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Drainage project to enhance Roser Park

Booker Creek will be reopened between Fourth and Sixth streets S.

By JON WILSON
Published April 29, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - A long-awaited drainage project has begun in Roser Park designed to bring an end to street flooding in the area.

But when completed later this year, it will do much more. The project will enhance the neighborhood's historic and cultural appeal, elements that have helped the creek-and-valley community emerge as one of the city's attractive, rejuvenated areas.

The storm drainage improvements will result in the reopening of Booker Creek between Fourth and Sixth streets S, where it previously has been invisible underground.

"Opening up the creek will be wonderful, " said Michael Manlowe, neighborhood president. "Oh, my gosh! It gives me goose bumps just to know it's happening."

The work will add another dimension to Roser Park's "outdoors museum, " which consists of a walking path with descriptive markers that tell the neighborhood's history. The neighborhood was designated a national historic district in 1998.

Eventually, a linear park will follow meandering Booker Creek from its mouth at Bayboro Harbor northwest to Tropicana Field. It will tie elements of the earliest Native American residents, city pioneers both black and white, and modern St. Petersburg's Major League Baseball.

The park also will link to the Pinellas Trail, in the process of being extended into downtown.

"The drainage ties in with the footpath. We had a problem with flooding in the streets, " said Kai Warren, a former Roser Park president and a neighborhood activist.

The project costs about $4-million, including construction and necessary property acquisition, said Mike Connors, the city's internal services administrator. Grants are paying a portion of the cost.

The entire Booker Creek drainage basin stretches from 33rd Avenue N to the bay. It is the largest of the city's 26 drainage areas.

Meanwhile, another project is under way to protect Roser Park's character and geography. Recognized for its unusual bluffs and hills, cut into long ago by Booker Creek's forerunners, the neighborhood for many years has used concrete retaining walls to contain the formations and keep them from crumbling.

Twelve wall sections are being replaced.

"It will guarantee the longevity of the infrastructure, " Manlowe said.

[Last modified April 28, 2007, 19:47:47]