Downtown Neighborhood Association Board Votes to “Adopt” Williams Park

Williams Park, the City of St. Petersburg’s central downtown park and green space, is an orphan no longer. The Downtown Neighborhood Association (DNA) has voted to join the city’s Adopt-a-Park program by adopting Williams Park, located between Third and Fourth Streets North and First and Second Avenues North.

City staff designed the Adopt-a-Park program to augment the regular cleanup and maintenance performed by city workers and to engage neighborhood residents in projects that benefit their own neighborhoods by helping keep the community “clean and green.”

Like all neighborhood associations, DNA represents the interests of homeowners and residents. However, the Association also recognizes a special obligation to work toward keeping the downtown neighborhood as an attractive, safe place and active cultural, educational, business, and social center for all city residents and visitors.

Williams Park was selected in part because it is virtually at the center of the DNA’s neighborhood boundaries, Tampa Bay on the east, Martin Luther King, Jr., Street on the west, and 5^th Avenues North and South, extending down 4^th Street South to 11^th Avenue South, encompassing the USF campus.

Williams Park is also considered the city’s first park. Called City Park at its founding in 1888, it was later renamed for one of St. Petersburg’s founders. The first bandstand was built there in 1894.

Partnerships, Volunteers Sought

The Association will work to develop partnerships with other organizations and businesses, especially those whose buildings face the park. Among those that have built along Third and Fourth Streets or are in process of building are Progress Energy, the American Stage, and St. Peter’s Episcopal Cathedral. St. Petersburg College is nearby on Second Avenue.

Because Williams Park is the City’s central downtown park and major public transportation hub and is used by many residents, DNA will need many volunteers to help with flower plantings, cleanups, and to raise funds for buying needed plants and equipment. “The combination of partnerships and dedicated volunteers might eventually lead to formation of a ‘Friends of Williams Park’ group,” says DNA president Marilyn Olsen.

To volunteer to take part in the Williams Park project, email molsen@mailq.us Signups will also be possible at DNA’s July 10 meeting at Sunshine Center, 330 Fifth Street North, beginning at 7 p.m. That meeting, which is free, will feature Tim Garling, new director of the Pinellas Transit Authority (PSTA), whose buses use the perimeter of Williams Park as a major downtown depot.

For more information on the Downtown Neighborhood Association, visit www.stpetedna.org.