A grant's short shelf life rachets up pressure to finish Causeway Park. No sweat, the city manager says confidently.
By AMY WIMMER
Published July 23, 2003
MADEIRA BEACH - The clock is ticking for the city to finish Causeway Park, a project Madeira Beach has been working on for five years.
A number of factors - stalled property negotiations, an on-again, off-again relationship with an engineering firm, city commissioners' wavering desires for the park - have stacked up to cause delays. Now, with Madeira Beach still awaiting plans from the engineers, the city has six months to finish the park or risk losing a grant that helped fund it.
The city already received one extension for that grant. And three years ago, when the park plan was in danger because of difficult negotiations with the former property owner, the city received two six-month extensions on a $1.9-million state grant that allowed the city to buy the property, on the northwest end of the Tom Stuart Causeway.
City Manager Jim Madden is confident the work will get done on time. Most of the challenging aspects - construction of a new seawall and fishing pier - are complete, he points out.
If the engineer meets a September deadline to turn in completed plans, and the city quickly hires a contractor that month to finish the park, it should be done by year's end.
"The easy stuff's left over," Madden said. "This is going to be a walk in the park, so to speak."
Greg Chelius, state director for the Trust for Public Land, said Madeira Beach does not appear to have taken an unusually long time to complete the work. "Many times the development of the park just takes longer than planned," Chelius said. "They've got so many things to do."
Madeira Beach has looked at turning the 1.9 acres at its entrance into a park since 1991, according to city records. The city approached Barry Loft, the land's former owner, but negotiations didn't go far.
Then in 1998, the city applied for a state Preservation 2000 grant to buy the land. The city initially was turned down but received the money in the next grant cycle.
Negotiations, however, were laborious, with Loft needing to retain some of the land for a neighboring property. The city did not close on the deal until March 2001, and twice Madeira Beach had to ask the state to give it more time to negotiate.
The city received help from other government agencies that saw promise in the park and stepped forward to help.
Even before the city had closed on the property, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency agreed to help develop it with $400,000 of settlement money from a 1993 oil spill in Tampa Bay. Causeway Park received more money from that settlement than any of the 14 projects NOAA selected to fund on the Pinellas beaches.
Madeira Beach also received a $150,000 grant from the Florida Recreation Development Assistance Program. To win that money, Madeira Beach agreed to spend $150,000 of its own.
But while the city was winning grants, its relationship with the engineering firm hired to design the park, Jones Edmunds & Associates, was faltering. The firm presented several designs to city commissioners, but then an urban planning firm hired by Madeira Beach suggested grander plans for the gateway park.
The engineers pursued those plans for several months. But Madden said the Department of Transportation then nipped the ideas, saying they interfered with traffic flow at the city's entrance.
Frustrated city commissioners decided to seek a new engineering firm. They learned the best firm for the job would charge $63,000 for work the city had paid Jones Edmunds $33,000 to begin. The city renegotiated with Jones Edmunds and this month agreed to pay the firm $25,000 for a set of complete plans. Those plans are due in September.
