The Tampa mural appeared outside of the downtown Tampa police department over the weekend, and while the city of St. Pete has not received any formal applications or proposals, residents have expressed interest in emails to the city, St. Pete spokesperson Benjamin Kirby told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
“I understand that we’ve gotten maybe some email inquiries about, ‘Could this be done?’ or those kind of general inquiries around it but nobody has approached us formally,” Kirby said.
The organizers of the Tampa mural, which was completed before the City of Tampa approved the permit, have not been met with any penalties for the mural, blocking traffic or defacing street markings. While Kirby did say completing a street mural prior to an application being approved is clearly a violation, he hasn’t said exactly what the penalties would be.
The City of St. Pete is currently home to three street murals, including the recent Black Lives Matter and Pride murals, all three of which have been completed as city initiatives, Wayne Atherholt, St. Pete’s Director of Cultural Affairs told CL. Although the city’s only street murals have been proposed internally, external clients are required to follow the same proposal process.
Depending on the scale of the mural and what may be involved, the proposal, including a preliminary request for a street closure, would go through a number of city departments. This includes the St. Petersburg Police Department, the Department of Transportation and Engineering, the Department of Traffic, the permitting department, the department of cultural affairs and the mayor’s office.
“We had to produce drawings that showed what the mural is going to look like, how it's going to be positioned, where it's going to be, where the roads are going to be closed off, what time they were going to start, it was going to be primed, when it was going to be prepped—all of that,” Atherholt said. “You just don't get a road closure permit and start painting.”
He said there’s no way to estimate a time frame for any particular proposal. This can also depend on whether the application was completed properly and whether organizers have insurance.
“There’s a lot of factors, especially with the coronavirus. God only knows how long that would take.”
The City of Tampa has not said when the organizers of the Tampa mural submitted their unapproved application. The city is in the process of sending a copy of the "Bock the Blub" mutal to CL.
Once a proposal application is approved, Atherholt said, the City of St. Pete requires a certain type of paint mixture to be used on the street, as well as an agreement to future touch ups or damage.
“Somebody’s gotta be responsible for maintaining it,” he said. “And they would sign off on their agreement to maintain it for X number of years. More than likely, it would be a nonprofit; I can’t imagine an individual just making an application to paint on a public street.”
The city also requires liability insurance for any and all nonprofits it works with.
“The fact that there is insurance involved, when this is done, it’s pretty involved and detailed—we think it through. Somebody just doesn’t come to the permitting department and get the road closed and start painting. That would never happen—legally, anyway.”
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This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2020.