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Visitors laud city's historic preservation
By LEONORA LaPETER ST. PETERSBURG -- The trolley bumps along the narrow brick roads of the Round Lake neighborhood, squeezing between artfully landscaped gardens lined with white picket fences and trash bins filled to the rim with debris from renovation. There are freshly painted bungalows in hues of lavender, powder blue, peach, olive and Christmas red and green. Even some of the apartment complexes sport fresh coats of paint, Cuban tile details, hibiscus in the front. There are still a few run-down specimens too, and Bill Wooldridge, who has renovated numerous homes in this neighborhood, points out it was rife with crack houses and prostitutes just seven years ago. Now twentysomethings and other up-and-comers are moving in and making changes. In the back of the trolley, George T. Neary, director of cultural tourism for Miami, looks out in amazement. South Beach's renaissance in his community, he says, took 25 years. "That's pretty fast," he says of the St. Petersburg neighborhood, northwest of the intersection of Fifth Avenue N and Fourth Street N. "People always talk about St. Petersburg as a sleepy town for seniors. Now the word I hear is exciting, new, things are changing." The Renaissance Vinoy Resort hosted about 400 of the state's most avid historic preservationists this week for the statewide conference of the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. Many of them meandered some of the city's back roads on trolleys -- from Driftwood and Kenwood to Roser Park and the Old Northeast -- looking at St. Petersburg's latest building boom: renovations of the city's historic homes. The visitors were impressed and keen to learn more about how they could speed up renovations back home. Florida communities receive more state money -- $20-million this year -- for historic preservation than any other in the nation. "I think St. Petersburg is a microcosm of the state," said Bruce Stephenson, a professor of environmental studies at Rollins College and the author of a book on St. Petersburg's development. "It's on a peninsula, it's developed out and it's the first place to build a (large) desalination plant. What St. Petersburg is doing now, other cities will do in the next 10 to 50 years." But St. Petersburg on Friday became one of the first four communities in the state with a property on the Florida Trust's first-ever endangered properties list. The Episcopal Cathedral of St. Peter's plans to destroy the landmark First Baptist Church and build a parking lot did not go over well with this preservation crowd. The St. Petersburg City Council has approved the demolition. "That's not a positive thing," said Heather Mitchell, executive director of the Florida Trust. "We think St. Petersburg has some great successes. We're hoping we can help them with these other issues they're having difficulty with." Local architect Tim Clemmons and Stephenson are talking about St. Petersburg's growth in a crowded conference room at the Vinoy. Stephenson, once a Pinellas County planner in the late '70s, is pointing to the sidewalks in a slide of the Vinoy and the waterfront from the 1920s. They are wide, designed for a woman pushing a baby carriage, he says. "You live in a civilized place if you can push a baby carriage to the park," he says. Then he points to a slide that was in a Smithsonian Institution exhibit on growth management. It shows a busy intersection in St. Petersburg, full of strip malls and car lots and no sidewalks. "You can't push a baby carriage there," he said. Clearly, St. Petersburg has its beautiful neighborhoods, but what about some of the main traffic roads we travel to get to those neighborhoods? "Absolutely the worst part of St. Petersburg is our main traffic corridors," says Clemmons. "We're not unique in that, but we've made it an art form." "The reason they are so ugly is that they were designed to be viewed at 45 miles an hour," Stephenson adds. He says the rest of the city should look at the neighborhoods around downtown. The Old Northeast -- with more than 3,000 historic structures -- is being considered as a national historic district and would become the second largest historic district in Florida. "If I could invest, that's where I'd invest," Stephenson says. "That's where they've got everything. The rest of the city needs to use that as a model. The single biggest problem here is how to put people closer together in a livable area. Florida is running out of space and you guys have the answers." But even some of the gentrifying neighborhoods are becoming costly. "That's expensive," said architect Carlos D. Ugarte of Palmetto after learning that a two-bedroom, one-bath yellow bungalow in Round Lake was going for $184,000. "For a neighborhood in transition, I'm surprised the values are going up so quickly." The trolley passes by St. Petersburg High School on Fifth Avenue N. Mark Felix, the guide for the Kenwood neighborhood, shows them several blocks of barren lots next to the school, where dozens of homes were removed for school parking. "You can see what happens to a historic neighborhood when the demands of the school system expand," he said. "It was a hard fight and the school system won. Our neighborhood is not the only neighborhood in St. Petersburg to experience this problem." But even as the neighborhood groups have fought government, they have also benefited from it. The Kenwood neighborhood, which has the largest concentration of bungalows of any neighborhood in the state, has put up 1,100 decorative signs with its name on street corners. Felix didn't know how much they all cost, but he said the neighborhood, which has applied for historic designation, just got a $3,000 grant to pay for six of them. Annette Howard, a city employee and president of the 22nd Street S Redevelopment Corp., said support from city government and Mayor Rick Baker has helped the black community begin steps to preserve its historic structures. The business district recently received a Florida Main Street designation, which provides state expertise and some money.
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