A nonprofit group is pushing an ambitious plan to turn nearly 12 acres of land under Interstate 275 into a public park — an estimated $55 million undertaking that could take up to 15 years to complete and, along the way, threatens to displace a small business that’s been paying to use the land for years.
The nonprofit Friends of Trails Crossing wants to convert what is currently surface parking beneath the interstate into a mixed-use park featuring playgrounds, art installations, an outdoor market plaza, exercise areas, and walking and biking paths. The project would stretch from Fifth Avenue South to Burlington Avenue North, cutting through the Historic Kenwood neighborhood, the CSX rail line, Campbell Park and the Deuces corridor.
John Barkett, who co-founded the nonprofit, said the goal is to reimagine land currently used for parking. “It’s really a way to get an awesome market in the center of where all of our locals like to congregate and have them protected from the rain and the sun,” Barkett said.
But the parking lot slated for later phases of the project isn’t sitting empty — it’s leased to a working local business. Rock-climbing gym Vertical Ventures subleases the space, and the city renewed that lease just last year. Co-owner Hal Thureson said the gym has years to plan for what comes next, but the stakes for his business are existential if the park moves forward without a workable alternative. “If we lost all of our parking and we weren’t able to figure out a suitable replacement for it, I mean we probably wouldn’t stay in business,” Thureson said.
Thureson, a longtime St. Petersburg resident who bikes the nearby Pinellas Trail daily, was candid that his view of the project is shaped by his stake in it. “I would probably say, ‘Hey, that looks great, seems cool to me,’” he said, “but I balance that with, well, it could have a negative impact on our business, but who knows?”
It’s a tension city leaders will have to reckon with: a taxpayer- and grant-funded government project that, as currently envisioned, could eliminate a functioning private business generating its own revenue and paying to lease public land — replacing it with an amenity that depends on continued public and philanthropic funding to operate.
And funding remains the project’s biggest unresolved question. The land under I-275 belongs to the Florida Department of Transportation, meaning the city first needs a formal agreement with the state simply to move forward. After that comes the harder problem: finding $55 million. Barkett said his nonprofit helped the city secure a $1.38 million federal Reconnecting Communities planning grant last year, and he’s hoping additional grants, private sponsors and programming revenue will eventually cover the rest — though no funding plan has been finalized, and the first phase alone, a three-year build between First and Third Avenue South, is projected to cost roughly $15 million.
The idea has been percolating in city government for years without resolution. Barkett first raised it during former Mayor Rick Kriseman’s administration, and it was formally pitched to the City Council about four years ago. Even if FDOT signs off and funding materializes, officials say the full build-out won’t be finished for 10 to 15 years — a long runway during which a small business’s future hangs in the balance, and taxpayers are asked to trust that grant money will keep materializing.
Barkett describes the project as a long-term catalyst for connecting different parts of the city. “It’s a bigger connectivity picture,” he said. “We really see Trails Crossing as the catalyst for all of this.” Whether that vision is worth displacing an existing, self-sustaining business — and whether the money to build it will actually come together — remains to be seen.
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