The Murder of Kiley

Most of the Tampa city employees and elected officials are hardworking and dedicated at what they do. Recently the city was given a rough rap by the St. Pete Times concerning the high pay levels that many of the administration are receiving.

At first glance it raises your attention, but Tampa has become a "high cost to live in" city. And if we paid our City administrators the national average salary for similar positons, would that mean we have average administrators ?

But that is not the subject of this blog posting. It is the blatant killing of Kiley.
Kiley Gardens Park on Ashley, between the former NCNB (or better known as the beer can) building and the Current Tampa Museum of Art, has been a neglected treasure for Tampa. Designed by an internationally recognized landscape architect, Dan Kiley, this park has been a subject in textbooks around the world.

This picture shows you what it looked like a few weeks ago.



And this one below shows it to you now.




Originally designed as an escape from the urban environment, this unique location provided Tampa with more than a park - a camouflage for the parking garage that is underneath the park serving the beer can building that has been so vacant for so long. As first built, the park had fountains and flowing water through various channels. But due to neglect by the City, the water part of the design was written off long ago. And speaking of water, it seems that rain water and moisture has lead to damage to the interior roof of the parking garage. And therein lies one of the reasons for the Kiley killing.

One of the other reasons was the placing of the wrong species of Crepe Myrtles that resulted in too large of trees, which combined with the neglect, might have also added to the garage roof problem.

The National Trust is a non-profit conscience for our national landmarks and treasures. They recently designated 11 projects throughout the United States that they deemed most important for saving from potential destruction. Two are in our area: the Belleview Biltmore Hotel in Clearwater and Kiley Gardens in Tampa. Imagine a relatively recently designed park deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

With City committees recommending Historic Designation of Kiley, Mayor Iorio refused to sign the designation that had been on her desk for months.

The Mayor met with a volunteer committee made up of young architects (YARDOPS)that had truly worked hard to clean the park on a regular basis. I have spent two work days there and have twice arranged for a lunch to be contributed by two restaurants: The Deck Pizza and Pub in SOHO and the Fourth of July Cafe in Old West Tampa, to feed the volunteers. The Weekly Planet did an extensive article on the park as has several national publications.

Twice I asked the Mayor if she would sign the Historic Designation, she indicated that she did not think she could because it would be too restrictive. In front of WUSF Radio's Bobby O'Brien, I asked her if Kiley was in danger and she clearly indicated that the park would be saved.

The Friends of Kiley Gardens were not notified of the planned killing so that the Crepe Myrtles could be saved, relocated or even sold to help raise funds for a potential new planting when the garage repairs are completed. Instead the killing
was done with saws and blades with little notice and as our pictures indicate above, the killing was massive for the Kiley Landscape.

The previous ambitious Museum of Art plans would have seen Kiley eliminated and replaced with the Vinoly designs, but that idea was thrown out due to cost. However, most Museum of Art supporters have not been supporters of Kiley Gardens. And with the beer can building looking more and more like the site of the new Museum of Art, they do seem to have a motive in this murder.

We like this current administration, they seem to have vision and purpose. The Parks Department and the Mayor have looked to neighborhood groups to help in the stewardship of parks and other projects,frequently relying on them for funds and direction. The killing of Kiley without any communication with this volunteer group that Mayor Iorio has met with before, must shake any confidence from neighborhood groups as to whether this commitment is real or not. With the Kiley fronting the Hillsborough River, the plans for the Mayor's Riverwalk project give her a motive for this killing as well.

Will Kiley be rebuilt ? We are not so sure anymore.

Thank You to ALL the Media in the Tampa Bay Area !

The amount of community and non-profit events happening in Tampa on a weekly basis is staggering.

Our websites: TAMPAGOLD.COM and SOHOTAMPA.COM try to provide as much information as we can about these. But sometimes it is just not possible.

Recently we received an email from someone taking us to task for not promoting their event. While we had the event listed for several weeks on our very interactive calendar, that was apparently not enough.

We are not the St. Pete Times or the The Tampa Tribune. We are not owned by Media General or Clear Channel or any other deep pocketed organization. We do our best to promote events as best we can.

We appreciate our advertisers and those who support our advertisers and our events. This is what provides the dollars to do what we do. We even launched a new website FLORIDAMILLION.COM to support non-profits AND to provide groups with a FREE ad to promote their events and their websites. Only a few have bothered to take advantage of it so far.

Frequently we do not receive any thank you for promoting events and that is ok, but we do get a little pissed off when we catch hell for not promoting an event that someone thinks we should. And of course, they expect us to buy tickets to their event when we do so. On some evenings I may attend 4 events.

We just want to say THANK YOU to all the media that is doing their best, just as we are , to inform you about these worthwhile efforts. We know you hear the same type of gripes and complaints about not covering this or that event. But we think you do a great job. THANK YOU !

The Riverwalk and Tampa's Future

With great fanfare the City of Tampa launched the Tampa Riverwalk project for downtown. Lots of area residents have griped about what they call a misplaced emphasis on the downtown area. We think they are just not quite getting what this is all about. It is about YOUR neighborhood.

When you live in Carrollwood or SOG (South of Gandy) or Brandon that seems like a lot of b.s. doesn't it ? Well it is not.

Look around. The demand for housing is continuing to soar. The past few years appreciation proves that. More and more people are moving to the Tampa area. They are jamming our roads and schools and our water/sewage lines.

Why downtown ? Because the infrastructure is already in place. The roads are there, the property is there. The same for Old West Tampa and East Tampa. The appreciation in these areas has been outrageous as well. You can see renovations and tear downs already happening in these areas that have stood idle for so long.

As Mayor Iorio says "downtown is everybody's neighborhood." When we have a nationally televised event in Tampa what is shown ? The downtown skyline.

We do not always agree with the Mayor. The sound ordinance in Ybor is too restrictive, (we wish she would stand on 7th Avenue and hear where the db levels are currently set), the failure to effectively monitor some of the development is concerning (like allowing 4 townhouses to be built on what was a single family lot and allowing the townhouses to have entrances on an alley, her failure to designate Kiley Park as a historic landmark (even though National Historic groups have requested it), and the sometimes slip ups in the administration in dealing with the elected city council. However, on Riverwalk, she has shown a vision for Tampa that will last a lot longer than you and I. An elected official with vision - what a great idea.

The idea of The Riverwalk is not very complex. It is a waterfront, open to the public park designed to provide thought about Tampa's past, our environment, and our community. But most importantly it is designed to connect all of downtown together.

With the majority of the infrastructure already in place, the residential renaissance in downtown will generate buckets of cash through tax dollars for City and County coffers. And it will create an attractive and welcoming environment for all of Tampa's residents and visitors. Our only complaint is: we wish it was complete now.