"This is a city and also a national treasure," says St. Petersburg City Councilman Wengay Newton of the venerable St. Petersburg Pier.
On this Friday afternoon in early January, sitting in the Columbia Restaurant on the Pier's fourth floor with a panoramic view of Tampa Bay, it's hard to argue with him.
But this particular mind-blowing view may be a thing of the past by 2013. St. Petersburg City Council voted 7-1 last August to tear down the 37-year-old structure and start all over with a new Pier. What constitutes "starting over" will be addressed by a Miami-based consultant to the City Council, and by the public, over the next few weeks.
The Council's vote followed the report of a task force that had met for the previous 16 months. Its conclusion: The existing pier head and approach (the base that surrounds the iconic inverted pyramid, and the roadway leading up to it) will need to be replaced in the near future. But the report also found that a "substantial analysis" should be undertaken before the city decides whether to retain the pyramid, which was constructed in 1973.
Mayor Bill Foster supports razing the structure and using the $50 million earmarked for restoration to build a new Pier instead, saying that renovation would cost much more.
But not everybody is embracing that vision.