Friday, December 9, 2011

The Pier What Happened?

My Post Sunday on the Pier resulted in some comments and some e-mails. These Comments from Linda say a lot. 

 "My perspective is actually that of a tourist, I do not live in St. Pete area, but my parents do and we visit 2-3 times a year. I think the city should really find out what TOURISTS are looking for, also in the pier, because, after all, tourists/visitors/snow-birders contribute largely to Florida's "income."

For those of you new to the whole Pier Process, here is a link  to the Pier Advisory Task Force. This is the outline and these are the people that brought us to this point in the process. The Minutes section of each meeting is a hyper link and you can read how the process unfolded. 

If you take a few minutes and look through this information you will see the amount of effort has gone into the Pier process up to this point and how much input the general public really had.  The question of a public referendum surfaced early and was downplayed from the very start.

So the question is what happened? All of those high end people, a bunch of money for consulting, visioning and planning, a whole raft of meetings how did we end up with the public so upset at the process?

A partial answer may be in the comments by the City's staff architect In a June 8, 2011 article in TBO.com J. Raul Quintana, the city's staff architect, acknowledged that, after all the money spent, the city is no closer to "a visual solution" to The Pier than two years ago. "In a way we're asking the same questions we asked back then," he said.

If you give a bunch of guys with rooms full of computers, egos the size of all outdoors,  that live thousands of miles away from here 50 million dollars to play with, and ask them to design something they can have their name on and not live next to,  you will get what we got. I am not sure what we expected, but we should have expected what we got. 

It is fascinating to listen to the St. Pete elite fawn over these architectural nightmares.  It's kind of like going to a wine tasting and listening  to some gal who showed up in a BMW go on and on about a glass of wine that tastes like the cat took a whizz in it. 

Quintana's comments still stand.

I think the real problem is that there is a group of movers and shakers in St. Pete that have never been happy with who and what St. Pete really is. They think we need a major league team or a monstrosity the water to define us. I think our quality of life defines us.

Look at the names on the Task Force and if you follow things closely a lot of them will look familiar. 

They know what's best for St. Pete and they are not about to be discouraged by letting you vote on their ideas

 All they need you to do is pay the tab.


Saturday, December 3, 2011

The Pier - Decision Time


There are plenty of comments out there about the proposed new Pier designs. Mine probably wouldn't add much. What we do need to think about now is the process and the impact.

The designs are interesting. It is notable to me that there is not a firm Florida, one that might actually understand our community and environment, that could design the new Pier. I guess they're just not "artsy" enough.

This is a big decision for St. Petersburg. If you haven't noticed, things are not going all that well. The news paper is abandoning the City as a name sake, like it or not it is probably just a matter of time before major league baseball takes their game elsewhere and we were just awarded the dubious distinction of being one of the saddest Cities in the nation.

There are a lot of questions to be asked and answered before the City commits to a project of this scale and impact. There is a fine line between artful attraction and something that becomes a eyesore.

The last thing we need is new Pier that becomes a laughing point, object of bad jokes, or that ultimately ends up on Spa Beach as a tangled mess when the hurricane finally gets here.

We may have been a bit too preoccupied with touting St. Pete as an "ART DESTINATION". I enjoy molded glass and the occasional clock dripping off the edge of a table, but something that is inordinately expensive to build, exorbitantly costly to insure and maintain, that most visitors stand on the shore and laugh at is not where we need to go.

Fifty million is the opening price. That is nowhere near what the final price tag will be if it is anything like the Dome and the International Museum projects.

Add to all of that the effort to prevent the people from actually having an opportunity to vote on what is done at the Pier and you have the makings of a real disaster.

From my perspective the Arts Council, the Chamber of Commerce and a few well connected downtown players have way to much say in this whole process. They don't want you to be able to vote because they know how it will go.

What does West St. Pete get out of this other than a bigger tax bill?

After a long time in the City Administration, I finally figured out the people got it right a lot more often than we did.

The public needs to push hard for a Pier Referendum.