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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
St. Pete City Council votes Thursday on whether to make public sidewalks private at BayWalk
Posted by Mitch Perry on Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 5:48 PM
On Thursday, the St. Petersburg City Council will vote on whether to give the public sidewalk in front of the BayWalk shopping complex to its owners. The city also intends to spend $700,000 of federal stimulus money to help revitalize the facility.
For the past two months, City Hall in St. Pete has been home to public hearings and protests because of the controversial nature of the proposal — which would be to rid the street of protestors who have used the sidewalk to host a number of demonstrations, particularly against the Iraq war earlier this decade.
The ACLU has threatened legal action if the Council follows through on its promise to give the right of way to Baywalk owners.
Eric Rubin is with Serve the People House of Worship in St. Pete. He calls the idea of privatizing BayWalk "fundamentally wrong." And he's unhappy that at the one public hearing he attended on the issue, only Councilman Wengay Newton made any objections to the proposal.
And Rubin feels there's another component at play here: race.
"If they can privatize the street, that would be a prelude to preventing black youth from wandering through BayWalk. They [city officials] also talk about this being a safety argument, not a free speech argument."
Marianne Huber is with St. Pete for Peace, the leading activist group that has held countless protests at BayWalk over the past few years. She considers the argument that protests have led to BayWalk's financial difficulties bogus.
In an email, Huber says, "In the six years we've protested at BayWalk, we have never hurt anyone. Half of the sidewalk is already private and off limits to protestors, so we've never prevented anyone from going there. And saying we're bad for business is nonsense. We've been at BayWalk less than 1% it's been open, while the unemployment rate in Tampa Bay has tripled in the past six years, and BayWalk offers high-end products that no wants and that don't sell well during very difficult economic times."
Huber and others contend that the city was told by BayWalk's owners, C.W. Capital , that they would not consider a potential $6 million investment in the shopping center without having the ability to control the sidewalk.
Homeless advocate Bruce Wright sees growing momentum for the Council not to give the sidewalk up.
Citing unscientific polls produced by local media outlets (as well as recent comments made by Councilman Jeff Danner that he worries about the precedent being set), Wright says BayWalk has problems, but they have to do with the economy, not street protests.
The City Council meeting on Thursday begins at 8:30 a.m. Activists say they'll hold a news conference in front of City Hall before the meeting at 8 a.m.
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