Following a design competition, St Petersburg City Council has approved the Pier Park design by ASD/Rogers Partners/Ken Smith Landscape Architect to replace the existing iconic 1970’s pier with a new structure that expands further into Tampa Bay and includes a new crystalline building.  The vote doesn’t however guarantee that Pier Park will be built as a previously-approved proposal – The Lens – was rejected in a voter referendum, and there has been strong support for an alternate scheme by The St. Pete Design Group which proposes retaining the existing iconic building and transforming it into a crystalline upside-down pyramid in the Bay, surrounded by new contemporary structures.

This will be the sixth pier in St Petersburg.  The original one was opened in 1889 by the Orange Belt Railway and was such a success that it was replaced in 1906 with the Electric Pier, extending 3,000 feet into the bay. This pier was replaced only 8 years later in 1914 by the Municipal Pier, which was heavily damaged by the 1921 hurricane and was replaced in 1926 by the Million Dollar Pier, named after the bond which the city took out for its construction and which included a observation deck, open-air ballroom, and a large interior space for card games and community events.

This pier lasted forty years until it too was demolished in 1967, the site sitting empty until the opening of the current iconic building in 1973 designed by local architect William B. Harvard Sr.  This St Petersburg Pier, known locally as The Pier closed in 2013 and awaits its fate.  The City had planned to demolish and replace it with the bold Lens pier design by Michael Maltzan Architecture and selected by the St. Petersburg Pier International Design Competition Jury in January 2012, until a voter referendum in August 2013 rejected these proposals and it was back to the drawing board and another competition with promise of greater community engagement in the selection process.

The existing building sits deserted when, with hindsight, it could have continued in use.  Hopefully the City will progress with the new proposals and perhaps leave future generations something that is more permanent than the previous ones.