Let’s Go to the Mall!
Mulling Over a Downtown St. Pete Mall As holiday shopping revs up and COVID-19 numbers tick down, much of Central Avenue is abuzz. During the depths of the pandemic, city officials approved parklets for outdoor dining. Although parked vehicles have replaced tables and chairs, Car-Free St. Pete and others envision a vibrant, gridlock-free urban core that welcomes walkers, bikers and mass transit riders. The idea of creating a walk-friendly downtown St. Petersburg is hardly new, however. It happened once before, nearly a half-century ago. Empty storefronts and a declining tax base overshadowed the Sunshine City’s core in the early 1970s. An aging and economically disadvantaged population lived in older apartments, rooming houses and declining residential enclaves in Bayboro, Historic Uptown, Methodist Town, Roser Park, and other nearby neighborhoods. Mayor Herman Goldner and others wanted to reinvigorate downtown. On Nov. 1, 1972, Goldner led a celebration, re-branding a portion of Central Avenue between 3rd and 6th Streets as the “Downtown St. Petersburg Mall.” They called this destination the “Suncoast’s Largest and Most Complete Shopping Area.” Crews removed parking spaces,
HERITAGE VILLAGE
By Jim Schnur
Downtown St. Petersburg’s decline, which included Webb’s City closing in 1978, continued for decades.
narrowed traffic lanes and installed plants and shrubbery. With the Inverted Pyramid Pier slated to open in early 1973 on the site of the former Million Dollar Pier, officials had long-term plans to create a threeblock, car-free zone. What prompted this desire to maul the asphalt and put a pedestrian mall in its place? For the answer, visit the intersection of 66th Street and Tyrone Boulevard: Tyrone Square Mall. The mall had opened
a month earlier, offering shoppers more than 1 million air-conditioned square feet. Twenty years before that, in late 1952, Central Plaza had started two decades of downtown decline. Aware of what the September 1968 grand opening of Sunshine Mall on Missouri Avenue did to downtown Clearwater businesses, as well as how Gateway Mall stole away shoppers beginning in March 1968, city leaders worried that Mall continued on page 22
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