More Wacky Ideas
It will take a helluva lot of cash to make the Albert Whitted Municipal Airport land ready for development — assuming the feds will even let the city of St. Petersburg out of its 20-year commitment with the FAA.
But that didn't stop the St. Petersburg Times from running a spread on the front of the July 1 City & State section presenting development alternatives to the mixed-use urban neighborhood proposed by Ron Barton, St. Petersburg's director of economic development and property management. The article's author, Bryan Gilmer, admitted the proposals, mostly from readers, were ridiculous, expensive or wacky.
The ideas: a waterfront baseball stadium, a space needle, a Coney Island-style theme park and a retail shopping Mecca.
Since the Times saw fit to propose ideas for what to do with public land, we at Weekly Planet figured we could do the same for 490 First Ave. S., the address of Times Publishing Co.:
* Poynter World — A vertical amusement park housed in a building designed to look like former Times publisher Nelson Poynter, bow tie and all. Rides will include Kill the Labor Union, I Miss Indiana, Webb's City Is Burning Down and Avoid the Taxman.
* Boom! — Walter Industries has put its well-known former headquarters next to I-275 on the real estate list for Tinseltown dynamite men. But why should Tampa have all the fun and receive all the glory when some no-brains, all-brawn action hero, damsel in hand, comes tumbling out of the exploding Walter Industries building during the climax of next summer's big blockbuster? St. Petersburg can have all this, too. We've taken the liberty of putting the Times Publishing Co. building up on the Hollywood explosion, er, auction block. Somebody call Jerry Bruckheimer.
* The Nelson Needle — Toronto has one. So does Seattle. And Auckland, New Zealand, too. But no city has two. If the Times can build a towering needle on the Albert Whitted land, surely we can build a second one at 490 First Ave. S. We could probably entice Clear Channel to foot the bill if we offer to house the radio antenna that beams out the company's famous five-song format. Imagine it: "Welcome to St. Petersburg, City of the Twin Nelson Needles."
* The Daily Planet — Once all the Times journalists have evacuated their ivory towers in fear of grunting Poynter World construction workers attempting to fasten their bow ties, we at the Planet will make the trek from our Ybor City digs to downtown St. Petersburg and debut The Daily Planet. I call dibs on Tash's office!
—Trevor Aaronson
The Mad Plan
Forget Tampa and St. Petersburg. A Pinellas County beach town is set to become one of the most forward-thinking communities in the Bay area.
Madeira Beach has asked urban planner Andres Duany, considered the father of the planning theory known as New Urbanism, to help the beach municipality move from a car-dominated city without a center to a pedestrian-friendly town where residences and businesses coexist.
Duany, author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, is an adjunct professor of architecture at the University of Miami and founding partner of two design firms, Arquitectonica and Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. Madeira Beach commissioned DPZ — which Duany runs with his wife, UM School of Architecture Dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk — to develop a 30-year vision for the city to adopt into its master plan.
The company's preliminary proposal in mid-June was textbook New Urbanism. The ideas: Create three noticeable city centers, slow traffic down, add crosswalks and street parking, increase building heights and units per acre, encourage street-side cafes, open restaurants and shops on both the east and west sides of Gulf Boulevard, and eliminate the commercial marine district.
"New Urbanism is the attitude you take about buildings on the street, creating buildings people will want to walk to," said Jorge M. Planas, DPZ project manager in charge of Madeira Beach. "They are not automobile-oriented areas." Academics often refer to New Urbanism as a return to small-town America.
DPZ's plan presented a dream city for every urban planner fed up with suburban sprawl. But Madeira Beach, whose previous planning was based on the post-World War II ideals of suburbia, wasn't impressed.
Residents complained that increasing units per acre from the current 15 to the proposed 75 is too drastic a change, that taller buildings would block Gulf views and that eliminating the commercial marine district would destroy Madeira Beach jobs and traditions.
"It was certainly different from what we've known in the past," City Manager Jim Madden said of the DPZ proposal. "(New Urbanist) purism is not going to happen here. … There must be some equilibrium."
St. Petersburg architect and developer Tim Clemmons, whose downtown projects could be described as New Urbanist, believes that while Madeira Beach may not be the Bay area city best equipped to dive headfirst into New Urbanism, Duany's ideas could have a positive impact on the beach community.
"It's too automobile oriented and there needs to be some rebalancing of that," Clemmons said of Madeira Beach. "We've let the car become too dominant."
Duany's plan would move power from tire to foot. But in a city whose main artery welcomes few pedestrians and accommodates heavy traffic flirting with 45 miles per hour, the transition won't be easy. What's more, unlike Tampa and St. Petersburg, arguably more suited to an official transition to New Urbanism, many of Madeira Beach's residents do not work within the city limits. "To get to and from, the vehicle of choice is the automobile," said Madden, who agreed with many Madeira Beach residents that decreasing the city's car dependence is impractical.
Miami-based DPZ will return to Madeira Beach in August to offer its final proposal, which will decrease the number of units per acre and address the city's other concerns with the plan.
While Madeira Beach isn't likely to become a model for New Urbanism, the move is a step in changing western Pinellas County, a classic example of willy-nilly planning and suburban sprawl.
"(W)e are delivering the best private realm only because we must compensate for the public realm, which is the most brutal in the world," Duany commented to Professional Builder about luxurious subdivision homes surrounded by congested roads that create the foundation for American suburbia.
Clemmons agrees that pedestrian-friendly environments are essential to a city's future success, but he's skeptical of whether Madeira Beach can change its suburban stripes.
"The places that people say they enjoy the most and visit the most are those that have a balance between the pedestrian and the car," said Clemmons. "If you see that as the underlying premise, then Madeira Beach may never be Copenhagen."
But it's a start, anyway.
—Trevor Aaronson
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2002.