ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 The City of St. Petersburg wants to build a new trail on unused railroad tracks in downtown and will use a $6 million lease for Ferg\u2019s Sports Bar to fund the $7 million land purchase from CSX.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be a brand new trail,\u201d said Cheryl Stacks, Transportation Manager. \u201cIt\u2019s called the Booker Creek Trail.\u201d<\/p>\n
The section of rail corridor the city wants to purchase is .86 miles in length, between 5th Avenue North and 1st Avenue South, totaling about 7.8 acres. Part of those railroad tracks cut right through the Ferg\u2019s Sports Bar property. The owner, Mark Ferguson, has offered $6 million to lease those tracks for 99 years, along with a section in a gravel lot he owns across Central Avenue, which was approved by the city council last Thursday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe keep our property all together,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to keep using it for gathering of World Cup, baseball, concerts (and) football.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city will use a tunnel which runs under 1st Avenue South to a sidewalk alongside the Ferg\u2019s property to Central Avenue to connect the new Booker Creek Trail. Once complete, the Booker Creek Trail will connect to the Historic Gas Plant District and the Pinellas Trail.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so exciting to have this trail come right next to Ferg\u2019s and to cross and go north to 5th Avenue North,\u201d said Ferguson. \u201cThat\u2019s going to bring a lot more bikers, scooters, walkers. Get people off the coach and get them down here to the EDGE District.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stacks said it has been about a decade since the city last did a trail acquisition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not often that we get an opportunity to expand our trail system and acquire property to do so,\u201d she said. \u201cSo this is huge for us. We haven\u2019t had a big trail expansion in St. Petersburg in a lot of years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city must close on the land purchase from CSX by the end of July or go back to city council for an extension. Stacks estimated it will take between 3-to-5 years to build the new trail.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could take a few years for us to go ahead and identify the funding to design the project and build a project,\u201d she said. \u201cSomething that we\u2019re looking forward to. We\u2019ve had this trail system on the books for quite a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ferguson said he does not plan to build any permanent structures on the leased land because of a reverter clause for the potential reactivation of the rail service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would not want to build a big high-rise on it, 200 apartments, and then the railroad would come back in and say, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re putting light rail through there. You\u2019ve got to get rid of the building,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cDown the road, we might decide to build a small building on it. We\u2019re not sure.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stacks said the reverter clause in the lease is a standard requirement as part of rail-to-trail acquisitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not aware of any trail in the country that had to revert back to a rail,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very unlikely opportunity. So I think we\u2019re in good standing and good footing to proceed with the trail and know that it\u2019s going to be there for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Booker Creek Trail will provide new recreational space for residents and an economic boost for the area, according to Stacks. The transportation manager said the city would not have been able to afford the land purchase without the public-private partnership with Ferguson.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a win-win for the community, for the city, and for Ferg\u2019s,\u201d said Ferguson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 The City of St. Petersburg wants to build a new trail on unused railroad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1011,2031,274,558,1190,2968,115,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,835],"class_list":["post-340363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-local-business","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-human-interest","tag-josh-rojas","tag-news","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}