Downtown Tampa will shortly have – to loosely paraphrase Gertrude Stein – some definite “‘there’ there.” We’re talking the revitalized Riverwalk, which will soon include two museums, a major Curtis Hixon Park makeover and a Kiley Gardens remake.
But in the good names of urban renewal, arts canton and downtown destination, some city officials are threatening to get carried away. Understandably, they want to make sure that such a showplace is properly reflective of Tampa at its best. Of course. But in so doing, they want to sanitize some of the seawall by limiting and eliminating much of the colorful signage left behind by northern university crews that train here in the winter.
“The question is: How do you want your city to be presented to the public?” asked Lee Hoffman, the Riverwalk development manager. “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?”
Actually, the question should be: How best to present the real Tampa, one that is both vibrant and aesthetically impressive as well as unique? This isn’t Jacksonville or San Antonio. That uncommissioned “crew art” that has been left in the wake of college rowing crews over the years is vintage Tampa. It’s not unflattering graffiti. Nor is it an incongruous mismatch with the waterfront’s gentrification. It is, as Tampa Downtown Partnership President Christine Burdick points out, part of Tampa’s heritage.
“It’s something that is somewhat symbolic in downtown,” says Burdick. “And to some extent, it should remain a part of downtown.”
But the issue is more than a matter of lose it or leave it alone. It’s more like market it.
What we’re talking about is a literal, historical signature: a graphic reminder of where Ivy League and Big Ten student-scullers have long wanted to be in the winter. And not only were the collegiate Kilroys here, but the boys and girls of Yale, Princeton and Michigan keep coming back.
Philadelphia and Boston, for example, don’t have a problem with student signatures along their boathouse rows. Tampa needs to market it – not question it.
To loosely paraphrase Thomas Wolfe, in Tampa, you can row home again.