- (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.

- A look at the major, new eco park on the Mississippi River tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Dow McVean, with Big River Park Conservancy.

Dow, thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Along with Adam Putnam, CEO of Ducks Unlimited.

Thank you for being here.

- My pleasure.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

It's funny, 'cause I say it's a new park.

It is major.

The land has been there and people have been over there, but there is a huge new movement of, I don't want to call it development, 'cause that makes it sound what it's not, but across the river, on the Arkansas side, if you were to go over the Harahan Bridge, or Big River Crossing, there's always been some land down there you can get to on your bike or if you were walking, but there's a bunch more about to happen there.

So, talk about that Dow, and then we'll talk about Ducks Unlimited.

- Yeah, so what we're working on would make virtually no sense without Big River Crossing in place, but with the bridge in place, the pedestrian bridge, I would submit that it makes infinite amount of sense to continue to develop   the trail system and park   on the Arkansas side.

Before Big River   Crossing opened,   you know, it wasn't clear,   two things weren't clear,   how many people were gonna go   out on the Big River Crossing   and, you know, enjoy the view   and come back to Memphis,   and how many were gonna   go all the way across   and want to have activities   on the other side.

And then secondly,   we had to also   explore how viable   a park and trail system   was in the floodplain.

A lot of people,   when you talk to   about this project,   they pushed back and say,   it's in a floodplain, but actually that's the good news, because if it wasn't in a floodplain, it would look like President's Island or East St. Louis, so that's what gives us this totally unique opportunity to have a natural area of that magnitude directly across from a major downtown, metropolitan area.

- And we got to see it as you were speaking there, photos of the bridge and the crossing that hopefully many people found because it's pretty remarkable.

And we'll talk more about how that came about, but also some of the levy trails, I think we were looking south and north at the Big River levy trail on the Arkansas side.

Let's, Adam Ducks Unlimited, your involvement.

Well, talk more about what, for those who aren't as familiar with Ducks Unlimited, which is headquartered here, but works all over the place.

But your involvement in this, in this sort of project.

- Well, Ducks Unlimited is thrilled that Dow came to us with this project because Ducks Unlimited is headquartered in Memphis.

We have over 150 families who live and work here.

Many of them downtown, and this Big Rivers Park is really the front yard for downtown residents and workers.

And we view this as a tremendous opportunity to work in our backyard of the city that we live in and love, and the restoration opportunities on this 1500 acre canvas to bring back the native vegetation, and to bring back the native, bottom land hardwoods, fully functioning wetlands, to demonstrate their role in a floodplain.

And at the same time, it's gonna be spectacular wildlife viewing, a great place for students to learn more about nature, and for families to be able to jog, and bike, and hike, and walk in this living, low amenity, floodplain park that's really gonna offer all of these features.

And we view this as an extension of our mission as a continental leader in wetlands conservation.

- More questions for all of that, but let me bring in Bill Dries.

- Dow, so, right now you have some farmers who own a lot of the land that that's in, what's being talked about as this park.

What's the status of talks with them, because I know at the outset, some were very welcoming of the idea of the trails that are there, and some were more guarded about what it meant for their property.

- Sure.

So, two farming families in particular, the Robinson family, who Bert Robinson's a friend of mine, and we've been working on this project together since, well, I guess about six years.

Since before Big River Crossing opened.

Two of the land owners over there gave us easements on which to put our proof of concept trail system, which is what you referenced.

That's already in place over there.

We've got 10 miles of now fully paved trails over there, but they gave us easements to build those trails to prove the two things we needed to prove, which first of all was, there was demand for people to go all the way across Big River Crossing to use a trail system on the Arkansas side, which anybody who's spent any time over there, that's pretty obvious there's great demand for that.

Secondly, though, we had to prove the viability in the floodplain.

And so we built our trail system, and then we had the 2019 flood, which was the third highest flood ever in Memphis, and the longest lasting flood ever in Memphis.

And after that great flood, we had less than $10,000 of damage to all 10 miles of paved trail.

And so that really gave us the confidence to move forward with the project.

Then we had to, to address your question, the difficult task of cobbling together the various parcels of land from the various landowners.

And I'm relieved and pleased to say at this point that we own or control all 1500 acres that we envisioned being a part of Big River Park.

And so now we're into the fundraising to purchase those acres.

To date, we've purchased about a third of the acreage, and we've raised the about half of the $5 million necessary to purchase all 1500 acres.

- For those not as familiar with acres, fifteen hundred acres, like how miles along the riverfront?

Give it in miles if you could.

- Well, roughly what we're talking about is, in broad terms, is between I-55, on the south end, I-40 on the north end, the Mississippi River levy on the west end, and the river itself on the east end.

That block is roughly what we're talking about.

- Right.

Okay.

- And does this take in Dacus Lake, which I believe is near what many of us called the new bridge?

- Yeah, no, it does not currently include Dacus Lake, but just south of Dacus Lake, you know, you have the town of Hopefield and the Trail Of Tears, and so there's some very interesting historical aspects that are in the park area, but Dacus Lake itself is not in the park.

- Okay.

Adam, I've been on the Big River Crossing just as the floodwaters have moved out pretty substantially, but there's still some left there, and it's maybe easy to forget during the floods that this is a migratory flight path for numerous birds, and one day over there, I saw dozens, maybe hundreds of cranes that were out there scooping up the fish that were left in what remained of the floodwater.

What kind of potential is this for what your organization does?

- Well, it's extraordinary potential, you know, the Mississippi alluvial valley acts as this funnel for this ancient highway that birds fly up and down twice each year, and then when you have unusual circumstances like the floodwaters that recede and leave all that rich food, you have even more reason for those birds to be there.

And it's not just ducks.

As you pointed out, it's cranes, it's shorebirds, it's songbirds.

You know, this is a birdwatcher's Mecca in the spring and in the fall, as those birds are repeating that ancient ritual.

And so the opportunity for us to showcase Memphis' relationship with the river, Memphis' relationship to the floodplain that sustains the life, the way that this floodplain attenuates nutrients, the way that it's a shock absorber for floodwaters, the way that it can then when it is not underwater, which is the vast majority of the year, be such a tremendous recreational benefit because of the trail system that Dow's team is putting together.

And then to be able to replant the trees and other vegetation that were there when, you know, when the first settlers came to the Bluff City, it's really a whole lot of amenities rolled into one.

- This was a pretty heavily forested area, right up to the river's edge originally.

- Yes.

- Right.

Right.

And, what Dow talked about, some of the concerns, or pushback as you put it, was about the fact that this does flood about once a year.

Another name for it though, in the current lingo, is resiliency.

- Yeah.

- How much is Ducks Unlimited involved in that particular movement, which is to say, yeah, pay attention to wetlands and build your development accordingly so that you don't stop it or move it, but you live with?

- Yeah, Ducks Unlimited was into resiliency before it was a buzzword.

Since 1937, we have worked in these wetland areas that really only recently has society come to value.

And that resiliency in particular up and down the Mississippi River, we're a part of a coalition of mayors of 120 cities up and down the Mississippi, and it was just highlighted in the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago.

We are their sustainability partner in these floodplain projects, because if you have natural wetlands, they act as that shock absorber when you do have flood waters.

They remove the nutrients.

They are the place where the sediments are deposited.

And of course they're wonderful for biodiversity and wildlife habitat as well.

And that's really the key to what we've been doing for a long time.

You know, we are the continental leader in wetlands conservation having conserved over 15 million acres since our creation.

And a lot of that work is done up and down the Mississippi River Valley.

- And then I would also add, talking about the environmental side, and I have to credit Bill Rhodes at AutoZone for highlighting this when we were meeting about the project, is the, you know, this date, carbon reduction and ESG outcomes are so important to many publicly traded companies and corporations and so taking this ground out of marginal farm ground on the river, in the floodplain with all the pesticide runoff, adding to the dead zone at the end of the Mississippi River and putting it back into its natural state of hardwood bottoms, and native grasses, that sponge that Adam speaks of, you know, it's about as big a lick as you can hit from an ESG outcome point of view and Ducks Unlimited, with their team of scientists, are able to quantify that.

And I have from the beginning, personally, always viewed this as a derivative spinoff of Big River Crossing and primarily a trail, and a biking and hiking project.

But really when you think about it, there's two equally viable ways to look at the project: as a park, and recreation, and trail and an extension of downtown Memphis, and Big River Crossing Project.

But there's an equally viable environmental way of looking at it, and I'm just thrilled to have Ducks Unlimited's expertise to help foster that aspect of the project.

- There are currently farm roads there that the farmers use to access with their equipment to their land.

What happens to those roads in this transition?

- Well, most of them will primarily become trail corridors, which is part of our current trail loop over there.

The seven mile loop was, part of that was a county road that was primarily a farming road.

There's very, very, there's no outlet, so there's very, very little traffic over there.

It's primarily farming traffic, but a lot, many of those corridors that the farmers have used, we will use to develop our trail system.

- And it is there, are there still markers for what were the Native American trails that were there in the old Hopefield settlement?

- There's a marker or two.

There was an old Boy Scouts trail, the markings are not there, but that corridor is there, and that leads up to the Mississippi River levy and then into Marion.

And so that's certainly on our radar as far as a trail corridor that we intend to develop.

So largely speaking, we intend to, you can, Adam's more knowledgeable than I am about this, but you can put trails throughout a conservation easement as long as you define those corridors on the front end.

And so once we have completed our fundraising for the $5 million we need, of which we have about half, to purchase all 1500 acres, then Ducks Unlimited can do what they are better than anybody in the world at doing, which is to design, and tap into federal dollars, and do the conservation work of restoring it to its natural state of wetlands bottoms, while we continue to build out the trail system throughout.

And then when all that work's done, we'll put it into a permanent conservation easement for public access as a park to be managed by Big River Park Conservancy.

- The Conservancy is a 501(c)(3).

- It is.

- And, you've got a big grant from First Horizon Foundation recently.

And you said, and I apologize if I missed a bit, the sticker price on all this is roughly?

- Well, the land acquisition is $5 million for the 1500 acres of which we own a third.

The other two thirds we have under purchase option agreement.

- And you're fundraising against that.

- And we're fundraising against that.

Yep, and then after that, we will, trail building, we have found, so we've got about three and a half million dollars invested in the trail system that exists over there, and essentially it's about.

- Separate from the crossing?

- Yes, totally separate.

- Just the trails?

- We've got about three and a half million dollars invested in the proof of concept trail system over there.

You know, the bigger crossing's about $22 million bridge, of which 15 million was the federal TIGER grant.

But so we will need to keep, our short term need is to purchase the land so that we can keep the ball rolling and DU can do what they do.

And then we will need some additional fundraising for the matching funds to build out the trail system.

But, you know, Charlie Newman is on our board at Big River Park Conservancy, and he, obviously, was heavily involved and did a lot of the heavy lifting on the legal work and bringing along the Big Rover Crossing, Mighty Lights, and all that.

- Well, and Charlie, who actually is, I should disclose is a ex-officio member of The Daily Memphian board, but also instrumental.

He does not like to take credit for it because there are many people involved, but instrumental in stopping the highway going through Overton Park.

I mean, and his history in this is.

- Yep.

So obviously.

- Worth noting.

- And his Shelby Farms, and Overton Park.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- So his knowledge is immensely helpful, and his council.

And he's been a big proponent all along of this is a low frills park.

I mean, by definition is 'cause it's in a floodplain, so whatever you do has to be able to sustain the flooding.

But we're really talking about a natural area with a trail system throughout, and a low frills, low maintenance park area.

- Well, and I laughed at, I didn't laugh, I laughed when you said about $10,000 when there was flooding, as there should be, but very extreme flooding in '19, and there was only $10,000 in damage.

I was a former member of the Overton Park Conservancy for a long time.

We'd love, [men chuckling] or they would love to have only $10,000 after.

I mean, the maintenance of a park is a huge issue.

You, to that point, you feel like they're maintenance dollars going forward after you've raised the money, 'cause that's always a question.

There've been a lot of questions about Tom Lee Park and everything going on there.

There were lots of questions about Overton Park Conservancy.

Yeah, you got some money, but maintaining these spaces can get very expensive.

You're comfortable with the operating budget and operating funds?

- That's correct, yeah.

- Yeah, okay.

I want to talk bigger picture.

A little bit about, and we talked a little before the show started, you know, you're a lifelong Memphian.

I'm 25 years in.

You know, when I moved here, there was, Shelby Farms was in an okay state.

Overton Park was not in a great state.

I mean, it's a beautiful piece of land, but it was just not really well maintained.

There were virtually no bike lanes.

And you think about this last 15 years, 20 years from Greenline to Shelby Farms, to then they Overton Park Conservancy kind of taking over all that.

The big, I mean, you can go on and on with the list, bike lanes, the crossing, the massive redevelopment of the Tom Lee Park and the whole waterfront, and the access, and so on.

I want to come back to you, but I want to get Adam in.

You are two years into Memphis.

You moved here right before and took the job at Ducks Unlimited right before COVID started.

Great timing.

[man chuckling] You may have had a lot of time with these amenities 'cause we were all in lockdown, and you may not, but I'm curious.

Lifelong Floridian before that, is that right?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Your take on what it was like to be a new person coming to Memphis, and the outdoor amenities, because I do, and maybe I'm wrong.

I do think that a lot of Memphians still have not caught up to the reality of everything that's going on here.

They've seen bits and pieces, but there's a lot.

But what, tell me I'm wrong, or tell me what your reaction was when you moved here to, as a new Memphian with obviously interest in outdoor spaces and ecology and so on.

- I'm thrilled you asked the question because it gives me an opportunity to brag about my new hometown.

My family and I have felt so welcomed in Memphis.

It is a town, as one longtime Memphian told me, where nothing is hard.

You know, everything is easy to get to, easy to get around, great selection of amenities, and the outdoor amenities are a big part of that.

You know, Ducks Unlimited's campus headquarters is in the Agricenter, in the heart of Shelby Farms.

Our folks hike and bike on their lunch break.

We have board members on the Wolf River Conservancy, on the Big River Park Conservancy.

The type of person who is drawn to work at Ducks Unlimited as a wildlife biologist, or engineer, wants that type of outdoor atmosphere and the four seasons environment, the welcoming nature to new executives moving to town has been phenomenal.

And that system of trails that we're looking to extend across the river, where you have this tremendous natural area literally steps away from the downtown skyline of Memphis, and just adds to that downtown living amenity.

And because of the extensive trails, it's not just a downtown amenity, it goes all the way out to the suburbs.

So it's very spectacular, and it's been an easy transition.

- Again, you're born and raised here in Memphis.

Your dad, who passed away unfortunately in the summer, Charles McVean was instrumental in Big River Crossing, but a lot of this sort of push for outdoor spaces and taking advantage of them.

How have you seen that arc of change about outdoor spaces, and what were the driver or drivers that made it happen?

- Well, it's been a variety of things.

I mean, obviously the Greenline was sort of the core thing that started it.

And then, you know, dad pushed forward with Big River Crossing.

I mean it's a, this project feels relatively easy compared to the job that dad, and Charlie Newman, and the former mayor AC Wharton, and others had in convincing the Union Pacific Railroad to let them put a pedestrian bridge alongside their active railroad bridge over the Mississippi River.

And then, to get a federal TIGER grant, you know, with Steve Cohen's help.

So, that was two long-shot miracles, frankly.

And this seems like low-hanging fruit, relatively speaking.

But dad always saw the Big River Crossing.

Dad was very concerned about income inequality and education issues in Memphis, and so he saw the Big River Crossing as his short-term solution to the problem, and then Peer Power, his tutoring, high school tutoring program, as the long-term solution.

And in the Big River Crossing, he saw it as a way to generate low hanging fruit jobs into tourism.

We're in the international agriculture business and we have people come to our office that see us from Asia, and from Europe all the time, and they want, when they come to the office they want to see two things.

They want to see Graceland and they want to see the Mississippi River.

- Right.

- And so dad saw the Big River Crossing and the Big River levy trail system, and all of the trail system as a way to generate a tourism interest in Memphis and to attract and keep young, talented people in Memphis and specifically downtown.

- About five minutes left.

I'm gonna bring Bill back in.

- Adam, I want to go back to a point that Dow made about Ducks Unlimited's role in trails.

What do you look for on the land?

Are you looking for access for people, balanced with areas where you let nature do its thing, for lack of a better term?

- So, we don't pretend to be experts in trails.

We are in the habitat, conservation, and restoration and Dow and Big River Parks are world-class trail builders in creating that system, but they go together so well.

It's just a no-brainer.

And, so where you have a 1500 acre floodplain along a river system as massive as the Mississippi, and then with a levy system that obviously has tremendous history and impact as well, we view this as a great way to demonstrate the type of work that we do, from Mexico to the boreal forests of Canada, right next door to an urban audience, that happens to be the corporate headquarters of Ducks Unlimited.

And that's part of what makes it so ideal, that we can tell our story as people are actually enjoying it.

This is not a static demonstration.

This is a living, breathing restoration project that families are going to be able to see it as it changes with the seasons, as it changes with flood activities, as the wildlife come and go, all of the different benefits of that.

And that is representative of our work from the Gulf Coast, all the way up through the Prairie potholes.

- Bill, our Big River Parks board, we're putting the final touches on RFQs that we plan to send out here shortly in the next couple of weeks for park planners and trail designers so we can integrate Ducks Unlimited's expertise in the wetlands restoration with a professional input on the trail design and corridor work.

- And while we've talked a bit about the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy and the Overton Park Conservancy, because this is a floodplain, what you're looking for in an RFQ is different.

I want to say, maybe closer to the ground because of what happens naturally there, than maybe those other two organizations.

- That's correct, and actually just so happened yesterday.

I met down in the park area with a gentleman who's done a bunch of trail design work for the Walton Family Foundation in the Delta and in northwest Arkansas.

And I think we'll see.

We're gonna go through the process, but I think somebody who has that unique set of skills is the kind of person we're looking for sure, given that it is in a floodplain.

- You mentioned your dad's work with Peer Power Foundation and working with high school kids, and you mentioned students.

I mean, talk a bit, I'll start with you.

Talk a bit about how, is part of the plan for this to get kids there?

Maybe kids who, we don't have great, you know, we don't have a lot of funding for mass transit.

I mean, how do we get kids who don't have the ability to get to this park to this park to expose them to things?

I mean, it's both an issue of poverty.

We have too much poverty, but it's also an issue of screens and screen time, and how do you get kids out into this, these environments that you invest in?

- Well, and this issue of screen time, you know, it cuts across all income strata.

I mean, it is just a generational problem, but of all the things COVID has taken away from us, one of the things COVID has given us is a renewed appreciation for the outdoors.

And we are seeing young people and families getting back outside.

It would be a tragedy if we were successful with this park and more children were not availing themselves of it, whether it's boys and girls clubs, field trips, working with Shelby County schools and others to get them out there, because it is so pedestrian and biker friendly, and so it's an enjoyable way of teaching science, and ecology, and limnology, and nature-based studies while you're having fun.

I mean, it's just gonna be a tremendous educational resource for Memphis.

- Yeah.

- I think it's gonna, when we're done with Big River Park and then Carol and her group are done with the redo of Tom Lee, and then you throw in Big River Crossing, connecting the two, and Mighty Lights, it's going to be, I think, we're gonna have an absolutely unprecedented, world-class riverfront to which there's no equal anywhere on the planet.

I really do.

And to your point about the educational opportunities, to have that sort of, that size and scale, and wild of a natural area, literally within walking distance of downtown Memphis, it's gonna be world-class.

- Well, I don't think I've mentioned, but it's probably on all our brains, is Wolf River Greenway.

So you go up to the north of Harbor Town, and that green way ultimately will stretch all the way to Ghost River.

- Yep.

- The work that's being done at Kennedy Park is gonna be fantastic.

- It sounds strange, but it's reality that you can get on a bike out here, somewhere east of Shelby Farms, and ride all the way to West Helena.

- Yeah.

- On a, more or less uninterrupted, which that's a far cry from where we were as a community fifteen years ago.

[chuckling] - Yes.

I think we will leave it there.

I have many more questions, but people can learn more about this.

Is there a website for Big River Conservancy yet, or the park?

- The Big River Crossing website and Big River Strategic Initiative, and then that will lead you down the correct path.

- Okay.

All right.

- Absolutely.

- Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Adam, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Appreciate it.

Bill, thank you.

Thank you for joining us.

Join us again next week.

If you missed any of the show, you can get the full video online at WKNO.org, or go to YouTube.

And you can get the full podcast of the show often with a few extra questions and a little bit more to it, you can get that at iTunes, Spotify, Daily Memphian site, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks, and we'll see you next week.

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