Not too long ago, the Friendship Trail Bridge was a vibrant public place, alive with joggers and fishermen.
Now, it’s forlorn, abandoned. Eroded parking lots and chain-link fence clutch both ends of the 2.6-mile trail, which was Gandy Bridge’s westbound lane before it was given over to pedestrians in 1999. Tumbling rocks, abandoned concrete and mangroves dotted with plastic shopping bags line the waterfront on either side. Aside from a few occasional fishermen casting their lines in the shadow of the old Gandy, the area is vacant; the bridge is doomed to live out the rest of its days collecting rain and bird crap.
But not if Neil Cosentino has anything to do with it.
To Cosentino, this condemned structure could be an economic pillar. Where county officials on both sides of the bay see corrosion and eventual collapse, he sees potential for something that’s a cross between Clearwater’s Sunsets at Pier 60 and Downtown St. Pete’s Saturday Morning Market.
“Try to picture this,” he says, sweeping his arms across the derelict bridge’s western terminus. “Food trucks, vendors, kayakers, rollerbladers. There’s so much here. You can say it’s dying, but it’s not.”
Almost everyone else seems to think the thing is toast.
No one has been allowed to set foot beyond those chain-link fences since November 2008. In April 2010, the Hillsborough County Commission, with the blessing of its Pinellas counterpart, elected to have someone blow it up. They approved funding for destroying just part the bridge — the two access points and the mid-section — in January 2011, though they weren’t sure how they’d fund the rest.
The $4.4 million partial demolition is scheduled to start in May, once Hillsborough County picks a bidder to do the deed. Hillsborough and Pinellas are sharing the bill, and the latter has reportedly already transferred its share of the money across the bay.
Cosentino is battling doggedly to stop the demolition from happening — again. And he’s not alone.
This is not Cosentino’s first crusade in Tampa Bay — far from it. His gentlemanly demeanor and Brooklyn accent are well-known in Hillsborough County Commission chambers, where’s he’s given public comment on an almost bizarre array of issues. A perennial candidate — he ran most recently against incumbent Mark Sharpe in 2010 — he was also a vocal part of the bid to get the 2012 Summer Olympics here. Now 74, he's constantly generating new ideas from his think tank, Bay World, including a national public newspaper and a “global airport."
He conducts all of these battles with graceful humility and utter lack of faith in government efficacy. A retired Air Force pilot who flew planes in Vietnam, he’s fond of comparing his activism to dogfighting (aerial combat).
“It’s intellectually challenging,” he said. “But it’s real.”
This is also not the first time Cosentino has fought to save the old Gandy. When the Florida Department of Transportation first shut it down (and handed the counties the keys) in 1997, he and a few other activists successfully petitioned to have it reopened as a recreational trail two years later, and the Friendship Trail Bridge was born — reportedly the longest pedestrian trail over water.
Alan Snel, who heads bicycle advocacy group Southwest Florida Bicycle United Dealers (Swiftbud), said the trail was a huge draw for local and traveling cyclists and runners.
“It’s part of our identity,” he said. “It provides continual access for people who don’t want to be in cars to experience the water and the bay.”
In 2008, though, state officials abruptly shut the bridge down after an inspection during which they reportedly saw chunks of concrete falling from the structure. It was on a Thursday afternoon. Commuters reportedly pulled up to the trailhead on either side for a post-workday jog only to find county officials chaining up the gates indefinitely.
An SDR Engineering Consultants report suggested that repairs would cost at least $15 million. The next year, engineering firm EC Driver prepared an even more damning report, one that more than tripled the first repair estimate.
Pete Yauch, Pinellas County’s director of transportation and stormwater, said the estimate shot up to $48 million because the first report took only the old Gandy’s horizontal components into account, while EC Driver looked at the whole thing.
There was also the question of whether pounding waves and salt air could decay the thing to the point where it would eventually collapse under its own weight.
“The potential is there,” Yauch said. “It’s probably not something that’s going to collapse from someone walking over it.”
Throw in some storm-force winds, though, and he said disaster could ensue. And what if emergency vehicles need to access a structure deemed unsafe for cars?
“Say someone trips and falls and an ambulance goes to pick them up,” he said.
Cosentino doesn’t buy it. To counter the official viewpoint, he cites a 2011 USF study suggesting that the probability of the old Gandy falling to pieces one day between now and 2029 is, according to the study, “very low” — 19 in 100,000.
He said it makes no sense that a bridge could be safe for 40-ton trucks one day, and unfit for a few rollerbladers the next.
“I’m not a bridge engineer, but neither are you. Neither are most people,” he laughs. “But anything that’s good for 40-ton trucks one day has got to be good for pedestrians the next day. Come on!”
He thinks having a partially demolished bridge out in Tampa Bay would not only be an eyesore, but a missed opportunity, and that spending millions of dollars to demolish a bridge in times of austerity is foolish. Instead, he said, why not lease it to a group of young entrepreneurs for, say, a dollar a year? If they can’t get grant money for repairs or make a profit after a few years, then the county can destroy it.
“The thing is a cash cow,” he said. “It really is.”
County officials aren’t really listening, though. However reluctantly commissioners voted for the demolition, they still voted for it. But Cosentino has contacted Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch, who said he’d be open to looking at a proposal. The thing is, he hasn’t seen one.
“He sent, basically, a concept,” Welch said. “We need a viable plan — and funding — in place.”
This doesn’t faze Cosentino.
“There’s always seed money for the right idea,” he said. “Don’t worry about the money. Just worry about the idea.”
Hillsborough County commissioners contacted by CL had nothing more to add on the bridge or Cosentino.
Pinellas County Commissioner Norm Roche, though new on the board, is on the Friendship Trail Bridge Oversight Committee. It hasn’t met since before he was sworn in.
“[Cosentino’s idea] definitely has merit, in my opinion,” said Roche.
Yet in the end, it’s a safety issue for him. The counties can’t exactly fund repairs, let alone a new bridge. Neither can they let people into a space officials deem unsafe.
“You don’t want to wait for someone to get hurt to make that determination,” Roche said. “I think it’s sad, to be honest.”
Still, Cosentino is not alone on the Friendship Trail Bridge crusade.
Ken Cowart is an architect who organizes the Tampa Bay Pecha Kucha (an event where innovators and entrepreneurs come together and present their ideas). He’s part of a growing contingent that wants to make Tampa Bay smarter, greener, and thus richer, and he’s part of an effort to gain signatures on a petition to save the bridge; SWFTBUD, Tampa Downtown Partnership and Creative Tampa Bay are among the signatories. He's also reached out to Hillsborough County Commissioners Sandy Murman and Victor Crist.
Cowart says while some of Neil’s ideas might seem larger than life, the Gandy one’s right on the money.
“This is something we should have,” he said.
Cowart said it’s not logical to spend money to tear something down — especially without more scrutiny.
“If you’re about to cut off my leg, I want a second opinion,” he said.
He said he doesn’t exactly have the answer for what should be done, but the bridge should stay put until someone does. He compared the old Gandy to Hillsborough relics like the Kress Building and Tampa Armature Works building.
“We don’t tear them down,” he said. “We just maintain them until they have a viable future.”
The Friendship Trail Bridge, he said, has an added value.
“It’s the one amenity that Hillsborough and Pinellas could agree on,” he said.
Now, both counties agree that it should be scrap.
This means Neil Cosentino is at a critical point in his dogfight. He says he has to react to the enemy’s next move before it happens.
Since no one at the county wants to take another look at the bridge, he’ll do it himself. As of press time, he’s putting out a call to action to boaters, paddleboarders, and kayakers. Over two weekends, at slack tide — when it’s less choppy — he wants them to paddle out with digital cameras and take hundreds of photos of the bridge’s underside.
“They may prove the government right, but I don’t think so,” he said. “If there are no cracks in 95 percent of the bridge, then we know it’s all BS.”
He said there will be more information on the Save The Friendship Trail Bridge Facebook page. You can also sign the petition to save the bridge at change.org.
The demolition is scheduled to start in just over six weeks.
Cosentino said if it does, he won’t see it as a loss.
“It’s not over,” he said. “Someone’s going to pay a price for that, politically.”
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2012.