After two “final” meetings reaching about 21 hours of debate, presentations and public comment, the Pier Selection Committee finally issued its ranking of three final St. Pete Pier design teams.
The honor Thursday night just before the calendar rolled over to the next day went to Pier Park.
“It was all because of our supporters,” said Ken Cowart, an architect working on the winning design. “It was amazing leading up to it. Just every other day someone reaching out and asking how they could help.”
Cowart said the team was a little surprised.
“Mathematically, looking at it going in, I felt as though we had a good chance,” Cowart said. “Of all the hoopla before [the meeting] I didn’t’ see very many people speaking ill of our design and I think that’s a testament of our design.”
Indeed, the numbers did look good for Pier Park. The team had two of the six members of the Pier Selection Committee backing them – Gary Mitchum and Mike Meidel. Another two tapped Pier Park as the number two team – Mike Connors and Melanie Lenz.
From that vantage the team looked on par with the committee’s original presumptive top pick – Alma. That design was favored by Connors and Lenz. But Alma suffered a debilitating setback – the public, or at least those in the public who cared to share their opinion, didn’t like it.
In the city’s public survey, Alma ranked just fifth out of seven designs. Pier Park sat comfortably at number two and the public’s top pick in that survey, Destination St. Pete Pier, was not favored by anyone on the committee except for historical preservationist Kai Warren.
The backlash surrounding speculation that the city may choose a poorly ranked team over one that overwhelmingly earned public support including threats of referendum and Lens defeat déjà vu.
Two independent surveys showed majority support for a no-vote from City Council if Alma was ranked first.
It became quickly evident that choosing Alma was not a wise move. With that in mind, it wasn’t a difficult leap to imagine Connors and Lenz supporting Pier Park as the top-ranked team, which is exactly what happened.
But it wasn’t just a numbers game. Pier Park seemed to fade into the darkness in the month between final ranking meetings. All of the media attention swirled around Alma and Destination St. Pete Pier.
In the meantime, Pier Park rolled along quietly gathering support. They first gained backing from team Blue Pier and symbolic support from the Suncoast Sierra Club. It seemed environmentalists were on their side.
Then some young business professionals jumped on board declaring the activated space offered by Pier Park was the way of St. Pete’s increasingly young population.
“There were so many young fresh faces,” Cowart said. “People who really love their city and want to make it their own.”
The concept is the brain child of Tampa’s ASD architectural firm and its partners – Rogers Partners Architects and Ken Smith Landscape Architects.
The plan reuses the current Pier’s caissons and elevator shaft to save on costs, but the iconic inverted pyramid that has been the source of much debate will be razed to make room for a modern, open-air structure with four levels.
It will have a large casual dining bar and grill restaurant with panoramic views of the waterfront and city as well as an expansive “tilted lawn” that can be used as a concert venue.
There are plenty of bathrooms and, contrary to some criticism, multiple spots to nab a slice of shade.
The promenade approaching the Pier head includes a “wet classroom” and coastal thicket.
It has a splash pad on the uplands for the little tykes and a reinvented Spa Beach. There will be a welcome center and trolleys. It’s the only designs that lets visitors interact with the water with a “toes in the water” future.
The floating docks have been a source of some debate though with critics worrying they won’t hold up to a hurricane.
“We presented a schematic design and we just have to go through and design everything and engineer it,” Cowart said.
In layman’s terms, the team hasn’t dotted its I’s or crossed its T’s. That comes now that they’re moving on to next steps.
The immediate next step facing Pier Park is City Council. That board will vote the final ranking up or down at its meeting May 7. Assuming that vote goes in Pier Park’s favor, and there’s no real reason to indicate it won’t, Mayor Rick Kriseman will then have authorization to begin negotiations with the team.
Cowart said from there it’s all about continuing to work with City Council on fine-tuning plans.
“We’ll work with the city on whatever they think is right to ensure that all the needs of the public are met,” Cowart said about continuing public engagement.
Of course, the elephant in the room and what likely has some officials holding their breath, is whether or not there will be another public revolt.
The coup that resulted in the downfall of Wannemacher Jennsen’s Lens design in 2013 was begun by just a small group of naysayers. Many of those same people were on team Destination St. Pete Pier. And they grew. The anti-Lens group was joined by many of the Lens supporters they crushed just a couple years ago.
Fearing a second referendum push simply can’t be ignored. Such a move may have been discouraged by choosing Pier Park as a sort of compromise between groups – the public gets their plan B design while the city gets to finally bulldoze the inverted pyramid so many, including the Mayor have said they don’t want to keep.
But Cowart said the team worked hard on their own assurances to avoid Lens 2.0.
“The amount of design and permitting that they went through with the Lens was evident in the selection committee’s criteria,” Cowart said.
It was specific and included a list of must-have elements. Teams that didn’t meet muster were launched right out of the process.
“The question that were asked of us were direct results from the Lens design process,” he added.
The idea is that leaves little for the public to complain about.
But there will be complaints and there already have been. Browse comments on Pier-related stories and a reader will find any number of concerns. Shade. Permitting. Floating docks. Unsustainability. Too much maintenance. High operating costs.
“We’ll take it one step at a time,” Cowart said. “It’s still really about talking to our supporters telling them more and more about our design.”
