Dear Mr. Connors....

Mr. William Ballard who was President of Concerned Citizens of St. Petersburg and instrumental in the St. Pete Pier LENS referendum has sent a detailed letter to Mr. Mike Connors. If your following the Pier selection this letter is a must read.

Disclaimer: I am not speaking for Concerned Citizens. The content of my March 23rd letter to Connors and in the “Hijack” email are personal observations and opinions.

William C. Ballard

1255 Brightwaters Blvd.

St. Petersburg, FL 33704

727-827-5021

March 23, 2015

Michael J. Connors, P.E.

Chair, Pier Design Team Selection Committee

Municipal Service Building

St. Petersburg, FL 33701

Dear Mr. Connors:

This letter is primarily intended as a wakeup call to our Mayor and City Council. Your committee is stuck in the middle. The fig leaf of “select the most qualified design team” is inadequate cover for the real task – making the choice between two highly disparate conceptual plans which have attracted highly different levels of public acceptance. That choice should be made by our city’s elected leaders. Your committee could then confine itself to its proper task, the selection of the most qualified design team to implement a specific project concept which the governing body has chosen. The process to date has not been a loss. It has produced two worthy conceptual choices, either of which could reward us greatly if implemented on a scale sufficient to make them successful. They are, alphabetically, the Alma and Destination St. Pete.

This pause in your committee’s deliberations gives our city leaders the opportunity to confront reality. A $50 million project budget, originally intended for reconstruction of the Municipal Pier in 2010, now diminished to $46 million, will not permit the construction of a project with a primary draw as recommended by the 2010 Pier Advisory Task Force. That task force, armed with economic studies, concluded that every successful recreational pier needs a primary draw, and that for St. Petersburg that element should be provided by a restaurant based program; specifically, 26,000 square feet of space to accommodate multiple restaurants. None of the 2015 design concepts could even half way meet this requirement in the context of 2015 construction costs. The recent economic study you mentioned, if I heard you accurately, concluded that none of the seven design concepts will provide the economic impetus for our city that the pier project was expected to provide.

The balance of this letter assumes nobody grabs the helm and your committee has to stay on its present course.

Do to the length of Mr. Ballard’s letter it will not fit in a standard PATCH Post. To read the letter in its entirety click this link St. Pete Pier a Wakeup Call.

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