Good ideas for Coliseum abound, but they’ve been kept at arm’s length

Written by Marvin Stockwell, co-founder of the Coliseum Coalition.

If there were a good idea for the Coliseum out there, why hasn't it come forward by now? It’s a fair question. The mayor said, "We tried hard to find a use for the Coliseum." 

I don't believe it. 

Good ideas have come forward, but they’ve been ignored and discouraged from ever going anywhere. 

I'll give you an example. 

About five years ago, a firm from Arizona reached out to us. "We're interested in the Coliseum, but we can't seem to get a call back from your City. We saw the media accounts about you giving tours to potential investors. If we flew in on our own dime, would you give us a tour?" 

"Sure!" we said.

Once inside, their jaws hit the floor like most people who take the tour. "Wow, this building is in great shape! We've renovated buildings that were truly gone, but the Coliseum looks like people shut the lights off and left. Do you realize what a great minor league hockey market Memphis is, especially with the success of the Nashville Predators?!" This made perfect sense to us as Riverkings fans. 

Our new friends from Arizona left excited, and they had a meeting with the City the next morning. "Hey, can we huddle up with you guys tomorrow before we fly out?” they said. We'll want to talk about next steps?" We agreed. 

Their excitement made us excited, and we all left hopeful.

The next morning when we all met up, they were dejected.

"What happened!?!" I asked.

"Well, unfortunately your City administration told us they couldn't talk to us about the Coliseum, because it's in the next phase of development."

The mayor said he tried hard.

Does this sound like trying hard to you?

Another example.

Entrepreneur Christopher Reyes' Baron Von Opperbean immersive experience vision has a business plan, creative team and investors. He has been stonewalled for more than a year. Why?

Another.

A Shelby County historian had the idea of putting the archive at the Coliseum as one of its uses. The mayor wouldn't hear him out.

These are just a few instances of the City not trying very hard to find uses for the Coliseum. We only know about the ones in which third parties chose to include us in the conversations. Otherwise, the City has kept us in the dark.

How many other good ideas went directly to the City and were given the brush-off like the Arizona firm? We may never know, because the City's process has not been transparent.

The City has never issued an RFP specifically for the Coliseum. Why? If you want to sell your house, you put it on the market and put a sign in the yard, right?

It doesn’t add up, does it?

The Coliseum sits empty not for lack of good ideas, but because of the mayor's unwillingness to listen and think creatively.

What if the Memphis Hustle played at a reopened Mid-South Coliseum? Robert Pera is a hard man to get a meeting with, but I bet Mayor Strickland could have used his convening power as mayor, years ago, to get us all around the table.

You don't think we could have worked out a deal to have the Grizzlies benefit sufficiently to make it worth their while? Of course we could have! For starters, they'd sell a lot more Hustle tickets if the team played at the Coliseum, plus they'd help restore the birthplace of Memphis' Hoop City identity. Wouldn’t that be cool? And it would be consistent with the Grizzlies’ hand-on-the-civic-pile identity?!

And perhaps we could still act on any of these great ideas, if the mayor would direct his energies toward reopening the Coliseum instead of lobbying State legislators to tear it down. 

And if not Mayor Strickland, surely the next mayor will see the opportunity the Coliseum presents. It's as plain as day to us who love it, and we stand ready to work with anyone. 

We’ve spent the last two years doing pre-development work with a consultant who helped re-imagine the old Sears Building as Crosstown Concourse, and who helped the Henry Turley Company reimagine Central Station. That pre-development work lays bare the opportunity at the Coliseum in a way that’s underpinned with financial rigor. Rigor that started with our eight years of research, and added MLGW usage data, and all of the attendance data and financials that the Memphis Public Library found inside the Coliseum in 2019. They found cool stuff in there, too, as this Bill Dries story in the Daily Memphian explores.

According to our pre-development work, the scenario most likely to lead to a revenue-positive Coliseum is a mixed-use redevelopment that includes different event types plus fixed uses. When we met with City COO Doug McGowan, he encouraged us to keep working in parallel in case the City ever went looking for a plan B. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said, “And this work you’ve done would make an excellent framework if we were to ever need it.”

When the soccer stadium was not in Gov. Bill Lee’s budget, we reached out to the City to ask, “Have we reached that need for a plan B?” So far, the City has said they are not interested in having our pre-development work inform their process. We are undaunted, though, and stand ready to help as soon as they’re ready.

We think 901FC is a great team and good for Memphis, but if the mayor finds the money to build their stadium, he ought to build it somewhere else and save $10 million of Coliseum demolition costs (City's estimate). Use the extra $10 million to build the team an even better stadium, or put it toward renovating the Coliseum. Why have one at the expense of the other? Having both would be better!

The City says it is committed to the soccer stadium being at Liberty Park. Fine. We have identified six places on or near Liberty Park where the stadium could fit (see map). One of those locations is Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. Yes, the USL field dimensions do fit!

The Coliseum Coalition has been at work since before Mayor Strickland took office. He’s had eager citizens willing to work with him for his entire time in office, but so far he’s been unwilling to fully team up with us and the community to find solutions. 

He may have gone to Jerry Lawler's house to consult "the King," but he did not consult the people in the neighborhoods around Liberty Park. He did not consult Orange Mound, Cooper Young, Belt Line, Humes Heights (my neighborhood), Glenview, Edwin Circle, or Chickasaw Gardens.

We did! 

In our 2016-17 neighborhood input process, Friends of the Fairgrounds, we heard them loud and clear, and we’v heard from people all over the city and suburbs over the years.

Mayor Strickland has never listened to what the people have been trying to tell him forever.

We want our Coliseum back!!

Written by Marvin Stockwell, co-founder of the Coliseum Coalition.