Memphis Is Quietly Re‑Opening the Places It Boarded Up

Memphis is spending real money and attention on a particular kind of project right now: places the city once restricted, paved over or boarded up are being brought back into everyday use.

The changes are scattered on the map — an old-growth forest in Midtown, a long-closed school in Orange Mound, an early public library downtown, a park field that doubled as a parking lot — but they share a through-line. Each involves undoing a physical barrier and deciding, again, what counts as public space.

An old fence, a new trail, and 126 protected acres

In Overton Park’s Old Forest, a fence that has been in place for nearly forty years is coming down, according to Overton Park Conservancy, the Memphis Zoo and the City of Memphis.¹ Behind it, a roughly half-mile trail loop is scheduled to open to the public, offering what the Conservancy describes as visitors’ first chance to experience a section of the Old Forest that has been closed since the 1980s.¹¹

The Conservancy’s post announcing the trail is dated November 5, 2025, with a formal opening set for Thursday, November 13 at 11:00 a.m.¹¹ That pins this not as a vague future idea but as an on-the-calendar change to how Memphians can move through the forest.

On social media, an outside observer framed the broader context: they noted that Memphis “has been showing up for this park since 1901” and that 126 acres have been “permanently protected because this community refused to let it go.”²² That 126-acre figure is presented as fact in the post and is treated here as such, but the author’s language is their own characterization rather than an official designation.

The same post calls the Old Forest “the only urban old-growth forest in the southeastern U.S.”² That statement is verified as something the author said, but independently confirming that no other urban old-growth forest in the region exists would require additional evidence beyond what is supplied here. The available record, however, does support a narrower claim: Memphis is opening up a long-closed piece of a rare, mature forest inside its central park.

The Greensward steps back from parking duty

Just across the park from the Old Forest, Overton Park Conservancy describes another reversal of past practice. After roughly three decades of overflow parking on the Greensward, the Conservancy states that the field is “being permanently returned to public use.”³

To make that shift workable, the Memphis Zoo is relocating its maintenance area to the park’s southeast corner, a move the Conservancy says will free up space for designated parking.³ The group further states that once this work is complete, overflow parking will cease,³ and it plans to remediate the Greensward and build a walking path around its perimeter.³

Those steps, as described, do two things at once: they preserve vehicle access to the zoo by rearranging back-of-house space, and they set up the Greensward to function again as a field edged by a walking loop instead of a relief valve for cars. The Conservancy’s language is an announced plan rather than an already-finished outcome; the evidence presented does not include a completion or opening date for the path, so it is not yet possible here to say when visitors will experience the remediated field.

Orange Mound’s boarded-up school becomes a library

Across town, the transformation is architectural rather than ecological, but the pattern is similar: a place closed for decades is open again.

The Memphis Public Libraries system notes that “more than 40 years ago, the Historic Melrose School in Orange Mound shut its doors,” and that after sitting “boarded up and empty for decades,” the Orange Mound Library and Genealogy Center is now open to the public in that building.⁴⁴

At the grand opening, library staff report that “hundreds of people from the community” turned out.⁴ The branch keeps Monday–Saturday hours from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., according to the same source.⁴ The factual pieces are straightforward: a long-closed school in one of Memphis’s historic neighborhoods is now functioning as a public library and genealogy center, open six days a week.

Without additional documents, this article cannot describe the renovation cost, the exact mix of services inside or the effect on surrounding property values. What the evidence does show is that Memphis invested enough in the structure to bring it back into an everyday role, and that residents physically came out in numbers to mark that reopening.

Libraries as long-running anchors

The Orange Mound branch sits in a longer timeline of public libraries in Memphis. The Library History Collection notes that public library service in the city began at 236 Front Street, where the original Cossitt Library opened its doors on April 12, 1893.⁵⁵ The same collection is described as capturing “more than a century of development and progress” through photographs, letters and documents.⁵

That history matters for the current wave of reopenings in at least one concrete way: it establishes that Memphis has been building, closing and reimagining civic buildings for over 130 years. Cossitt’s original address and date are verified points on that line. The Orange Mound Library’s opening in a repurposed school shows that the line is still being extended, not in a new greenfield location but in a structure the city once left idle.

Water play and access upgrades in neighborhood parks

The same emphasis on everyday public use is visible in smaller park projects.

A video posted by the Memphis Parks department announces, “We’re gearing up for the Douglass splash pad opening!”⁶ In that clip, the department identifies Charlie Gardner as a Memphis Parks project manager and notes that he shares “a behind-the-scenes look from the past months of construction.”⁶ The post adds, “We can’t wait to share the completed splash pad with the public tomorrow, August 16, from 5-7 p.m.!”⁶

Those statements establish that a new splash pad in Douglass Park has been under construction, that the city considers it complete enough to present to the public, and that it has set a specific window for people to come see and presumably use it. The evidence here does not independently confirm the year attached to that August 16 date, only the day and time window as stated.

Separately, a bid solicitation hosted on Beacon’s procurement platform carries the title “Audubon Park Splashpad and Park Access Improvements,” lists the issuing entity as the City of Memphis, Tennessee, and assigns the project a reference number of 348779.⁷⁷⁷ The due date is shown as April 8, 2026 at noon Central time.⁷ That document is an announced procurement, not a construction completion, but it does confirm that Memphis is actively seeking contractors for another splash pad and access work at Audubon Park.

Taken together with Douglass, these records show the city adding water play and access improvements in multiple parks. The documents here do not specify the budgets, exact designs or how the Audubon access improvements will change circulation on the ground, so drawing further conclusions would go beyond the evidence.

How this fits into Memphis’s capital plans

At the county level, the existing record sheds some light on how projects like these get into the pipeline. Shelby County’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) document explains that the county prepares a five-year CIP for capital expenditures each year.⁸ It states that each elected official and division director is asked to evaluate their capital needs for the next five years and submit requests for inclusion in the plan.⁸ The referenced CIP covers fiscal years 2022 through 2026.⁸

Importantly, the document clarifies that although the five-year plan is approved in total, only the first year’s budget is actually adopted as the Capital Improvement Budget.⁸ That structure means projects like building renovations, park upgrades or trail work might appear in the plan before they are funded, and some may be funded only when they reach that first-year window.

The evidence provided does not directly tie the Old Forest trail, Greensward remediation, Orange Mound Library or the specific splash pad projects to line items in the CIP. Without that linkage, this article cannot state which governmental pot each project draws from or the dollar amounts involved. What can be said is that the county has a formal process for capital projects, and the timeline it defines overlaps the years when many of these reopenings and park changes are being announced or carried out.

What is changing on the ground — and what is still unknown

Across these examples, the ground-level changes are specific and observable:

• A section of Overton Park’s Old Forest that has been closed since the 1980s is scheduled to open via a new loop trail, after the removal of a fence that has stood for nearly four decades.¹¹
• The Greensward is slated to stop serving as overflow parking, with the Zoo relocating maintenance operations and the Conservancy planning remediation and a perimeter walking path.³³³³
• A historic school building in Orange Mound that was boarded up for decades now functions as a public library and genealogy center, open six days a week.⁴⁴⁴
• Neighborhood parks in Douglass and, if procurement proceeds, Audubon are gaining splash pads and related access improvements.⁶⁶⁶⁷⁷

What remains unclear from the available evidence includes:

• The exact budget and funding sources for each of these projects.
• The detailed designs of the Greensward walking path, the Old Forest trail amenities, and the Audubon access changes.
• The precise dates when Greensward overflow parking will end and when all features of the Old Forest trail will be open for regular use.
• Any quantified changes in park visitation, nearby property investment or neighborhood demographics following these reopenings.

The evidence does not support a sweeping conclusion that these projects alone will transform Memphis’s economy or real estate market. It does, however, clearly document a pattern: across different neighborhoods and asset types, the city and its partners are revisiting places that were physically closed off — by fences, pavement, plywood or lack of amenities — and choosing to re-open them to daily public life.

What to watch next

• Whether the Greensward remediation and walking path proceed on the timeline implied by the Conservancy’s description, and when overflow parking actually stops.³³³
• How the newly opened Old Forest trail is maintained and whether additional formerly closed sections of the forest are slated for public access.¹¹
• Any published usage or program data from the Orange Mound Library and Genealogy Center that could show how often the reopened building is being used.⁴⁴
• The outcome of the Audubon Park splash pad and access improvements procurement, including which contractor is selected and when construction begins.⁷⁷
• Future county or city capital plans that explicitly list additional reopenings, restorations or conversions of long-closed public buildings or park spaces.⁸⁸⁸