A proposal to partially close two streets in Chickasaw Gardens got closer to a Memphis City Council decision than it has in the last year.

But the council still delayed a vote Tuesday, Dec. 17, on the matter until its Jan. 7, 2025, meeting.

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The latest delay in a matter that has been punted by the council since December 2023 followed a day of discussions about the message the gating of Lombardy Road and Lafayette Place to vehicles would send in a wealthy neighborhood that includes a city park maintained by homeowners.

“This is a hard one, y’all,” said Council member Edmund Ford Sr., who moved for the delay.

“I don’t want to make this racist,” Ford said. “I don’t really think it is. The problem is this picture,” he said as he held up a photo of Chickasaw Park. “You want to block me out. That’s a nice park. That’s how some people see this. I don’t feel that way. But some people feel that way.”

The homeowner’s association wants the two streets closed at their expense because they say it will make the subdivision safer for residents and those going to the park. They say speeding drivers trying to cut through the neighborhood and delivery trucks are a hazard to those on foot in the neighborhood without sidewalks.

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The original proposal in 2023 would have limited access to those on foot or on bicycles as well as cars. The restrictions on those on foot or on bikes has since been eliminated from the proposal.

“This has been an effort to open up our neighborhood — make pedestrians safer,” said Jarod Wilder, a homeowner and leader of the HOA effort. “What we want is to have safer streets and open it up for more people to enjoy.”

John Smith, an attorney for those in surrounding neighborhoods, told the council there is opposition to the street closings from those now able to walk to the park in Chickasaw Gardens.

Smith said the closings give “at least the appearance of being elitist and exclusionary.”

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He also told the council that other neighborhoods that might want similar street closures will be watching the council’s debate and decision closely.

“This is not what Memphis is about,” Smith said.

Council member Yolanda Cooper-Sutton said she would like to have similar gates in her neighborhood and that all Memphians want to be safe.

“You don’t need a gate,” she said. “There’s a Black community over here. We don’t have gates. I don’t belong to the country club, so I won’t be rubbing shoulders with you.

“Everybody can’t afford to pay for their own gates,” Cooper-Sutton said. “What we don’t want to do in this city is to set a precedent that because you are more privileged or have more wealth that your well-being is more important than someone else.”

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Council member Chase Carlisle replied: “I don’t understand how it’s ‘I want a gate in my neighborhood. But because we’re not getting gates, you can’t have one.’” 

Carlisle, a critic of the closures initially, said he now supports the closure and argues it’s necessary without limiting public access to the neighborhood and its park.

“The access is not being cut off,” he said. “The vehicular access is being rerouted. The problem is people fly through this specific neighborhood. That is the problem. … It’s a cut-through neighborhood.”

Council member Jeff Warren lives by Overton Park and said he sees the same kinds of traffic problems.

“I live off Poplar (Avenue), and people speed down the street,” he said. “It doesn’t mean my neighborhood needs to be shut off. Those people speeding should get tickets.”

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Warren noted the two street closures would be the latest in a 1920s-era subdivision that once had a dozen streets for access into and out of the neighborhood, according to the Memphis-Shelby County Division of Planning and Development.

Throughout the decades, access on most of those roads has been closed leaving five access streets, including Lombardy and Lafayette.

“I think this is generally a bad precedent of closing off more and more of our city,” he said. “It’s just a next step before they say they want to close off Central Avenue.”

The street closures are opposed by the Division of Planning and Development as well as the Land Use Control Board, which both make recommendations to the council before votes on street closures and other planning and development matters.

DPD Director John Zeanah said the standard for the division is what the closure would do to traffic circulation by the general public.

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He also looked at a dozen proposed street closings in the general area over the decades. DPD recommended rejection of all but one of them.

“The importance of circulation is a consideration here and was a consideration then,” he told the council.

In other action:

1. Scott Morgan is the new director of the city’s public works division. Morgan’s appointment by Memphis Mayor Paul Young was approved by the council Tuesday at a salary of $163,000 a year. Morgan succeeds Robert Knecht, who retired this past summer. Morgan has been the interim city public works director since then.
2. The council also approved Rodney Cleek as the new chief financial officer of Memphis Light, Gas and Water at a salary of $231,608 a year. Cleek, who has been deputy director of the finance division of the utility, replaces Dana Jeanes who recently retired.
3. The council delayed to its Feb. 4 meeting a final vote on the ordinance that would put in place a “fiscal agent” for the More for Memphis economic mobility and anti-poverty program.
4. The council also approved uses for the last of the city’s federal American Rescue Plan Act funding. The $112,165 has to be encumbered by the end of the 2024 calendar year or it returns to the federal government unused. It can be spent for those purposes over the next two years.
5. The council resolution divided the money among eight nonprofits and a capital project to upgrade the sound system in the city council chambers at City Hall for $60,000.
6. The council approved accepting a $100,000 grant from the state for renovation upgrade of the outdoor fitness area of the McWherter Senior Center in East Memphis.