art museum and arty park
It looks like Mayor Pam is set to correct her single glaring failure in office - the new location for the Tampa Art Museum. The Tampa Bay Business Journal reports that she plans to:
spend $5.7 million to purchase the Pavilion at 400 N. Ashley in downtown Tampa and renovate the structure to house the Tampa Museum of Art…
By the way, I never realized that was the name for the Cube building next to what I still call NationsBank Plaza (aka Rivergate Tower) at the corner of Ashley and Kennedy.
Anyway, to avoid problems similar to the space issues that doomed the plan to use the old courthouse, the city will lease (rent free until 2009) 22,000 square feet of space in the Beer Can/Rivergate building until they could build an addition to the Cube/Pavillion. The plan includes a renovation of the long neglected Kiley Gardens which sits next to the building. Tommy has told us about Kiley Gardens over the last couple years.
The gardens are an often unexplored little spot of beauty in downtown. When I was in high school, the lush green grass crossed by little streams and stones ribbons was a fun place to spend a few hours on a lazy summer day. The stone amphitheatre with its perfect view of the river and University of Tampa was a great spot to sit and chill. Everybody got a kick out of standing the middle of the amphitheatre and hearing your voice echo back to you thanks to the awesome acoustics.
Today the gardens are neglected. The fountains and the streams are dry. Iorio says they never worked right and the city isn’t going to fix them. Lets hope this plan has the support to save this quiet little corner of Tampa.
Tags: arts, city, development, names, tampa
Loading ...
February 10th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Yeah, and the transient population still needs “quiet little corners of Tampa” to flop/barf in. That place was a hole years ago and couldn’t possibly have changed much since. Not PC? Sorry, it’s how things have changed in “the TPA.” Go. Sit. Get harrassed for .50.
February 10th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Now I-Lady needs to fix the eminent domain problem. Are you guys reporting on that story that was in the business journal today about Tampa Heights?
February 10th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
What are they planning to do with the current site of the museum once it’s all moved into the cube?
February 10th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Sandy, Sandy, dear sweet Sandy. I was once like you, willing to base my point of view on a single impression. Yeah I went to Kiley Gardens once on a Sunday afternoon and left after getting hit up for change three times in five minutes. But then I went back again on a workday and saw people WITH JOBS down there enjoying lunch, reading, etc. If Mayor Pam and the folks at Weekly Planet aren’t ready to give up on it, neither am I. This museum proposal is a huge step in the right direction. Maybe we can redirect the bums over to Chillura Park so the county has to deal with them too!
February 10th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
No bums in Chillura Park. Not enough Weekly Planets to go around on a cold night already. Sheesh!
February 10th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Right when the last museum proposal perished, we decided after long discussed ideas to pursue efforts to put Kiley Gardens back into the spot light. I won’t go too deep into Dan Kiley (I will post our website below), but needless to say he is the “Frank Lloyd Wright†of landscape architecture. He has worked alongside architecture masters such as I.M. Pei and Eero Saarinen. I believe Kiley’s drawings of Kiley Gardens are actually archived in the Library of Congress along with his other works. In short he is an accomplished Architectural Landscape Master (Good ole’ American too). And really what we have is not some dark/secluded corner but a ‘Mona Lisa’ that has been totally neglected and targeted for urban blame due to the short comings of then and previous administrations. When I was in design school, 400 N. Ashley Plaza was actually featured in my text books. I even came across students from Europe and South American who visited or were planning to visit this landscape gem.
The fact remains the park is not at fault for being what it is today, it was manipulated since day one during construction (wrong tree species and poor construction of water runnels) and later fall to the neglect to an administration that was suppose to honor its care. I’m sorry I do not buy into sorrow or negativity of how things change; in fact I would argue this park was about change and Tampa could not handle such a place intellectual thought, mathematics and pearls of modern design (though now I think most that care about the city of the arts, can).
In many ways this hidden proposal (we suspected a similar proposal last fall but we not could get any answers in the post months) is a double edge sword. Yes injecting a new program in one the most interesting architectural pieces is exciting, but the main question is how will the park be rehabilitated? Will it become saucy hot grass mound like Curtis Hixon? Completed paved? Right now I am in a fury, trying to find out more answers and timelines to everything and intents of this proposal. I need to get into the bottom of what the city’s definition of ‘renovation’, especially when our mayor has yet to sign the local landmark designation for Kiley Gardens. Would a Mona Lisa be as strong with her eyes and lips missing?
Our website is: http://www.kileygardens.org
February 10th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
to answer two of the above questions this is an excerpt from the lead story on tampatrib.com right now.
“• In addition to buying the cubes, the city will use the $20 million to renovate them, demolish the existing museum and restore Kiley gardens. The museum would select and pay an architect….The existing museum will be demolished to make room for a new park.”
I am not sure if they mean the museum will select an architect that will also have responsibility for Kiley Gardens’ restoration or not.