In the Tampa Tribune there is an article about some controversy regarding Lake Roberta. "Lake Roberta - The city turned the lake into a retention pond and is now trying to clean it up. A landscape designer wants the city to turn the lake into a park."
In the St. Pete Times there is an article about "Interior designer Karen Brown gave up her studio, instead adding an office to her home on the Hillsborough River."
There is a little blurb in the St. Pete Times about Stephanie Beckel opening up Tampa Antiquarian Books in Seminole Heights. (It's the third business blurb in thr article)
Rohama Chomick wrote a great letter to the editor to the Tampa Tribune about fireworks.
The Lake Roberta issue is only going to get uglier.
ReplyDeleteIt is true Myron's plan is controversial. He did a good amount of work on it, incorporating all of the ideas he heard from residents into a single plan. I think that is its main problem--too much. But it certainly represents what is possible if the will and cash is there. Kudos to Myron for taking on something like that and comming up with a beautiful plan. I would prefer to see something a bit less, but the outline of what I'd personally like is in that plan too.
One of the larger problems is that the residents living across the street from the lake are highly possesive of it. While it is a community resource (and I can see the lake from my home), they tend to act as if their opinions are the only ones that should carry weight.
One neighbor prefers the lake to be a clean glassy sheet of water. So much so that he called the city to come out and spray herbicide on the lake to kill all plants. They did, and what a mess that made. Since that was done, the lake turned green and the bad plants excelerated in growth.
The lake residents use prostitution and vagrancy as the reason they don't want any benches or the bank deepened to make room for people gathering. But these same people were not supportive of the hooker patrols and took no effort, not even calling the police, to thwart crime around the lake. The residents that don't live on the lake did all that for them.
Trash cans and a dog waste station are contested as well. One of the lake neighbors that fights these walks her dog, without a leash, around the lake many times a week. I've seen the dog deposit a load and move on. She doesn't clean it up. But she was one of several complaining about how people bring their animals down there to mess up the banks and fighting the dog waste station as "unsightly."
One neighbor was so angry with the attempts at cleaning up the lake and adding some facilities that would make it possible for non-lake residents to enjoy it more, wrote a letter to the city attempting to start his own neighborhood association and break the area away from Old Seminole Heights.
The bottom line is, many of the people living across the street from the lake don't want other people down there. Anything to make it easier or nicer for people to enjoy the lake is fought.
This is a turf war--both literally and figuratively.