Designers are imagining creative new ways to capitalize on Tampa’s
downtown riverfront. An international
design competition to enhance Tampa’s riverfront kicked off last night
at the Tampa Museum of Art. It’s hosted by USF and the Tampa Downtown Partnership and several architectural models of a future riverfront
were on display.
Green space has been a popular topic in city architecture and landscaping, but now blue space, a city’s waterfront, is a new trend
in urban design. 30 years ago Tampa’s mayor planned out the Riverwalk.
The 30 million dollar project is about halfway done, and will one day
connect more than 2 miles with pedestrian walkways and green space.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said this design competition could influence
the rest of the Riverwalk construction.
The design competition is called Restitch Tampa, and seeks to refocus the Hillsborough River as a social, economic, and ecologic spine for
Tampa. When Governor Rick Scott rejected Florida’s funding for high
speed rail, $1.2 million from the US Department of Housing and Urban
Development remained set aside for train-related infrastructure.
[Shannon Basset](http://www.arch.usf.edu/faculty/detail/shannon_bassett/, a professor of Architecture and Urbanism at [USF[(http://www.arch.usf.edu/home), hopes
that money goes toward the winning project. They’re fundraising now to
award competition winners – that will just be for design, not for
project construction.
Even though Tampa has Bayshore Boulevard, Curtis Hixon Park and more,
St. Petersburg is better known for its urban green spaces. The City of
St. Pete is having their own design competition to redesign the St.
Pete Pier, using $55 million in city funding. Riverwalk Development Manager Lee Hoffman said that he’s happy with the current public
private funding split to build Tampa’s Riverwalk.
Chad Oppenheim will be a judge on the jury for design competition
finalists, and is well known for building a modern looking 25 story
high-rise in Miami that includes solar panels and wind turbines into the design. Daniel Roark is a Basset’s graduate assistant, and helped
work on several of the models on display last night. He said that
ecology plays a major role in the design process.
About 30 people attended the event, many of whom were architecture
students that plan to enter the competition. The deadline for
submissions is December 2nd, and first stage winners will be announced
December 15th.
