The city helps put a new dock on the Hillsborough River. Next: a boathouse and water sports center to draw rowing crews near and far.
By RICK GERSHMAN
Published March 13, 2004
[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]
Boy Scout Stephan Gruendel, 13, of Troop 4 watches birds fly Friday above the Hillsborough River from a canoe near the new dock at Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park. The city plans to help develop a Tampa Water Sports Center in the park.
Rowers enjoy their sport Friday on the Hillsborough River at Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park. A new dock there offers crews easy access to the river. One official says plans for a water sports complex would benefit the local economy.
TAMPA - Downtown: You might not have known, but a river runs through it.
The city has often overlooked the Hillsborough River as it plans, and sometimes has even hid it away.
"We have been for so long negligent in doing anything in this area of the river," Wayne Papy, interim parks and recreation director, said Friday. "But now we're doing something about it."
He spoke at an assembly announcing the start of renovations at Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park. The city joins the Stewards Foundation, a nonprofit rowing group, to bring a two-story boathouse and sports center to the park.
Just north of Tampa Preparatory Academy and less than a mile from public housing projects, Riverfront Park has a recreation center but has never had a dock.
It received one this week, and Friday rowers from Yale and Georgetown universities and the Tampa Bay Dragon Boat team launched from it. They rowed while the theme from Hawaii Five-0 played.
The dock is just the beginning. The Stewards Foundation also will erect a temporary boathouse over the next few weeks on top of the old shuffleboard courts. That will complete the project's first phase.
By this fall they hope to begin construction on a new city recreation center, the project's second phase. The existing recreation center will be renovated into the Tampa Water Sports Center, a two-story facility estimated to cost between $1.7-million and $2.2-million.
The 25,000-square-foot rowing center, which will replace the University of Tampa boathouse, will include a permanent boathouse, accommodations for up to 100 and rowing shells, canoes, kayaks and additional equipment.
In 1984, then-Mayor Bob Martinez sold a small parking garage and riverside park called the Rose Garden, at the Kennedy Boulevard bridge, to NCNB, which built a 33-story office building. It was a decision that came to symbolize the city's attitude toward the river in the minds of some critics.
When the City Council passed an ordinance in 1987 limiting ostentatious riverfront construction, members spoke of eventually creating a riverside water park. That never happened.
Today, the new center will be used by students from the University of Tampa and schools with rowing crews, such as Tampa Prep, Plant High, Hillsborough High and Berkeley Prep. Teams from northern universities, and some local children, will use it, too.
"We're teaming up with the Recreation Department to teach the inner-city kids how to row," said project supervisor Thomas Feaster. "And we expect to teach a lot of women. This is one of the fastest growing sports for women."
The center will include an observation deck, for which the Stewards sold naming rights to raise funds. Bright House Networks is paying "tens of thousands of dollars" to put its name on the deck, project vice president Denny Antram said Friday. The Stewards also are selling naming rights for the canoes and kayaks that will be used.
The project "will have an economic impact of millions of dollars on this community," said Paul Catoe of the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Mayor Pam Iorio made a brief appearance to support the project.
"We need to have rowers on this river all the time," she said. "We need to have activity on this river all the time. I see this river as something that needs to connect to people."
- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
