If timing is everything, Tampa Mayor Dick Greco's chosen moment was impeccable. It was January 2000. The national economy was booming. The mayor, in the final three-year stretch of a second term, announced plans for a multimillion-dollar cultural arts district along the Hillsborough River in downtown Tampa, bankrolled by funds from the Community Investment Tax.
Circumstances were far less auspicious by the time final plans were drawn, readied for public comment on controversial funding proposals, and brought before Tampa City Council for approval. Wall Street was heading south, whispers of recession were in the air, and Tampa was in the midst of unrelenting drought. "The driest place in the country," Greco said. Ominous signs indeed.
Though the proposed cultural arts district signaled cultural Nirvana for arts enthusiasts, it meant to other citizens that promises of neighborhood repairs would go unmet. Again. In the end, the mayor compromised and reduced the amount of public monies he requested for the arts district and Lowry Park Zoo. The drama that unfolded over many months may have been politics as usual, but it was also an exercise in democracy. But first the details:
The proposed district encompasses 25 acres around three major institutions: a new $27-million Tampa Museum of Art (TMA) an addition to the Tampa Bay Performing Art Center (TBPAC) and a long-awaited history museum. Other planned amenities include a community art facility with space for the Arts Council and other art organizations, a theater that would be usable for local performing groups, and possibly University of Tampa's Scarfone/Hartley Galleries. Boundaries, all on city-owned land, are NationsBank and TBPAC at north and south, with the Hillsborough River and Ashley Drive at east and west.
A $12-million Lowry Park Zoo expansion was piggybacked onto the cultural package. With 700,000 in yearly attendance and potential for 1-million, the 98 percent self-supporting zoo is ostensibly a model for city-owned, privately funded alliances.
A $235,000 Duckwall Foundation planning grant attracted 26 firms, of which prestigious Chicago design/architecture firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) was selected. They are currently major players in Chicago's cultural redesign. Tampa architects Fleischman/Garcia approached SOM and became the firm's local partners.
The master plan was developed by SOM after four public workshops, all held downtown, and each drawing several hundred participants. It was a comfortable democratic process, with the architects extracting suggestions from a well-dressed powerhouse audience. Architect Phil Enquist remarked, "we've been the pencil" for the plan.
Opening up Ashley Drive (and the downtown business area) to the riverfront and creating a pedestrian-friendly tree-lined grand boulevard are major components of the plan. A streetcar route will skirt the downtown, and 1,500 parking spaces will be added.
Plans include softening the river's edge and carving out a huge environmentally sound lagoon. Designed to open Ashley to the river, it will, theoretically, also rectify flood plain issues. But the lagoon will also replace the abandoned Kiley Garden, designed by one of America's foremost landscape architects and situated beside NationsBank.
A past deal left the city owning the land and the developer owning the building, leaving taxpayers responsible for high maintenance tabs. Mayor Greco said he fears a lawsuit because of leakage into the underground garage, and because new building owners do not want the garden. Present owners, New York-based Colonnade Properties, have no interest in preserving art installed by original developers.
Both the mayor and Renee Williams, the city's director of arts and cultural affairs, confirmed plans to demolish it because city officials are unable or unwilling to fund repairs.
Other plans include a mile-long river walk; fountains, condominiums above the Poe Garage, and restaurants and retail built into a liner wall on its southern facade. A pedestrian bridge over the river will link Tampa Museum of Art and University of Tampa. Also in negotiation is a deal to give the University of South Florida College of Fine Arts a desperately needed downtown presence in the NationsBank (Bank of America) cube.
An outdoor amphitheater for concerts and performance is also on the drawing board.
A new Tampa Museum of Art will triple in size, and, according to a preliminary architect's rendering, stretch between Ashley Drive and the river. Built in 1979 and situated awkwardly in its present spot, far from the street and lacking curb appeal, it has struggled to function as a museum. Although it has been renovated piecemeal seven times, its deficiencies bar it from landing big-league exhibitions. Among those deficiencies are inadequate space, ventilation, loading dock, air conditioning, security and storage areas and a leaky roof. Museum Director Emily Kass says that when the museum is enlarged, the opportunities for sponsorships will increase, as will be donations and membership fees, and the museum will be able to attract more national dollars. At the Mississippi Museum of Art, Director Andy Maass, former director of TMA, just opened an Andrew Wyeth exhibit. He recently said that he raised $900,000 on the Wyeth name alone and brought the artist and his wife to the opening. Sales (the catalogue alone is $300) and traveling the show will recoup a good deal of expenditures. Meanwhile the museum continues to build on its solid reputation by exhibiting major artists. This will never happen at TMA, at least not in the current building.
Whatever its final form, the district will enhance cultural opportunities and, I hope, re-energize a perennially deserted downtown suffering from decades of terminal urbanism.
The Political Scenario
In the weeks before the critical April 26 City Council hearing, there was slim hope that the mayor's proposal would get the four votes needed for confirmation. Behind-the-scenes dealmaking propelled a make-or-break political gamble into compromise mode. City Council Chairman Charlie Miranda exerted tight control, his own cliff-hanging vote sealing the deal. But the council's stunning 6-to-1 vote in favor of the arts district took the audience and community by surprise.
The compromise was minimal. A token gesture, but enough to draft a team willing to take a huge political gamble. Greco reduced his original $30-million request for the art museum and $14-million for the zoo by switching $5-million to transportation and neighborhoods. This meant $27-million for the museum and $12-million for the zoo. It also meant promising council members Gwen Miller and Rose Ferlita improvements to their districts.
And the one holdout? Bob Buckhorn remained resistant, unwilling, he said, to saddle future mayors (read Buckhorn) with a yearly $4–million debt for the next 25 years. This amount represents debt payment from a $55-million bond to be purchased with Community Investment Tax (CIT) money. The CIT brings the city approximately $11-million a year.
Buckhorn sided with a sizable constituency voicing honest opposition to non-neighborhood spending. Surviving a tight City Council vote left the Hillsborough County Commission as the next hurdle. Their past verbal agreement to fund the history center with $17-million, to be matched by $11-million raised by museum supporters, was jeopardized when supporter Ben Wacksman lost his commissioner's seat. His replacement, Stacey Easterling, is skeptical of the history museum's current plans.
Designed to assist neighborhoods, the CIT gained more press as a corporate welfare plan for the new Bucs Stadium. The mayor claims it passed in 1996 because of "17,000 people who had never voted before, and of these, 14,000 never voted again." Exit polls found that voters believed that the money would be spent primarily for schools, public safety and a backlog of needs — roads, sewers, parks and the like. "We're not going to blow it," Greco said at the time. When the mayor announced plans to appropriate 40 percent of yearly CIT money to seed the arts district, outspoken critics pressed forward.
While Greco said CIT fine print permitted spending on facilities of his choosing, residents weren't thinking museum or zoo; they were looking closer to home.
Lines being drawn between the mayor's office, City Council, and the Hillsborough County Commission confounded the issue. The city because it owns riverfront property and the art museum. The county because it owns the existing public library and had previously pledged to build the history museum, now under siege from conservative-thinking commissioners.
Former City Councilman and University of Tampa professor Scott Paine says, "Any community that doesn't have a history museum means kids won't know where they come from and won't know where they're going."
There was powerful symbolism in the way public hearings were held. The first four meetings were designed to extract wish lists from an adoring crowd able to speak their minds from comfortable seats. At four later meetings, significant numbers of naysayers mixed with supporters, but they had to stand and wait. Community activist, Carole Mehlman, attended at Jan Platt Library where, she says, "there was a sign-in sheet for speaking. People lined up, some standing for an hour. This is what they call "citizen participation,' making the public as uncomfortable as possible?" Mehlman, an avid arts supporter, member of every museum, the aquarium and the zoo, is against the district.
Her letter to city officials raises critical questions. "Because of the importance and the symbolism of the project to a maturing city, I would support the use of 10 percent of the CIT. I think that most of the money for this Center can and should be raised privately. If the Olympics 2012 bid, which brings questionable, short-term economic benefit, can raise private money so easily, then surely this project that has permanent, definable economic benefit can do it."
The first CIT public meeting began with Betty Wiggins, representing East Tampa Business & Civic Association. She said her area was "largely neglected for half a century," and that the city is "inextricably linked to the fortunes of its … collective communities." Inescapable symbolism struck home when she informed Greco that 22nd Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is the designated geographic center, "the heart and soul of the county." She unveiled a laundry list of unmet needs in the neighborhood.
Greco answered in his soft, comfortably schmoozing tones, laying out for public perusal all that he thought he had done. Gerald White said he was not against an arts district but believes "the black community needs a contract with the city." At another meeting, Steve LaBour, president of the Tampa Hillsborough Association of Neighborhoods (THAN) voiced skepticism. He said, "A real plan and real deadlines would go a long way."
Among the many pungent comments and questions, Kevin Dwyer raised the unanswerable, "40 years ago the city of Tampa promised my neighborhood sewers. We still don't have them."
Dr. James Davison of New Tampa said, "You broke a trust." And, "I don't care if we're not the No. 1 city in America. We want to be proud of ourselves." By the second meeting, a circumspect Mayor Greco appeared in jacket and tie, newly sobered by public statements.
Balancing measured anger, some black residents spoke in favor of the arts district, for "nourishing the soul." John Parks, USF dance professor and 12-year Tampa resident, spoke poignantly of his New York roots. A product of arts "educating the mind" and bestowing "identity," he attended The Juilliard School, which led him to Broadway and movies. Countering residents pleading for repairs, he said, "(I'm) hearing about how it's all about the visual, the facade, the structure. I'm interested in things that are not tangible."
Seeking "minority representation," and "equitable distribution," Joe Robinson urged the city to include an African-American Museum in the new district.
One remarkable comment, by architect and urban planner Cheikh Sylla, summed up the dialogue and received much applause: "This doesn't have to be an either/or. I don't look to a mayor for filling potholes. I look to a mayor for vision."
But for a mayor who believes he has been fulfilling obligations (he's replaced police cars, funded roads, sidewalks, drainage ditches, and swimming pools) the dissent came as a shock. While city officials put a positive spin on these forums, it was impossible to ignore passionate and articulate voices.
Having a cultural arts district would place Tampa within a global renaissance from Spain to Massachusetts, where there has been an explosion of cultural institutions wed to arts districts typically situated along downtown riverfront sites.
This profusion of culture is a raging fad called "Guggenheim globalization" or "McGuggenheim," alluding to strategies developed by Thomas Krens, director of New York's Guggenheim Museum. Krens is masterminding spin-offs, such as Bilbao, Spain's magnificent museum designed by Frank Gehry, the Tiger Woods of the architecture world. Aside from extraordinary aesthetics, this one museum totally altered the economic landscape of a dying Spanish city and exports New York-style museum culture. It's good to see this grand diffusion of art, but culture can suffer when cultural institutions focus too much on economics.
The old mill town of North Adams, Mass., sports its own Guggenheim satellite. MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) is not window dressing; it's a surgical strike for reviving what seemed unrevivable. What's the draw? The hum of mills replaced by contemporary art, some of it colossal installations filling 19th century long-abandoned old brick buildings. And crowds keep coming (100,000 in the first year) all the while pumping cash into newly flourishing businesses. "Commercial rents in the complex have more than doubled," writes Roger Kimball in his irreverent The New Criterion review, "The Museum as Fun House." Who could have predicted the glories of mass-marketed art in the same league as Barbies or burgers?
In Santa Fe, another phenomenal transformation. The New York Times reports on a city emerging as a major arts center: "By rights Santa Fe, which has only 70,000 residents and sits in the middle of a desert, should be a sleepy backwater." Instead it's a cultural magnet attracting world-class culture. "At some point in their lives, everyone who is interested in art, either mildly or seriously, comes to Santa Fe, and that's becoming true not only for Americans but for foreigners as well," says George G. King, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum director. One survey cites Santa Fe as "one of the country's five biggest art markets."
In London, where the new Tate Modern's cutting-edge contemporary art is the talk of the town, hordes of insatiable art enthusiasts experience snippets of postmodern culture in an award-winning remodeled building.
And the list goes on and on. A recent Toronto Star Newspapers Limited article by Martin Knelman describes a scenario in Denver that is remarkably similar to Tampa's, "Within a 25-year period, the Colorado metropolis has gone from a cow town to a cultural centre. The Denver Art Museum is doubling its size with a new $110-million building by Daniel Libeskind, and the city's historical museum is being expanded. Both projects are being funded with public bond issues, meaning the city borrows money, earmarked for a specific project, at low interest rates. The money is repaid from revenues over many years."
Money, Money, Money
Inherent in culture and leisure packaging are enhanced cultural gratification and urban revitalization. Along with this, statistics supporting cultural arts districts as hot post-millennium tickets to sound economic health. Franci Rudolph, Executive Director of Tampa Bay Business Committee for the Arts (TBBCA), says that Tampa's business leaders used to view Tampa's industry as phosphates and ports. Now it's art and culture. She points to a recent study documenting $232.2-million in area arts impact during 1995, compared to $402.2-million now — $49-million in payroll alone. The Business Committee commissioned the study, which was done for free by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Renee Williams, Director of Arts and Cultural Affairs for the city, says that the economic impact (Hillsborough and Pinellas) "could double in five to 10 years."
Astonishingly, the arts, along with increased sales, related services, and jobs, are surpassing sports as a bankable commodity, a trend documented by local attendance figures. Bay area cultural events attracted 3.3-million more people than all sporting events put together.
With such forecasts of profits, global arts expansion, and more than 90 cities in the United States currently having or developing cultural arts districts, promoting such a plan for Tampa should have been an easy sell. That it was not is curious and complicated.
History
The notion of a Tampa arts district is not new, though some people believe a lame-duck mayor pulled the proposal out of his hat to enhance his own legacy.
Greco was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times as saying he couldn't imagine Tampa supporting such a project when he was mayor 30 years ago. Emily Kass told me of a plan in the early 1970s to build a cultural complex. "It got voted down," she said.
Former TMA director Maass, who arrived in 1984, remembers that the city "talked for years and years about developing the land." Sandy Freedman says, "If it wasn't named the cultural district in fact, it was thought to be that area."
Subsequently, two architects, each fittingly named David, entered the cultural arena, met Goliath, and lost.
Around 1987, USF architecture professor David Crane, then also a TMA board member, wrote and received a $40,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant "to investigate how to create a reuse plan for the arts as well as riverfront development. Matching funds came from 20 to 30 local companies and private citizens," with TMA the facilitating agency.
Chief architect and planner for the Boston Redevelopment program during the 1960s, Crane worked nationally and internationally with urban design and economic redevelopment projects. At the time of the NEA grant, he was director of the Florida Center for Community Design and Research (FCCDR), a unit of the USF Graduate School of Architecture and Community. He is currently their Markborough Chair of Architecture and Urban Design.
Crane explained that he and FCCDR explored ways to "expand the art museum facility, give it a better setting, and incorporate the history museum." Also under consideration were a TBPAC addition, new housing and retail, opening up vistas from Ashley Street to the river. Revitalizing the northern end of Franklin Street with arts and mixed-use, a major component of Crane's plan, is mentioned only peripherally in the current plan.
"The grant required an endorsement from the city of Tampa, then under the mayorality of Sandra Freedman," he said. "We were well into the beginnings of this work when Mayor Freedman raised certain objections and we had to finish the work in a big hurry in order to not have to return the money to government and private donations. This occurred after eight months of work. Instead of pursuing the arts district, Mayor Freedman demolished Curtis Hixon and sought federal dollars for what is now the unused Curtis Hixon Park."
Freedman said Crane's plan "wasn't embraced by everybody. Economic times weren't too good. It was a real downturn."
Andy Maass says, "Crane's was the first proposal. It didn't move toward the implementation stage but helped with the thought process."
By 1997, USF graduate architecture student, David Foster, a Harvard University graduate, entered the chronology. Crane, chair of Foster's thesis committee, had urged students to immerse themselves in community before selecting a thesis topic. Foster moved to historic Tampa Heights and wrote a thesis based on long-range redevelopment plans, including Tampa Heights' proximity to the river and nearby arts venues. He promoted affordable housing for artists with galleries at street level, a component that would add to the vibrant ambiance in which humans and cities jointly thrive.
Shortly thereafter, a committee of 60 to 70 people was formed, and the Cultural Arts District proposal was announced.
Though Crane and Foster masterminded major proposals, did an enormous amount of creative work and brought these ideas forward to the powers that be, neither was ever invited to participate in the current process. Many of the names given me by Renee Williams are associated with institutions or power groups, including hotels and the restaurant association. Williams said Crane's and Foster's proposals were given to the architecture firm responsible for creating the current plan.
The Missing Links
Because few artists attended the cultural district workshops. I invited area artists to a dialogue sponsored by Weekly Planet. Of the nearly 50 attending, only two had known anything about the workshops.
Arts Council member Taylor Iken identifies one breakdown in communication as "the difficulty in reaching the decision makers in the newspapers." But it's more pervasive than newspapers. Longtime area activist/painter Roberta Schofield, a member of the Artists' Advisory Committee last year, had only two hours' notice before the first workshop began. This committee, an arm of the Arts Council, is pursuing outreach by organizing town meetings designed to strengthen communication with area artists. They advise that the first step is to register with the Arts Council.
This lack of artist participation reflects their relatively weak position in this community. With an arts district about to hatch, I urge the mayor to formulate an overall philosophy acknowledging the place and value of local artists in a cultural district future. We need official recognition that live artists will add significantly to a cultural future.
The mayor's proposal has not gone far enough in ensuring affordable studio/gallery space in contiguous areas of the arts district, either east of Ashley, in the North Franklin Street area, or north, in Tampa Heights. There has been casual talk: "maybe," "probably," and "hopefully." Art Keeble thinks the district "footprint" will be "a catalyst for development east of Ashley." That "the district will expand itself." On the other hand, we know that hungry developers are only a heartbeat away.
During my interview, Mayor Greco, gave his commitment to meet with me and a group of artists to discuss long-term affordable space for local artists, and in the downtown area.
Emily Kass thinks an area set aside for artists is really important. "I hope that with blocks and blocks that are undeveloped, those could be taken over by artists for loft spaces and studios. There could be a very strong grass-roots effort to do this. This has certainly been in SOM'S thinking."
Developer Hinks Shimberg suggested "some kind of public private partnership. The arts district will come alive when people live in and near (it)."
Now it's up to the city. Yes. Indeed.
Contact WP art critic Adrienne M. Golub at randagolub@aol.com or leave a message for her at 813-248-8888.
This article appears in May 10-16, 2001.