Andy Ashby - Memphis Business Journal -

Robert Mayer talked to the local CCIM Institute chapter today about Shelby Farms, outlining the advances the advances Shelby Farms Park Conservancy has made in its first three years.
 
However, the director of park operations also was inadvertently showing a clear path for another significant Shelby County greenspace: Overton Park.
 
The Shelby Farms Conservancy is a nonprofit organization founded on the principal that any great city anywhere in the world has a good park system. From an economic development standpoint, this means helping to attract talented people to Memphis and Shelby County.
 
For decades, Shelby Farms was a nice place to visit, but the conservancy is making it more of a cultural amenity. It gives a model for how to operate a large park outside of the current way known in Shelby County, which is having the government do it.
 
The Shelby Farms Conservancy's $2.7 million annual operating budget comes mainly from events. It also has an ongoing capital campaign to pay for improvements.
 
These capital improvements efforts have really started blossoming with results recently. The 4,500-acre park has seen the opening of the Woodland Discovery Playground, the Wolf River Pedestrian Bridge and the Shelby Farms Greenline in recent years, improvements which were probably not imagined when the park was strictly government-run.
 
Take the Woodland Discovery Playground. With its arbor passageways and educational features, it’s in the running for national and international design awards. It has European design influences and varying degrees of challenge at different play stations. This is not something which could have sprung solely from the imagination of government.
 
The Shelby Farms Greenline was completed last year and was an instant success, with Mayer comparing its weekend traffic to drive-time car traffic on Interstate 40. That said, the conservancy, which worked with private and government entities to make the greenline a reality, is working on improving it. The nonprofit is working with the Avon neighborhood to add ADA access. It’s also adding six cameras to bolster security on top of its ranger, volunteer and law enforcement patrols.
 
The Shelby Farms Conservancy also is working on an expansion of Patriot Lake from 55 acres to 110 acres, adding pedestrian paths and an amphitheater, among other amenities.
 
A private group called the Overton Park Conservancy is working toward a similar path with its 342-acre Midtown park.
 
A conservancy can do many things better than most government entities, such as generating private investment in a project and marshalling volunteers for maintenance and other projects.
 
When the Shelby Farms Conservancy was formed three years ago, it had to figure out a lot of what it was doing as things came up. With Overton Park, hopefully the drivers of its conservancy can use their map.