In downtown St. Petersburg, there's a stretch of land between Beach Drive and the beginning of the approach to the Pier, an area city officials hope will transform into a place that makes an easy transition between busy downtown to what, come 2018, should be a new Pier.
On Thursday, St. Pete City Council unanimously approved a $318,030 contract with W Architecture and Landscape Architecture for the design of the area east of the Pier approach. The New York-based firm helped develop the Blue Pier design, a Pier head design concept that lost out to ASD/Rogers Architects' design, formerly known as Pier Park. This project's total cost is expected to be $20 million; the Pier head/Pier approach work is expected to cost $46 million.
W's local partner in the project is the firm Wannemacher-Jensen Architects, which was part of the team that helped develop the popular but failed Destination St. Pete Pier concept in 2015 as well as the Lens, which St. Pete voters took down in 2013.
Wannemacher-Jensen will conduct public outreach on certain project details, though much of it will be based on the Downtown Waterfront Master Plan. It will also provide contextual input to W on various project details, i.e., whether certain elements would, aesthetically pleasing or not, fit in with the surrounding area and the St. Pete community as a whole.
“This is a great opportunity for the City of St. Petersburg to have multiple international groups and designers working together," said Jason Jensen, a principal for Wannemacher-Jensen, after the hearing. "Our team, Wannemacher-Jensen, with W Architecture being involved with this, it adds another international component to St. Petersburg, which is fantastic recognition to have.”
The aim of the project is to provide a seamless transition between downtown and the Pier, though it's unclear how that will look at this point.
“I wish I could give you details, but, really, now is the time for our team to come together and look at the master plan, and we're just really getting kicked off at this point,” Jensen said. “It is one seamless waterfront and we have multiple teams working together and you also have a master plan that's been worked on for a couple of years so all of that's going to come together and be a seamless waterfront for the City of St. Petersburg.”
The groups aim to finish the job — uplands, approach, Pier head — in 2018. While their timelines might not be in sync, the plan is to have it all done by then.
“At the end of the day, the ribbon will be cut on a seamless project,” he said.
While it'll be a while before there's a groundbreaking, Thursday's council decision marked the project's official kickoff.
“Today was the formal process of approving the contract for W Architecture and Wannemacker-Jensen to get started on the Pier approach project,” said Missy McFarlane, a spokeswoman ASD/Rogers, for the team that's building the Pier. “Today was the first checkmark, so after today they can get started on the project. And they're estimating, from February, about four months to do the process of reaching out to the community, getting some information, putting together the plan and starting the design.”
This article appears in Jan 21-27, 2016.