The Shelby County Board of Commissioners next month will be presented with the long-awaited master plan recommendation for the 4,500-acre Shelby Farms Park.

The Tri-State Defender recently had a conversation with Calvin Anderson about the plan and the effort to develop it. Anderson heads the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy board that oversees the park.

Defender: I want to know, first of all, to what degree do African Americans use Shelby Farms, and how do we know?

Anderson:  Well, I can tell you just in the amount of time I’ve spent out there, as well as we can go by the number of events we’ve done out there – Earth Day and other specialty events – that there is, surprisingly,  a good amount of utilization of the park by African Americans. I’ve seen people out there doing their family reunions. You will always at any point and time that you drive up see people out there who are actually walking the grounds or jogging or over at Catch ‘Em??? Lake, which temporarily is closed right now, as well as school kids that come out there to utilize some of the activities over at the Agricenter. So there really is heavy utilization already there.

Defender: Okay, so now you are the head of the Conservancy Board, and you’ve been there for about a year. To what degree does this board reflect diversity and how important is that?

Anderson:  It is important, and I think part conscious, but part of it was just sort of the framework of getting people who were interested, had time, were energetic. We were fortunate to have a very good and diverse board of some 30-plus members that probably an excess of a third of them are African Americans, and also a third of them are women.

We have people who live inside the city of Memphis, and I think everybody on the board lives inside of Shelby County. So they come from diverse corners of the county but also come with diverse disciplines. Some are strong  on recreation, some on conservation, some on business finance. Others on  just simple park use framework, some around youth focus. So I think in any number of  spectrums that might lay out, we would have something close to or exact on those kinds of specialty and diverse areas.

Defender: To what degree can you say  that African Americans participated in this community input on a master plan. And how did you reach out to the community?

Anderson:  We did probably in excess of 15-18 public forums. We did them all across the city. We did a couple in North Memphis. We did the Orange Mound/Glenview area. We did University of Memphis. We literally went to all four corners of the community to get input. We also had it online. We had the exhibit at the library and partially downtown inside of the county building. And then as a standing exhibit there at Shelby Farms. By the graciousness of your paper and other outlets we were able to get the message across to a broad spectrum from both print and electronic media.

And then we had specific focus groups that we brought in from youth alliances through the Shelby Farms Park Youth Alliance as well as through the NAACP Youth Alliance and then a number of specific individuals that we had come out to the business center and visit and talk with us about their thoughts about the park and their suggestions for what ought to be considered as we went about putting together a master plan. And then those that reviewed the master plan as we had the three competing entities. And then what we’ve done with sort of some input around field operations. . . they were the ones who would be the finalists that we selected to do the development.

Defender:  So there has been talk about making use of amenities to attract a larger audience. Is that, indeed, a part of the plan?

Anderson: Absolutely, because the point is we couldn’t possibly sort of put some of the resources into the park if we weren’t going to increase utilization. And our point is to increase utilization locally, but also to increase it regionally and, indeed, nationally, since we are billing this as the largest urban park in the country at 4,500 acres. Our premise is that for what we’ve designed there from expanding the lake to a million trees along with the 12 areas set for programming with expanded playgrounds and so forth, we are looking for increased utilization.

Defender: Will there be a charter school or sports complex?

Anderson:  We don’t  know precisely, and I’m not being evasive there. I mean, we’ve got in the drawings the possibility that there be some kind of educational or recreational facility there. I mean, if so, it would be something that’s compatible to the park. I mean, you could have something like what you might see on the grounds of where East High School is. That you’ve got something that has an educational component to it, but you also have it attached next to a number of recreational activities. And when we think in terms of educational facility, we’re not thinking in terms of a basic traditional school where you’re doing reading, writing, ‘rithmetic. But also the education would be centered around conservation, recreation, preservation, park activities.

Defender:  So, does the master plan actually exist as such now.

Anderson:  Pretty much. We’re putting together what we’re calling the final draft of it that would be ready, hopefully, by next week or so as we march toward presenting that to our board and then having our board approve it to take it to the county commission.

Defender:  Now, will the plan account for use of the Agricenter in any way?

Anderson:  Oh yes, the Agricenter is included in this acreage. That 4,500 is acreage that includes the 1,100 acres that’s part of the Agricenter. From a planning standpoint, yes—it’s that whole area. But it’s also respective of the good stuff that Agricenter does. So even there, it’s a standpoint of enhancing what the Agricenter already does and tying it into it so it’s not two things on separate parts of the area.

Defender:  Some public reports have suggested that the Agricenter might not be a willing partner. What do you think?

Anderson:   No, I think they have worked with us very well and very closely. They’ve had a part of the planning process. We have both the chairmen of our Agricenter Commission and Agricenter International that serve on the Conservancy Board. I have worked with them—all three of their principals pretty closely. If they had had any resistance, they would have said it, and they’ve had many opportunities to. We’re mindful of what it is as an asset that’s over there, Karanja, and we’re not looking to change that or disrupt that. We’re looking to make sure that what’s there is tied is connected to everything you do so that when Karanja comes out to Shelby Farms, there’s an easy way to see all 12 areas that would constitute Shelby Farms, and that each of those things somehow or another connects to, ties in with, and at a minimum, whatever is there, whatever comes in the phases that it comes is all sort of compatible stuff with similar fields, similar type connectivity.

Defender:  You mentioned Orange Mound earlier. I’ve often heard it said that there are people in certain parts of the city, perhaps such as Orange Mound, who have never seen downtown let alone Shelby Farms. So does the master plan – when you say reach out to a larger audience – is that group part of your larger audience.

Anderson: It is, and the premise is within our planning standpoint. We’ve looked at where there are specifically parks – from Overton to Martin King Park, Audubon – that are already existing, and what are the assets and activities in those parks, because our part is that Shelby Farms will contain a large amount of activities and resources – of certain amount of nature and certain things that won’t exist in other parks. But at the same time, that this is a work in progress, and you have to work in conjunction with the resources and assets that are already in place.

And where there may be some people who have not ventured outside their neighborhood, we hope to have the standpoint with a tie-in on transportation that we increase the possibility of access out to the park and to create something out there that’s worth the trip.

Defender:  You’ve been there a year. And as I understand it, the challenge has been to improve the park but keep the essential character. Does the plan do that?

Anderson:  The plan so far does that, and that would be credited of it when we first laid it out. That was the premise by which all three of the finalists drew their proposal around, and that was the predicate by which we accepted the field operations and the lead planning model was it really did just that.

Defender:  What have you learned as head of the Conservancy?

Defender: I went into this being so aware of appreciation of the recreational part of it, but didn’t have so much a knowledge of the conservation and preservation part. I’ve come away with the knowledge of knowing just leaving things alone isn’t the best way to have them function in the sense that there is a certain amount of interaction that you have to do even in a wilderness area, even in a nature area that makes it something people would want to be and can navigate in and out of.

And I’ve also learned in the process that there is a good tie-in to health here. That getting kids out into nature, getting kids out into recreation, getting kids out interacting with other kids is a helpful component to them in the standpoint of raising their sociability skills as well as giving them some exposure that helps them overall. And the recreational aspect will help to stem some of the tide of growing childhood obesity that we’re facing because kids are less active and have less places to go.

So by virtue of having a park that has a combination of things where you can learn about how food grows, where you can learn about what constitutes taking in carbon dioxide putting out oxygen by virtue of what we do surrounding  the Million Tree Project – that talks about what you have in the standpoint of the full ecology of things and the full hydrology of water. Those things will be important for kids to know so that there’s a real aspect of touching, feeling and being exposed to some things as opposed to seeing them on video and on laptops and on computers.

So I think what I’ve gotten is a little bit of learning of appreciation for how important and essential it is to have – especially children – interaction with the real world around them in the way of parks, and in the way of trees, and in the way of water, and in the way of conservation and preservation.

Defender: Anything else you’d want our readers to know?

Anderson:  That really, Karanja, the process has been about enhancing the assets that were there and protecting those assets for current and future use. And it really has been something we’ve made a great attempt to get broad input into it because again, our point is we think this is something everybody can rally around as a place that is large enough to contain a number of things. What you can do with 800 acres of Central Park, we can do really great things with 4,500 acres in Shelby County.