If you're planning on expending any amount of energy watching or participating in the Pier debate, we suggest staying in bed the next 43 hours or so and play Trivia Crack on your phone. Rest up and replenish your energy, mental stamina and tolerance for lengthy nostalgic diatribes, for you're going to need these on Thursday morning, when the St. Pete City Council will vote on whether to enter into a contract that would ultimately lead to a new St. Pete Pier.
On that morning, we suggest you caffeinate heavily, but keep the Kahlua close at hand.
If you muster up the patience to attend the meeting, which has a godawful start time of 8:30 a.m., expect throngs of urban planning hobbyists to pack St. Pete City Hall to bloviate on why they hate, hate, hate Pier Park, the design chosen by the Pier Selection Committee. It's a concept that seems like a happy medium between those who think the inverted pyramid is an aesthetic nightmare and those who think all it really needs is a new coat of paint and maybe a Burlington Coat Factory/Panera Bread combo.
Most of the people who vocally oppose Pier Park do so because they really want the inverted pyramid to be preserved and refurbished. One of the top three designs submitted by various design teams, Destination St. Pete Pier, does this. This design also captured the bulk of public favor in one city survey and a few phone surveys conducted by St. Pete Polls.
Critics think the inverted pyramid is an outdated design that went the way of Sam Goody, and indeed, looks very much like the kind of place you'd find a Sam Goody, NKOTB cassingles and all.
Many argue that the public support for the design in and of itself should be reason enough for the city to choose it, and are throwing every bizarre accusation of corruption in the book at Mayor Rick Kriseman for not dropping everything to build it. The public survey was part of the community input component included in this process after voters shut down the Lens concept in 2013 (which wouldn't have been on the ballot had it not been for a petition drive/campaign by many of the same people who don't want anything other than Destination this time around).
What isn't part of the conversation, at least among the people throwing whatever conspiracy theories at the wall they can find because they want the pyramid refurbished so badly (among them a specimen called "Bay Post Internet," one of several sites posting rabid anti-Pier Park content), is that the public had input.
The city held nearly 40 meetings last year to gather public input on how the Pier should function — not what it should look like, because the reason they hated the Lens was because it placed form over function — but what amenities would make us all want to go there more than once every five years, the maximum frequency with which most of us visited the current building before it closed. That means restaurants, event venues, fishing and more.
City Council has a pretty heavy agenda that day, and we don't envy them. They're talking about the Downtown Waterfront Master Plan, one of those boring-but-important items that could have substantially more impact on the future of this city than the question of whether or not we keep the damn pyramid, not to mention a Community Development Area that aims to create jobs in South St. Pete and a potential noise ordinance that could alter St. Pete's nightlife scene, which is pretty damned important.
If your Pier fatigue has begun to exhibit physical symptoms, you can watch Thursday's meeting from bed via a livestream you can find at stpete.org.
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2015.