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Tampa seeks Amendment 1 funds for Riverfront Park

 
Sierra Club officers, who advocated for Amendment 1, say the money is for buying and preserving land, so the development for the new Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park wouldn’t be consistent with the fund.
Sierra Club officers, who advocated for Amendment 1, say the money is for buying and preserving land, so the development for the new Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park wouldn’t be consistent with the fund.
Published Jan. 4, 2016

TAMPA — With the cost of Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park creeping up toward $30 million or higher, city officials are looking to the state of Florida for up to $10 million for the project.

City Hall has budgeted $5 million this year for an ambitious redevelopment of the park, and Mayor Bob Buckhorn has said he plans to use a "significant chunk" of Tampa's $20 million BP settlement from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for the project.

But Buckhorn said that likely will still leave about $10 million in costs uncovered.

That's where he hopes money from the voter-backed Amendment 1 comes in. Approved by 75 percent of state voters in 2014, the constitutional amendment sets aside a third of the tax on real estate documents for land purchases, restoration and conservation.

For Buckhorn, it's a logical fit.

"Open space in a city — though it may be more active, versus passive — may be just as important as acquisition of large chunks of rural property just to preserve it," he said. "Kids in the cities need green space to play in, too."

So, ahead of the Legislature's spring session, Buckhorn has talked to lawmakers from Tampa about finding money for the project through the Florida Communities Trust.

The trust is part of the Forever Florida grant program and was created to help communities protect natural resources, provide recreation and preserve the state's working waterfronts. Gov. Rick Scott recently unveiled a 2016 budget that includes $10 million for the trust, a figure Buckhorn sees as something of a placeholder going into this spring's legislative session.

"I think that would be a real appropriate use of Amendment 1 moneys that would take the burden of the management of the land away from the state, which they don't appear to want," Buckhorn said. "They don't seem to like buying big chunks of property and then having to manage them. This would be helping us complete a project that we would end up managing and having ownership of."

But officers with the Sierra Club, one of a coalition of groups that advocated for Amendment 1's passage and is suing the state over its implementation, said the funds were meant to buy and preserve natural habitat — something the city wouldn't be doing.

That's because the 23 acres of Riverfront Park already belong to the public and have for decades. City plans for the new park include a 16,250-square-foot "river center" with a boathouse on its ground floor, a large event lawn, a splash play area for kids, a dog park, an expanded playground, bigger athletic fields and sand volleyball courts.

Nobody is saying that wouldn't be nice, but building new structures in local or even state parks "is not what the voters intended with Amendment 1," Sierra Club senior organizing manager Frank Jackalone said.

"I thought that the intent of Amendment 1 was pretty clear — that it was about acquiring land," Tampa Bay Sierra Club chairman Kent Bailey said. He agrees that cities need urban parkland and thinks that using Amendment 1 funds to buy and preserve that land would be consistent with what sponsors had in mind. But "when it comes to creating a 16,000-square-foot structure on parkland using Amendment 1 money, I don't see that as appropriate."

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Since the amendment's passage in 2014, the use of the money has been controversial.

In June, environmental groups filed a lawsuit contending that the state defied the will of the voters and spent the Amendment 1 money on general state expenses, including employee salaries, rather than on buying or restoring conservation and recreation lands. They have asked for an injunction to force the state to put more than $200 million from the state budget surplus into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund.

Despite the suit, which is still pending, state officials have proposed further uses of Amendment 1 money that conservationists say don't fit.

In September, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam proposed spending money from that fund to replace old cars ($338,000), fix roads ($2.8 million), do construction and maintenance for the state Forest Service ($3 million) and pay for information technology services ($1.2 million).

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has asked for $470,000 to replace old boats and vehicles and $4 million for construction to make more parks compliant with federal accessibility regulations for people with disabilities.

In contrast to some of those uses, Buckhorn said he thinks spending Amendment 1 money on Riverfront Park "absolutely fits" the intent of the initiative — "much more so than buying vehicles."

"Urban parkland is even more scarce than rural parkland, and urban parks have always been given short shrift (in local and state environmental land programs) because the focus historically has been on large, undeveloped tracts in the rural areas versus urban green space in the cities," Buckhorn said.

Skanska, which won a design-build contract from the city a year ago, is doing the construction drawings, which Buckhorn hopes will be finished in the spring or early summer. Once they're done, the city will negotiate a guaranteed maximum price for the project.

Ten million dollars is a lot to ask for, and Buckhorn said he doesn't expect to receive that much, but anything would help. Moreover, he said money for Riverfront Park is not his top priority from the Legislature. (That would be the second round of funding for the University of South Florida's downtown medical school building.)

And the park project will go forward whether or not the city gets any state money for it.

"We're going to get this done one way or the other," Buckhorn said. "It's too important for West Tampa and the west side of the Hillsborough River."

Contact Richard Danielson at rdanielson@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3403. Follow @Danielson_Times