Today a St. Pete City Council committee got an update from the team behind Pier Park, which is replacing the once-iconic inverted pyramid that's now being dismantled.
It was a surprisingly short meeting in which the team that's designing and building Pier Park gave an overview of the project and passed around a neat little 3D-printed model of the structure that will go up at the pier head, around where what's left of the inverted pyramid stands.
Some highlights:
The top deck of the building at the Pier head will have the same elevation as the viewing deck of the old building.
It'll have 5,000 square feet of restaurant space.
Facing the bay at ground level, there will be a grated floor that moves up and down with the tides, providing about six inches of water to wade in. It can be elevated out of the water for special events.
There will be tons and tons of bathrooms.
The walkway out to the Pier will be shaded, and full of activities.
Multiple events, as big as Ribfest or slightly bigger, would be doable at the venue, and could even be done at the same time.
"We're really cognizant of being able to use this in a number of ways and in a number of scales," said Vince Lee of New York City-based Rogers Partners, one of the firms involved in the project.
The council seemed all right with how the project has been going so far. There were a few questions on environmental permitting and other things, but in general they seemed satisfied.
The team will report back to City Council for an update in January.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2015.