Trailblazers in preservation

[Times photo, 1997 As the city was contemplating whether it should buy the site, a series of Save Sunken Gardens days were held to collect signatures on a petition and build support.

Ride the Friendship Trail, visit Sunken Gardens and take in a play at the Palladium. You can because some dreamers among us had the idea that these old structures had some life left in them. How did they do what seemed doomed to failure?

By LENNIE BENNETT

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 27, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- History is nothing new. But mainstream interest in preserving local history is, or at least in preserving tangible pieces of it. And sometimes, it happens because one person, or a few, doggedly pursue a vision in the early stages when they are often dismissed as dreamers.

Recent examples:

The old Gandy Bridge span, which connects Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, became the Friendship Trail Bridge, a recreational path that opened in December after commissioners in both counties brokered a deal with the Department of Transportation to save it.

Sunken Gardens, which closed after 64 years as a privately owned local attraction and was a candidate for commercial or residential development, was purchased by the city of St. Petersburg and reopened as a public park in January.

[Times photo: Mike Pease] On opening day in December for the newly rechristened Friendship Trail Bridge, hundreds of people headed out to take part in a Hands Across the Bay ceremony.

The First Church of Christ Scientist, an imposing 1920s structure that its congregation wanted to shut down, was transformed into a performing arts hall in 1998 using no public money.

They are part of a growing list of historic preservation success stories. Most of the properties have been renovated as commercial or residential projects by businessmen like George Rahdert, a developer and lawyer who owns a number of historic buildings and says the climate for preservation is "much improved over the last 10 years." (Rahdert represents the St. Petersburg Times on First Amendment issues.)

But the three cited are anomalies. Preserving them was, at first glance anyway, the least viable option to those looking at alternative uses. Saving an old bridge, garden and church were not popular ideas.

What did it take to save them?

"It takes some of us who will bang our heads against a wall and go out and ask for money," said Mary Wyatt Allen, one of the group responsible for founding Palladium Theater. "And community willingness to support the project."

Hillsborough County Commissioner Jan Platt, who helped bring the idea of the Friendship Trail to the political table, agreed.

"It takes strong-willed civic activists," she said.

City Council member Bill Foster, an early supporter of Sunken Gardens' preservation, said, "There has to be a use for it. And that cannot be outweighed by cost."

Pinellas County Commissioner Barbara Sheen Todd, who was a key player in the Friendship Trail, said, "It also takes political leaders who know how to make it work."

As different as each project is, they share those commonalities: a person or a group with a vision, grass-roots and political support, a need. And, of course, money.

Often the original visionaries are not the people who wind up cutting an opening-day ribbon on a dais.

"The person who had the wonderful idea is not always the one to make it happen," said Platt.

'Nobody was interested'

In 1996 Neil Cosentino, a retired Air Force pilot, first challenged the Florida Department of Transportation's assertion that saving the 44-year-old Gandy span, replaced by a newer bridge, would cost at least $23-million. He believed it would cost a lot less -- no more, in fact, than the cost of demolishing it.

Cosentino cannot explain why saving the Gandy Bridge became an obsession. It was, for him, the ultimate symbol of arbitrary government decisionmaking.

"Something is wrong with a system," he said, "when government can destroy a perfectly good bridge."

That conviction launched him on a crusade, solitary at first, during which he met with public officials in both counties. He was ignored.

"Nobody was interested," Cosentino said. "The message wasn't powerful enough. Then a very simple thing happened. I looked at a map and saw at one end of the bridge Weedon Island and the other end Picnic Island. People were not going to save a bridge. So I said, "We're going to create a trail.' "

Environmentalists and bicycling and running groups began to form behind the idea of the bridge as trail, helping him lobby public officials.

"In simple terms," Cosentino said, "you're fighting government."

Pinellas Commissioner Todd and Hillsborough's Platt listened to his questions about the DOT report.

They asked their planning departments to readdress the information in it, crunched some numbers and came up with a far lower estimate and a more positive assessment of the bridge's structural soundness. They became powerful allies, willing to talk to others in high places that had dismissed Cosentino.

Hours away from demolition, the bridge was spared, and the DOT eventually agreed to allow Hillsborough and Pinellas counties to take it over and to give the $7-million budgeted for its demolition for rehabilitation.

The 2.6-mile recreational trail opened in December, hailed as a historic Hands Across the Bay preservation effort.

Along the way, though, Cosentino parted company with the preservation group that saved it.

"He was asked to resign in 1997," said Frank Miller.

Miller, a Tampa businessman and weekend cyclist, joined the Save the Gandy effort in 1996 after reading about Cosentino. He became the group's spokesman, then its president, working out the deal with the DOT and officials on both sides of Tampa Bay.

"His views just weren't where we were going with the bridge anymore," said Miller, who is now a member of the trail's oversight committee, which includes Todd and Platt, and is president of Gandy Bridge Friendship Trail Corp., the entity charged with fundraising for the trail. Cosentino formed his own group, the Friends of Friendship Park Bridge and Trail, which is scheduled to have its first meeting soon. He has no sanctioned affiliation with the trail, officials said.

"When Frank became the good guy and saved the bridge," Cosentino said, "he said I was the bad guy."

"Neil was a visionary," said Todd. "I can't speak to the other issues."

Salvaging Sunken Gardens

Like the Friendship Trail, Sunken Gardens came close to disappearing.

Owned by the Turner family since 1903 and opened as a for-profit tourist attraction in 1935, Sunken Gardens, at 1825 Fourth St. N, was in gradual decline after the 1970s. By the mid-1990s, the family wanted to sell it, possibly to a developer eager to have a prime parcel of downtown land for a commercial or residential project.

For several years, suggestions by some activists that the city buy it and preserve it as a park were dismissed by officials and many residents.

Two preservationists, Debra Roman and John Jewell, came forward in 1997 with an offer to buy it on behalf of their newly formed not-for-profit, the St. Petersburg Botanic Society, and turn it into a botanical garden.

"I like old stuff," said Jewell.

Roman said that after they registered Sunken Gardens on the Web site at that time, "the number of hits was phenomenal, especially internationally. When we realized it was bigger than just us, it helped."

Their deal fell through in March 1998 when council members, nervous about funding sources, refused to guarantee financing.

"We got burned out," said Jewell. "We had invested several thousand hours and dollars."

Roman said their last big push was to get historic designation for Sunken Gardens, which was granted several months later. The move was opposed by the Turners because it limited redevelopment options.

But Roman said, "That was the straw that saved the camel's back. During the hearing, the room was packed with supporters."

At that point, the idea of Sunken Gardens as a public park gained momentum, embraced by several neighborhood associations. With broader public support, the City Council revisited the idea of purchasing the property.

At that time, too, the idea found a champion in City Council member Foster.

"I was able to get a plan on the agenda, and things just snowballed after that," he said. Council members went back and forth, finally deciding to hold a referendum on the issue, asking residents to vote on a one-time tax that would raise several million dollars to purchase and begin renovations on the garden.

"Usually a threat galvanizes a group," said Rick Smith, one of two city historic preservation planners. "Preservation almost always comes along as a strategy to do it."

Several offers by developers, including one to turn it into a nudist resort, generated unsavory publicity and alarm. The referendum passed in March. By the end of September, the city had closed the deal to purchase the gardens, and in January it reopened as a public park.

Jewell and Roman, early proponents, are no longer involved with Sunken Gardens.

"We still have a big place in our hearts for it," said Roman.

"We've moved on," said Jewell.

The Palladium

The story of Palladium Theater parallels those of Sunken Gardens and the Gandy Friendship Trail in many ways, with a few key differences.

Palladium Theater, located at 535 Fifth Ave. N, really began as two separate projects in the early 1990s. One stemmed from a growing interest in a midsize performance hall that would accommodate the smaller space needs and budgets of local not-for-profit groups. The second was to find a use for the First Baptist Church sanctuary that was purchased by St. Peter's Cathedral in 1990.

The original plan was to tear the old church down and use the land for parking, but a group of church members thought the building, located on Fourth Street N across from Williams Park, had potential as a theater. Unsophisticated in fundraising, they could not get the idea off the ground until Paul Stavros, Mary Wyatt Allen, George Rahdert and Bill Hough, all local civic leaders, joined in the efforts. In July 1997, Stavros and Hough announced plans to raise $750,000, partly in state grants, to renovate it into a 600-seat hall.

But after months with consultants studying its feasibility, the group decided to walk away.

"There was no parking. The building was in bad shape. It would have cost too much just to renovate it, at least $1-million," Hough said in an interview in 1999.

At that point they heard that the First Church of Christ Scientist, several blocks north, was available.

After a tour, Paul Stavros said, "I'll take it."

The 1925 structure was in good shape, built, Stavros said, to be a theater.

They closed on the property in June 1998. It reopened as Palladium about a year ago and has been almost continuously booked by local groups since then. The original group of church members who met for months to rehabilitate First Baptist are no longer involved with the Palladium Theater project.

Unlike Sunken Gardens and Gandy Bridge, the church, snapped up so quickly by a group of people with the financial resources and community connections to redevelop it, was never threatened with demolition. No public dollars were used to buy or renovate it, although, said Mary Wyatt Allen, it has received a state grant and the group plans to ask for city money to help with programming costs.

'Mainstream it'

Around town, other examples large and small point to a burgeoning interest in preservation.

"We have the largest number of site files in Florida," said Virginia Littrell, chairwoman-elect of the St. Petersburg Planning Commission, referring to a list of historic buildings the city has compiled. "We have an administration that is working to save the past."

"There is a greater awareness of the value of our roots," said Commissioner Sheen Todd. "The other part is there is an actual economic value in preserving things. It's become a mainstream ethic."

City planner Smith uses the same word. "The trick is to mainstream it," he said. "It's not just about a few people who have a reverence for the past. Studies show it has economic benefits. It's become a very ecumenical philosophy."

Still, the fate of some historically significant buildings is in question.

The former First Baptist Church is one of them. Now that it is no longer being considered as the Palladium site, and with no other buyers in sight, leaders of St. Peter's Cathedral want to tear it down, an action complicated by its historic designation.

"I predict it will go the way of the wrecking ball," Foster said. "It has no use. We're going to lose a lot of landmarks like that."

The YMCA building, another downtown landmark at 116 Fifth St. S, is on the market now that the organization plans to build a new facility farther west.

"If a developer can find a use for it," said Foster, "and its numbers are such that it can be renovated cost-effectively, then it will be a success story."

He does not favor the city purchasing either property.

"It's always touchy to use public money to land bank a historic building without a need," he said.

"Sunken Gardens is the least best hope for most of our historic buildings," said Smith. "We need to make historic preservation financially attractive to private investors."

A recent change in the building code is heartening, said developer Rahdert, who believes that will make it easier to rehabilitate existing structures. "That plus a change in attitude," he said.

Of the buildings that will not be saved, Mary Wyatt Allen says, "With regret, I will see them go. I'm hoping the community will find aesthetically attractive replacements with a practical use."

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