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Tom Lee Park – ULI Americas Awards for Excellence Winner
May 12, 2025
Photo By TOM HARRIS
Tom Lee Park catalyzes the reunification of river and city by transforming a significant piece of the riverfront into a signature park where community life can flourish along the water’s edge.
Photo By CONNOR RYAN / CONNOR RYAN CREATIVE
Incorporating input from thousands of Memphians, the park features a range of flexible civic spaces for sports and fitness, multigenerational play, environmental education, events, concerts, and more.
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Developers: Memphis River Parks Partnership
Designers: Studio Gang; SCAPE
Site Size: 31.0 Acres
Studio Gang (as master planner and architect) and SCAPE (as landscape architect) were commissioned to collaboratively design a reimagined Tom Lee Park. Groundbreaking was in 2020, and the Park opened in2023, as the centerpiece for the Memphis River Parks Partnership’s reinvention of six miles of riverfront. Tom Lee Park signifies a turning point in the city’s relationship with its riverfront with an emphasis on inclusivity, restorative ecology, equity, and opportunity. It catalyzes the reunification of river and city by transforming a significant piece of the riverfront into a signature park where community life can flourish along the water’s edge and attracts 1,000,000 visitors annually.
Photo By TOM HARRIS
The Sunset Canopy is a 20,000-sf timber structure designed to host community activities, recreation, and events year-round on the courts below.
Extending along the Mississippi River, the park’s overall design is organized into a series of programmatic zones that mimic the dynamic hydrology and sediment flows of the Mississippi River—with forms inspired by riffles, pools, micro-deltas, and tailouts—weaving together circulation and topography into spaces that showcase hardy riparian ecosystems. At its northern end, the park introduces a new ADA-accessible entrance connecting to key civic spaces above the park on downtown’s riverbluffs. A restored soil system supports over 1,000 new trees and lush native plantings. Over 300 new oaks support a vast array of bird and insect life at a key stopover point in the Mississippi Flyway, reintroducing a piece of historic bluff and bottomlands canopy.
Incorporating input from thousands of Memphis residents, the park features a range of flexible civic spaces for sports and fitness, multi-generational play, environmental education, events, concerts, and a distinctive playground.. At the park’s heart is Mellon Foundation-funded A Monument to Listening’s permanent installation of 32 honed basalt sculptures by artist Theaster Gates that invite healing conversations about race. The park honors Tom Lee, a Black river worker who saved 32 people from a sinking sternwheeler in 1925 and leverages his heroism to create civic connectedness.
Photo By TY COLE
A permanent art installation by artist Theaster Gates confronts themes of belonging and discrimination by inviting visitors to sit with each other in conversation.
The Park is comprised of four primary zones: the Civic Gateway welcomes visitors from Beale Street and Vance Park at the north end, an Active Core offers space for lively and flexible activities, the Community Batture provides shade and elevated views of the river, and the Habitat Terraces offer a more intimate experience of the natural landscape at the park’s southern end. In addition to providing shelter for larger community events and activities, the Sunset Canopy offers space for gatherings. Point Bar Pavilions are constructed using reclaimed materials and house concessions and the Welcome Center. Cutbank Bluff forms the east entrance to the park with a crucial ADA connection to downtown. It is one of five new and improved entrances that better connect the park to downtown. Visitors are greeted by new topography, plantings, and paths that frame views of the river, guide them to specific landmarks, and connect them with the park’s outdoor spaces, which range in scale from open lawns for games and cookouts to wooded micro-forests for shaded rest. Inspired by the industrial structures that once operated on the riverfront, these pavilions and shelters introduce a material aesthetic that embraces the palette of Memphis and the patina that will come with time. Throughout the park, native plants provide shade and beauty for people and habitat for wildlife, making the park a resilient and ever-changing place that marks the passage of the seasons—a peaceful spot within the city where Memphians reconnect with each other and nature’s rhythms.
Photo By TOM HARRIS
Native plantings make the park a resilient and ever-changing place that marks the passage of the seasons—a peaceful spot within the city for Memphians to reconnect with each other and nature’s rhythms.
The site was expanded to 31 acres by the Corps of Engineers in 1991. Studies and plans over 100 years recommended a better use of the riverfront, but the park remained barren and featureless until Memphis River Parks Partnership set out in 2018 to create a nationally significant riverfront anchored by a reimagined Tom Lee Park that would not only transform the site at Memphis’ front door but designed so it celebrates Tom Lee’s heroism in order to inspire higher ambitions and bolder aspirations for modern day Memphis.