Rowing teams' paintings on downtown Tampa seawalls may be banned

TAMPA

It's a long-standing tradition of rowing teams training on the Hillsborough River. Under cover of night, they sneak out and paint their crew's mark on a seawall.

Students from Georgetown, Princeton and Yale have all left behind signs of their time on the river, with the greatest concentration downtown around the University of Tampa.

City officials, though, are wondering if it's time to rein in the practice.

The $15 million remake of Curtis Hixon Park is finishing up, along with significant portions of the Riverwalk. That means more people will be visiting the downtown waterfront, said Lee Hoffman, the city's Riverwalk development manager.

"The question is: How do you want your city to be presented to the public?" Hoffman asked. "Do you want to continue to have crew art, or whatever you want to call it, to proliferate, or do you want to try to restrict that in some way?"

A proposed policy would limit the markings to the west side of the seawall between the Brorein Street and Kennedy Boulevard bridges. Any existing paintings outside that space would be removed. And future markings beyond that location would be immediately covered.

Construction at Curtis Hixon, which included a new seawall, has already eliminated some of the crew markings.

Hoffman met last week with representatives from rowing interests and the Tampa Downtown Partnership to discuss the proposed policy.

Larry Marfise, athletic director for the University of Tampa, said he has reservations about any proposal that explicitly allows markings in some locations but not others. It could pose a liability issue because if students get hurt while painting, they might say the city condoned it.

Plus, he questions whether such a policy would be effective.

"I've worked in collegiate athletics for 30 years," Marfise said. "And I know one thing for sure, if you tell students you can't do something, we'll wake up in the morning and see all kinds of paintings."

Christine Burdick, president of the Tampa Downtown Partnership, considers the markings a part of Tampa's heritage.

"It's something that is somewhat symbolic in downtown," she said of the paintings. "And to some extent, it should remain a part of downtown."

But it needs to be something everyone is comfortable with, she said.

Tom Feaster is president of the Stewards Foundation, a nonprofit rowing association that coordinates crew training visits to Tampa. He said the city is taking the right approach in developing the policy.

"They're getting all the stakeholders involved in the decisionmaking," he said. "It's just a matter of working out the details."

Janet Zink can be reached at jzink@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3401.