The low Mississippi River level Wednesday, Oct. 2, offered a rare, bottom-up view of construction work so far on the Memphis Flyway observation deck in Tom Lee Park.

Several groups of people made their way to the river’s edge to see the 218-foot long, $10.4 million elevated overlook that’s being built on typically inaccessible riverfront land.

Construction begins on Tom Lee Park’s boardwalk

The Memphis Flyway is being built over a wildlife habitat area that’s not publicly accessible. It’s set to open in June 2026 and will offer visitors a view of the larger flyway, the one used by migratory birds who are part of the wildlife mix near the river.

“We’re protecting this land. We’re protecting this space,” said Andrew Kiepe, MRPP’s development manager who led the tours Wednesday.

What’s normally a mass of shrubs and thick brush around a few trees and lots of driftwood is now a bare, steep dirt slope.

The park surrounding it is thick with trees and tall grasses as part of Tom Lee Park’s $61 million redesign.

The redesign makes the southern end of the park a more natural and solitary setting compared to the developed spaces with more programming in the park’s center and northern end.

MRPP chief operating officer Art Davis called Wednesday’s visitors on a pair of tours “boots on the ground.”

“It’s amazing how far you are when you get down there,” he said from what will be the flyway’s entrance.

The supports for the walkway that will offer an elevated, unobstructed view of the Mississippi River on the south end of Tom Lee Park are still to come. They’ll be followed by the 200-footlong boardwalk.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Memphis River Parks Partnership are both watching the flyway project closely to ensure there is no further stability damage to the area once the thick brush returns. When the Army Corps expanded Tom Lee Park in the early 1990s, the dike being used to support part of the expansion collapsed. The Memphis Flyway is being built over the collapsed area.

The low river level is helping the project’s lead builder Montgomery Martin Contractors.

“We have to make sure that when we start on the foundations for the flyway that we have dry weather,” Davis said. “Our construction team at Montgomery Martin has committed to making sure that as soon as we start digging for those foundations, that we keep going until the work is completed so we don’t have to deal with Mother Nature and the river.”

‘40% of all North American birds go down this flyway’

The Memphis Flyway’s June 2026 open date will be two years after the project’s groundbreaking this summer. 

The park playground alludes to the surrounding habitat with interactive sculptures of river otters and other creatures native to the river’s environment. There have been sightings of foxes on the park’s river border.

To the south, President’s Island, the industrial area where the river takes a sharp turn west before resuming its southward flow, is known for its deer and turkey populations.

“We have the wonderful luxury that 40% of all North American birds go down this flyway,” Kiepe said. “But we are more than that. I can guarantee you if you walk the river today you are going to see a monarch butterfly because of all of the pollinator habitat provided there. … Nowhere on the river are you going to have this kind of access.”

That’s the view from the elevated boardwalk. At ground level, access to the river’s edge is challenging, even with the land cleared.

The group of about a dozen people on Wednesday’s first tour looked up the slope for a few minutes when they got to its bottom, and then Kiepe and Davis led them single file through a tiny opening in the brush border that includes poison-ivy and wild-blueberry bushes.

The path was through a thick mat of driftwood branches on the ground that demanded the attention of those more inclined to take in the eye-level view of the river all the way to the flood plains on the Arkansas side of the river.

With a plentiful supply of driftwood, MRPP plans to assemble some nests for the area.

The partnership did something similar for the human play area at its River Garden park to the north on the Wolf River Harbor.

“Everyone wants to get close to it,” Davis said of the attraction to the river. “And this flyway provides that opportunity — to get closer to the river, to see a natural habitat and to enjoy the quietness of this area of the park.”