The ramshackle houses are off-limits, marked by wire fencing and a healthy overgrowth of weeds. It's hard to picture what will go in their place - 42 stories of fabulous water views and high prices, and until some other developer comes along to top it, the tallest building in downtown St. Petersburg.
This building, planned by developer Grady Pridgen, is supposed to be another sign of the breathtaking rebirth of downtown St. Petersburg. Build enough of these monuments to six-figure living and no out-of-towner will dare call this town God's Waiting Room again.
Truth be told, the moniker fell away some time ago. The high rises have risen. The shops are open. The businesses do business. Downtown hums.
But still I have this urge to stomp my feet, blow a whistle, bang a pot.
The picture of downtown St. Petersburg, despite its success, is terribly askew, all out of proportion.
On the one hand, you have the condos, like that planned 42-story tower, Bayway Lofts.
On the other hand, you have the houses that have, for nearly 100 years, given St. Petersburg its character, its look and feel, in downtown and beyond - two- and three-story homes and hotels that were built in the teens, '20s and '30s. St. Petersburg existed at a very different scale then.
Some of these buildings are slums and flophouses.
Some are gems and worthy of restoration.
To be fair, at least one house on the Pridgen site will be moved and saved. But that's the exception. The pressure always favors the big deals, the big money, like the projects that now dress up St. Petersburg's waterfront. The problem is, the more of them St. Petersburg gets, the more of its character and history the city loses.
Last week, I met with Karl Nurse, one-time mayoral candidate and small-scale redeveloper. This is a man who likes flying against the wind.
Nurse had just finished the restoration of a small, two-story apartment house, the Nelson, on the edge of downtown. It was the utter opposite of those high rises. The rents are cheap, $500 to $600, and the apartments are small. Good for students, young couples just starting. Next to the Pridgen project, this one was the size of a postage stamp.
The Nelson is in a neighborhood surrounded by buildings just like it. Nurse hopes his project will spark others to come in and do as he did - save the old buildings before somebody decides they are too much trouble to save.
It wouldn't be that hard.
It's not as though St. Petersburg has no practice with historic preservation.
Think of individual buildings, like City Hall or the Coliseum. Two residential neighborhoods, the Historic Old Northeast and Historic Kenwood, are preservation districts, driven by the passion of the people who live there. The same has begun to happen in Midtown, where residents have clamored to save places like the Manhattan Casino. Each time, the voice for preservation came from the bottom up.
Who speaks for downtown? I called the mayor Monday to ask him. Rick Baker more or less said there was nothing to worry about, that the old and new can happily coexist. Downtown would soon have its own Historic District, like the Old Northeast and Kenwood. He said Karl Nurse has plenty of company in the renovation business. As far as downtown was concerned, land values were driving the process. If you wanted inexpensive housing for ordinary people, like what Karl Nurse built, you would have to go where the land was cheap, and that would be on the edges of downtown.
And that was that.
"Residential development is not something I would apologize for at all," said the mayor.
He seems very cheerful about all this.
If you're like me, and not so sure, I guess you're out of luck.
