Picnic Island Park Will Get A Buffing
By MARK HOLAN, The Tampa Tribune
Published: May 16, 2007
PORT TAMPA - A $430,000 facelift at Picnic Island will allow visitors to see a different side of the city park at the tip of the Interbay Peninsula.
Parks and recreation officials say they want to add a boardwalk and shell paths skirting the mangroves on the island's east side.
'We are going to be looking at ways to incorporate a boardwalk to provide access to a couple of different habitats,' city landscape architect Brad Suder said.
However, the boardwalk will not slice directly through the mangrove thicket to Picnic Island Bayou, a shallow tidal flat where wading birds hunt for food, Suder said.
Instead, the construction is likely to occur where park visitors already have beaten a path along a small cove at the edge of the mangroves at the park's southern tip.
Suder said the project will include one or two platform areas for educational presentations.
Picnic Island was created from dredge spoils deposited from the nearby shipping channel and industrial port in the 1950s and early 1960s. Vestiges of a natural island remain underneath the mangrove canopy closer to the mainland.
A consultant's proposal for the boardwalk is due this month. Designing the boardwalk and obtaining permits to work in the environmentally sensitive area could take an additional six months.
The city also plans to create a shell parking lot at the canoe and kayak launch on the east side of the island.
On the more familiar west side of the 100-acre park, where visitors have access to the beach on Old Tampa Bay, the city will renovate two restrooms and add two picnic shelters.
The work is expected to begin in June.
Reporter Mark Holan can be reached at (813) 835-2102 or mholan@tampatrib.com.
