Hillsborough: A river flows in Tampa, but who could tell?

A river flows in Tampa, but who could tell?

By SANDRA THOMPSON

Sunday evening in downtown Tampa, a sort of miracle happened. The Florida Orchestra was playing a pop concert in Curtis Hixon Park, the much-maligned open space nudged in between the Tampa Museum of Art and the hulking Poe parking garage. There was room for a lot more people, yes, but there were plenty -- about 2,000 -- to make it lively. Young people, old people, parents and kids sat on the grass or on the sporadic green leaf benches as the orchestra played under a yellow-striped tent. As Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was nearing its end, fireworks exploded in the sky.

When it was over, the crowd jumped to its feet in applause.

It showed us something about downtown Tampa.

If something is going on, people will come.

Of course, the concert was on a Sunday, so parking was not a problem. Neither was traffic. And it was free.

There has been much talk, and will be more, about downtown and particularly this area of downtown. The park is right in the middle of the proposed Cultural Arts District that runs west of Ashley Drive from Kennedy to Interstate 275, and it's on the river. In fact, in this whole strip, the park is the only place where you can actually see the river, without going right down to its edge.

How to make the downtown a magnet for people, and how to make the Hillsborough River a major asset to the downtown, are two of the most critical questions Tampa is now trying to answer. To that end, the urban design team of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has been brought in to study the area and, in public workshops, to find out what people want.

As I listened to them, I came to realize that we might look toward a city that wanted some of the same things that we want for our downtown -- and got them.

My brother lives in Portland, Ore., a city of about 500,000 in a metropolitan area roughly the same population as that of Tampa Bay. And the city has a river running through it.

Portland is recognized for its riverfront, its pedestrian and bicycle-friendly downtown, its open green spaces. In fact, its Web site notes with some attitude: "Portland's 37,000 acres of park space include sizable chunks of prime downtown real estate, and don't look for that to change any time soon."

It wasn't that way 30 years ago. The Willamette River was rife with pollution, a four-lane freeway ran along the west bank, and nobody went downtown.

Today you can catch salmon downtown. The freeway has been ripped out, replaced with green space, the Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park -- considered the city's front yard. Summer, it's packed with festivals and concerts. The Greenway Trail runs the length of the river on both sides, so you can walk or bike instead of drive. Riverplace, a complex of shops, restaurants, condos, a boutique hotel and marina, does not overwhelm the landscape.

To discourage cars in the downtown, buses and light rail are free. ART, "the cultural bus," runs to the museums, performing arts center, parks and so on. The popular MAX light rail swiftly brings people downtown from the suburbs. And they come -- to downtown's three-story mall, its restaurants, shops, clubs, coffee bars (seemingly on every corner). And people live there -- lots of them, especially young people. Today, my brother says, "It's the place to be."

It all started with a mayor who believed in a strong downtown.

Portlanders consider the river the very heart of their city.

"I didn't know you had a river in Tampa," my brother said when I called last week to ask some questions about his city.

He'd driven here several years ago; according to my directions, he exited I-275 downtown at Ashley Drive.

"Remember driving through downtown to Bayshore?" I reminded him. "All along downtown on your right side, there's a river."

- Sandra Thompson is a writer who lives in Tampa. City Life appears on Saturdays.