- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- What it takes to build great cities tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by a number of folks involved with urban planning and building cities and all kinds of things here in Memphis.

I'll start with John Zeanah, who is Director of, I'm going to do it wrong, the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development.

Thanks for being here again, John.

- Thank you.

- And also Paul Young, who is CEO of the Downtown Memphis Commission.

Thanks for being here, Paul.

- Thanks for having me.

- And Sutton Mora is COO of Community Foundation of Greater Memphis.

So the kind of premise of the show when we set this up a couple months ago, was that in part all of y'all were, y'all have parts you play in various organizations in the city, and you all were in school together at U of M, the Masters Program in Urban Planning back in '03 to '05.

Also crossed paths with Tommy Pacello, who died coming up on two years ago, who was just a real force of all kinds of things going on in planning and in Memphis, sort of rethinking how it builds and how it grows and so on and so forth.

Paul kind of messed things up a bit because Paul declared that he's running for mayor.

And we will talk about that in full disclosure.

You know, we'll talk a bit about the mayor thing and we will have you on and talk a lot about that.

Van Turner has also declared his candidacy for city mayor.

We will get Van on, Michelle McKissack, who is the head of the school board right now, is exploring that and other people will come forward.

We will get them all on.

We will love to have all the candidates for city mayor on over the course of the next year.

So that, but we will end up talking about some of those things as we go on.

Let me start, I'm going to start with John here.

Again, my sort of premise at the top in terms of what it takes to build great cities, you have been very much involved with, and I think these other folks have as well, but sort of the front person for first Memphis Greenprint and then Memphis 3.0.

And talk a bit about why that's important.

And now that we've lived with Memphis 3.0 and Greenprint for even longer, what changes come about and why those sort of plans are important, and why and where they are more than just a sort of idea that goes on the shelf, great plan and everyone walks away.

I mean, Greenprint has really, that plan has been followed and Memphis 3.0 has driven a lot of actual things and building and growth in the city.

- Yes, that's true.

So Eric, I'm recalling the first time I was on your show, we were talking about Greenprint and sitting next to me was Frank Ricks of LRK.

And at that time, Frank and LRK, they not only were one of the champions of Greenprint, but also that was around the time that the Chairman Circle was getting started.

And a lot of these efforts around planning and around the future of our city, I think we're being talked about in many circles.

But one of the things that Frank said that I think that we've tried to continue from Greenprint all the way to today is building a culture of planning in the city of Memphis, and the importance of that.

Greenprint was really the first opportunity within at least the last decade to demonstrate the importance of that culture of planning.

And actually, I'll give some credit to Paul because Paul at the time was the administrator of Office of Sustainability that helped lead the grant application.

But that was one of the goals of that grant application was that by bringing this money for Greenprint from the federal government here to Memphis and Shelby County, this would not only give us a chance to be able to develop a plan for a regional system of green space, but it also could be used to showcase the importance and create a model for bringing together so many community stakeholders around a culture of planning.

Not just creating a plan, but building a culture of planning.

And that's incredibly important because it's not as if planning didn't exist before then.

It did, it was very fragmented though across many organizations, many agencies.

And there wasn't really a centralized focus around planning and bringing all those partners together.

So I think Greenprint again, created an important model for that, which then led to the model for Memphis 3.0 and creating the city's first comprehensive plan in nearly 40 years.

And then thinking about how a comprehensive plan gets implemented, and taking the same approach of leaning on building up that culture of planning and including as many organizations in that implementation to ensure the plan's success.

- So, Sutton, and I should say about Community Foundation of Greater Memphis has been a big supporter of Daily Memphian, you know, so I should have disclosed that or I'll disclose it right now.

But I'm curious from you, you're not in the planning thing in the way that these two folks are, but you, Community Foundation of Greater Memphis supports all kinds of organizations, and I got to think, you know, when I moved here twenty-five, twenty-six years ago, and I was thinking about this because we've hired so many young people new to Memphis, into the Daily Memphian as reporters.

And these things that now still, I think, still feel new to us, like the Greenline, like the expanded Shelby Farms, so that Shelby Farms even exists, like Overton Park in its new form, bike lanes, parks and green spaces, things that sort of came out of that.

None of that was, none of that was for certain 20 years ago.

A lot of it, I mean Shelby Farms, there was talk of like selling some of it off and putting up subdivisions, right?

I mean there's all kinds of things that are, that exist now that I think a newer generation of Memphians, this is because I'm old now, take for granted and assume that was always there.

And I'm curious how that plays out with all the nonprofits in town, because a lot of these are not there.

They're either fully private nonprofit organizations, they're public private.

What do you see in that space, and how has that changed?

- Well, I think Shelby Farms and the Greenline are actually a really great example.

We were actually the entity that purchased the rail line and held it until we figured out what we were going to do with it.

And so we provide, we're able to work, we've worked with Paul, we work with John, we provide a way to kind of move things along or do things that the government can't do because we are just kind of a different, we are a different kind of entity.

But also I see from our donors, like our donors last year gave out $138 million, and 85% of that stays in Memphis and the Mid-South.

They are invested locally.

So they are invested in nonprofits that are invested in 3.0, that are responding to what that plan says, that responded to what the Greenprint says.

And it makes our donors ask questions when we have that culture of planning that they wouldn't otherwise.

Like, are you part of this?

Are you part of this larger process?

Where does this fit in?

And until we're all kind of trying to fit into the same thing, we're not going to be able to move the development ahead the way we want to.

- Yeah, before you were at Downtown Memphis Commission you were at, - Housing and Community Development.

- Housing and Community Development.

And that is a place, and we've had you on the show a number of times also with Archie Willis talking about the transformation of public housing in Memphis.

But you kind of see it in some of these places like South City you see it where it's not just a transformed island that is now a much improved mixed-use, mixed-income subdivision or housing area.

It's right up against all this other stuff that's going on.

And maybe I'll start there, with South City and how that kind of hits these things we're talking about.

Because there are bike lanes next to it.

It's not far from the park, it's not far from, you know, where you can go over the river.

All these things that again, we sort of take for granted, but weren't necessarily so.

- Yeah, it's all about adding all of the elements that make for a great community.

And that's the importance of planning is thinking about it on the front end.

When you think about some of the challenges that we've had in our community, you know, you think about the impact that planning had in 1980 when we put forth the Memphis, I think it was Memphis Vision 2000.

And that plan said, we want to grow, we want to be bigger.

And we achieved that plan.

But what we didn't bank on is the fact that the people that lived in the core of the city would be the ones to move further out.

We thought we would just grow as a whole and grow the pie, but we kept the same number of people and it led to our communities being fractured and losing population in the core of the city, which meant we lost businesses.

We have now vacant homes, vacant businesses.

And so now our goal with Memphis 3.0, which John led, is to build it back up.

And South City is a part of that.

And many of the other efforts that we're taking on as a community are all a part of this broader vision that was brought forth as a part of Memphis 3.0 to grow our city, to bring the population back to the core, and to make sure that every neighborhood is vibrant.

- Is that working?

I mean, people talk about the, the population of Memphis is stagnant, the city of Memphis.

I mean, is it that what you're describing really isn't working as intended?

Or is it, without that, the population would be in greater decline, from your point of view?

- I think planning is a long-term exercise.

And so I do believe it's working.

I think that that organizations are now coalescing around a vision, and it's going to take 10, 15 years to get where we want to go.

But I do believe that we're moving the needle in the right direction.

- What are those organizations, when you talk about that?

I mean, the range - Downtown Memphis Commission, Community Redevelopment Agency, MLGW, the City of Memphis, Shelby County, EDGE, all of the nonprofit organizations.

It gives all of us a guidepost.

And that's the importance of planning is to know.

And it gives the development community certainty with regards to where the public sector is looking to grow the community.

- John, if I remember this right John, I think we talked about, but, I mean, it was in part because Greenprint existed.

That was the foundation on which you all went after the big HUD resilience grant, which was 200 million, $100 million?

- Sixty million.

- Sixty million dollars.

In today's dollars it's 200 million?

I don't do math.

I, I should never do math on this show.

It's really bad.

I can do it with a calculator or spreadsheet.

But the, you needed a plan to get this money.

And I think I remember that from maybe from you and from other people that, and when Memphis didn't have a culture of planning, it was missing out on federal dollars, potentially state dollars.

Like it doesn't all have to come from city/county dollars.

- Yeah, absolutely.

When we applied for the HUD resilience grant, Shelby County was one of over 60 jurisdictions nationwide that were invited to participate because we had had the federally presidentially-declared disasters in 2011.

But it was a two-phase process and in the first phase it was made explicit to all applicants that clear community development objectives had to be illustrated as a part of this application.

And so being able to respond to that grant with the Greenprint plan as our community development objectives around how we use green space to build up our communities and create resilience was exactly what the federal government was looking for.

And in fact, we've got the same situation now that the federal government has invested so heavily in infrastructure through the infrastructure bill as well as other programs that have been going on for several years.

In fact, MATA's grant that they received a few years ago for the bus rapid transit route, one of the main sources that we used to illustrate our commitment to more frequent transit was Memphis 3.0 and the Transit Vision.

It was clear to the federal government in that application that Memphis had a plan for not only what this route would be, but also how it fit into the broader transit network and how this route could lead to transit-oriented development that fit with the city's comprehensive plan.

And just to go back to something that Paul touched on, you know, one of the things that we thought was really important because of our history of planning, and because like I said, it's not like it wasn't happening but there was so many organizations who were involved in somewhat of a fragmented state.

One of the things that we wanted to ensure in Memphis 3.0 was that we communicated the ways that different organizations took their part to develop and and build up places throughout the city, not just how we direct the private sector to build within the downtown area, but also how neighborhood organizations and CDCs, the role that they play and working with the government to help invest in community centers throughout the city.

- Yeah.

You work with, Sutton, at Community Foundation with so many different organizations, they all are in lockstep?

They're all on the same page?

They all are going in same direction?

- (sarcastically) They're all together.

- Without naming names.

How, how, I mean, have we gotten as a community better about this?

Because we're talking about lots of public, private organizations, governmental organizations, who, do they work well together?

Have they worked well together?

- I think one of the legacies of what John was just talking about is no one in this city was saying the word resilience before we had that conversation.

And it has been brought into the conversation, into the neighborhood level, in a way that it wasn't before had we not had that plan.

So you see things like the Protect our Aquifer folks and movements like that, that don't necessarily feel like they're a part of this.

But it all stems from the fact that we are talking about resilience, we are talking about what it means to move the city forward.

And we're, we are trying to, most of us are trying to move in the same direction.

With any sector, there are fiefdoms and there are some organizations that don't want to work with other organizations, and like that happens.

But I see more collaboration amongst nonprofits and neighborhood leaders now than I did when I started that job 10 years ago.

I think people realize that you have to work together.

- And you, you were at Cooper Young, I was going to say a hundred years ago, which wouldn't be nice, I'm sorry, but some years ago, some years ago you were you were, before you were at Community Foundation, you were at Cooper Young- - Development Corporation.

- And that, I remember, I think that was when I first met you.

You're still there.

And did people look at you like what?

I mean, I would bet that within Cooper Young people wanted it because that was a very avid community, a very tight community who really advocated, but outside the boundaries of Cooper Young were people like, yeah, I don't know what you do.

- Well, I think CDCs take a little bit of explaining to understand.

And you meet one CDC, you've met one CDC, because they all do things a little bit differently.

- I, over the years when I've, I always think when I have people from CDCs on, that it's, like, no, they're all different.

- They're all- I didn't know that Roshun Austin was part of a CDC forever.

I was like, I was like, "Wait, I thought you were, whatever you are."

She goes, "Oh no, no, we're a CDC."

I mean, it, it is confusing.

- It, it's confusing.

But it has to be because Roshun was a mentor to me when she was at Orange Mound and I was at Cooper Young, and what Orange Mound needed and what Cooper Young needed were two different things.

And what the CDCs role really is, is to advocate for what those people on the ground need from that perspective.

We cannot treat all the neighborhoods the same.

We cannot invest in all the neighborhoods the same way.

So you have to be able to really reach where the people are and address their needs and go from there.

I remember when we were in school together, we were working on a plan and we had a professor who just had all these really lofty ideas, and when we're doing all these community interviews, they were like, "We need street lights."

And she was like, "Yeah, but what kind of park do you want?"

"What kind of this and what kind of that?"

And they were like, "We want street lights.

"We need our street lights to work.

That's what we need."

And so that's why you have to have these different organizations to advocate for that.

- Downtown Memphis Commission is interesting to that point because you're, you know, there's a lot we put, you know, on Daily Memphian, news organizations, 100 North Main is going to be rebuilt.

You know, DMC had bought that and now selling to this private developer and it's hundreds of millions of dollars and so on.

You are also working in parts of Memphis that need streetlights?

- Absolutely.

I mean, Downtown Memphis Commission is five different entities.

And so while the things that may get the most attention are the large projects like the Mobility Center or 100 North Main, we're also working in the Pinch District.

We're also working in South City.

We have partnerships with organizations like The Works and CRA, where we facilitate some of their grants.

So we work with small businesses, those small developers that still need support to get their communities over the top.

- Yeah, with eight minutes left in the show, I mentioned Tommy Pacello.

So one of the, like, you know, I think one of the most obvious transformations of a neighborhood is the Medical District because, and it's not there yet in the sense, but again, you know, 5, 10 years ago you would no sooner go to the medical, ten-plus years ago, go to the Medical District for brunch or for lunch or for dinner.

You just, it just wasn't on anyone's radar.

I mean there was some housing, it was as Tommy Pacello, who was head of the Medical District when, the Memphis Medical District, when he passed away about two years ago.

We'd talk about, you know, the lights go out, people commute in and out.

So let's talk about, not so much about the Medical District, but about Tommy.

Tommy was this kind of remarkable guy.

I guess he was a little bit after y'all at the University of Memphis in planning in that he could make planning cool.

He could make, he could evangelize for it in a way that was very tangible.

He could talk about it like at the street level, how people want.

We're going to transform this whole Broad Avenue area or this Medical District, but down block by block, street by street.

I mean, your memories of Tommy.

Well, thoughts about Tommy?

- First of all, Tommy made anything cool.

- Yeah.

He did.

- Whatever he was involved with.

You know, within the planning world, the person who is thought of as sort of the father of of modern city planning, Daniel Burnham, you know, he has this famous quote of "Make no little plans, they don't have the passion to stir men's blood" or something to that effect.

You know, Tommy was the opposite.

You know, he saw the wisdom and the beauty of the little things and how important it was to invest in small visions that could really make a big difference in certain places.

And I think, at least in my career, that is what I learned so much from him.

Because as I came through the planning school and as I, you know, got into my planning career, you know, I was interested in the big plans, the big visions.

And, and still I think, you know, my career path has kind of led me still along that track of thinking about big, sort of, citywide plans.

But what Tommy did so well within planning was to just illuminate how important it was for, you know, a block, a site, to think about, you know, adaptive reuse of a building, to think about the way that a pedestrian access or the street scape is designed, to think about the way that a storefront could be activated.

And that contribution is one that, I think, was really important at his time when he worked in Memphis, but also he was able to share that with so many different people who I think have carried on a lot of what he taught us.

And, and I think that that is ultimately one of his biggest legacies that he leaves for Memphis, is that it's not just about casting the big vision, it's also about the details and getting the details right, and the sustainability of getting the details right.

- Thoughts about Tommy?

- I always think about connections when I think about Tommy because that was what he was really good at doing is putting the dots together and all the way from that small thing to the big vision.

And the thing that Tommy could do really well also was he could make the deal pencil.

Like you have to make it be able to work.

And he would figure out who he needed to bring to the table and who he needed to work with to make sure that the deal worked.

And whether that deal was, "Hey, we're going to redo this street for three days."

Or whether that deal is, "Hey, we're going to revamp this entire neighborhood over the next 10 years."

But you got to be able to pay for it.

You got to be able to sustain it.

And he was really good at being able to make those connections to make sure that happens.

- Yeah.

Tommy was an amazing person.

I used to always laugh with him because I felt like every time I talked to him, I learned a new word.

[everyone laughs] He was the first person that had mentioned urban acupuncture.

I was like, what is that?

I had never heard it before.

[Panel Together] Tactical, tactical urban, tactical.

- Tactical urban First time I had ever heard it was from Tommy.

And eventually it became, you know, the planning lingo.

He was always ahead of the curve.

He was somebody that, you know, he left his fingerprints all over Memphis.

I served as the chair of ULI, and last year we did this ode to Tommy where we all went out and stood in front of different buildings and structures that Tommy had an impact on.

And just seeing the video was amazing.

It shows that, you know, in his time on this earth, he really, really had an amazing impact on the city.

And he loved Memphis.

- Yeah, and Tommy was mid-40s when he passed of pancreatic cancer.

It was very really just so tragic.

Really a great, great guy and a great friend of the show and, and you know, a friend to whatever degree of mine.

We've got a few minutes left.

And again, you blew this whole show, Paul, because you declared for mayor since we planned this.

So I want to go through it with patience to the other folks here.

We will have, you know, again, as I said at the top, but if you came in late, Paul's declared for mayor in the last couple of weeks.

And we'll, Van Turner's also declared, we'll get Van on the show.

He's been on the show and other capacities and we'll certainly get him on.

Michelle McKissack is exploring and other people will declare and we'll have lots and lots of time with them.

But real quickly with just, we got four minutes, three minutes left here.

Why, why running and what are your priorities real quick.

- Yeah, so for me it is just, this is the path that I've been on.

I've been serving Memphis my whole life and my career past 20 years have been working in community development and planning.

And I feel like it's time for Memphis to have a leader that has my type of background.

I'm a city builder.

I'd be the first mayor that's a city planner that has been academically trained on how to build a great city and has been professionally doing the work on building a great city.

And so I feel like I'm the leader that Memphis needs.

- Right now, obviously coming off the last month, but it's really been a, Memphis had a crime problem for a long time.

The whole country has had this huge spike in violent crime.

We obviously as a city are going through this trauma, not just, I mean, it's enough that Eliza Fletcher was abducted and killed, the things that are coming out about how it was not handled well at the state, local, and many levels, and you can read all about that on the Daily Memphian, we did show about it with Mark Perrusquia last week, and the mass shooting, you know, someone driving around town shooting people.

What, what can you do?

I mean, we've talked a lot about city planning today.

We've talked a lot about building.

We've talked about great cities.

But there's also other parts to the job, and crime, crime fighting, and criminal justice is a big part of it.

What are your priorities there, and what can be done to?

- Crime is number one on everybody's mind.

And what we've learned in those unfortunate, tragic incidents is that when we collaborate, we can solve crimes, we can capture people and capture them quickly.

And that would be my priority with crime, is finding ways to identify those that are committing the most heinous crimes in our community and bringing them to justice.

And ideally they go into a justice system that's focused on reform.

But my goal as mayor is to make sure that we get them off of the streets, and we want to balance that approach with prevention.

We have to make sure that we are touching the next generation so that they don't take on a life of crime, or the only thing we will be doing is removing a criminal and building a pipeline for another one to move into its place.

- There again, we could do a whole show on this, but crime, you know, there is some criticism, and I get it, that while this media put a whole big spotlight on Eliza Fletcher, she comes from a connected family, comes from a wealthy family with, you know, lots of connections.

She is white and we don't put as much spotlight on others.

Is crime an issue across the city?

You've been doing lots of quiet listening and talking.

In your current job you meet with lots of the city, but is it an issue for everyone or is this just suddenly on the radar of people who look like me?

- Crime has been an issue for everyone.

I mean, it, it's been an issue.

It's become more prevalent of course, but it's been an issue and it's something that we need to finally come together as a community and resolve.

And it's an issue in communities across the country.

So it's not just a Memphis problem, but we can be the city to get it right.

- Okay, We will leave it there.

Again, we'll talk to Paul much, much more over the next year as his campaign progresses.

John Zeanah, Sutton, thanks for being here.

Thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of this show today, you can get the full video at wkno.org.

You can also get past episodes there.

You can also get the podcast version of the show on the Daily Memphian site on wkno.org, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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