesign.

It was done with the cooperation of Memphis River Parks Partnership, the private entity that manages the riverside parks for the city of Memphis. MRPP raised $61 million for the redesign and carried out those plans.

“It is also a reminder of what it takes — that we can build big things. We can push through controversy and build new things,” MRPP President and CEO Carol Coletta said of the documentary.

“I hope it serves as inspiration for the next project and the next project in Memphis,” she said. “I’ve lived through the controversy of a number of projects and when you are in the middle of it — you hit one hurdle after another and you think, ‘Maybe we can’t do this.’”

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The park’s redesign came with its share of controversy, which included a city-mediated planning process between MRPP and the Memphis In May International Festival. The festival objected to any major changes to the park flat layout that lacked trees.

MRPP and the city administration said the goal of the redesign was to make the park more useable for citizens during the 11 months of the year when Memphis in May isn’t using it.

Even after the festival and the partnership came to terms on the redesign, there was another mediated dispute over what kind of damage deposit the festival should have to pay the partnership.

Festival leaders appealed directly to Mayor Jim Strickland to take MRPP out of the negotiations so the festival could deal directly with City Hall.

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Strickland ultimately denied the request.

The film doesn’t deal with the controversy, although Wexler said the original plan for an hourlong documentary was to make it part of the story.

“It absolutely would have been part of the story,” Wexler said. “With the way the controversy played out — by the time the park was finished — there really was no more controversy.”

She said the disputes were a legitimate story on their own.

“We don’t want to pretend there’s not a controversy with large civic projects because there often is. You don’t want to ignore it,” she said. “At the same time, we didn’t feel that that needed to be our focus.”

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Coletta said there are ways to examine the contention beyond a documentary that attempts to talk about the planning process and the park’s concept as a space welcome to all visitors and Memphians.

“People need to understand that if you are going to do ambitious projects, that change is hard. I don’t believe it until I see it. I only know what I know,” she said. “I only know what I’ve seen and that’s human nature. It happens everywhere.”

The film also aims to bring the story to a broader audience that may not be familiar with the setting or the story of Tom Lee, the laborer who rescued 32 people from a capsized excursion boat on the Mississippi River in 1925.

The 2006 monument to Tom Lee is the centerpiece of the redesigned park; descendants of Lee were involved in the planning and a prominent part of the September 2023 opening ceremonies.

MRPP, with funding from the Mellon Foundation, holds poetry and spoken-word competitions whose winners are announced May 8, or Tom Lee Day, marking the anniversary of the river rescue.

The poems are reflections on how the story of Lee is still relevant.

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Lee’s family also pushed for years to have a more appropriate park monument than the 1950s-era obelisk that referred to Lee as “a very worthy Negro.”

Wexler said she and the other producers at Last Bite Films are now pursuing another documentary about Lee himself.

“In making the film, our team realized how many people don’t know Tom Lee and now we are working on a film with the National Civil Rights Museum just about Tom Lee the man,” Wexler said. “We’re getting together with the family in the next month to have oral histories to be preserved forever at the museum.”

Coletta said Lee’s story and what it means is “interwoven” into the park.

“You can’t talk about the park without talking about Tom Lee,” she said. “There aren’t many parks that have that story so interwoven. … You can see stories reflected in certain monuments, but you don’t feel like it’s really pulled into a civic asset in that same way.”