Ambitious projects in the pipeline

During his campaign for mayor, Bob Buckhorn made an overarching promise -- to create a series of initiatives to improve parks -- and filled in the details with proposals to create a Parks Advisory Board, a greenway or trail from MacDill Air Force Base to New Tampa, and playgrounds, pocket parks and community gardens on vacant lots.

Since becoming mayor, Buckhorn has taken significant steps to improve Tampa's parks and public spaces, but his boldest ideas have not been the ones he outlined during the campaign.

Instead, so far Buckhorn has made with biggest splash with initiatives to:

• Request private-sector proposals to redevelop the city's historic Water Works Building as a part of an ongoing project to restore the city's 5-acre Water Works Park, which is a few blocks north of the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. He chose Columbia Restaurant owner Richard Gonzmart and Bill Rain of Metro Bay Real Estate, who proposed a seafood restaurant, chophouse and oyster bar with an outdoor cafe overlooking the Hillsborough River. The city and the developer are currently negotiating a development agreement for the project.

• Persuade Tampa Electric and Peoples Gas to provide more than $300,000 to light up four Tampa bridges -- the Platt Street bridge, Brorein Street bridge, Kennedy Boulevard bridge and either the CSX railroad bridge or the Cass Street bridge -- at night starting this summer. The city is hiring artist Tracey Dear, who illuminated the bridges in Chicago, as well as the Wrigley Building there, to do the project, called Agua Luces, or Spanish for "water lights.” Dear was selected through a juried process for the original Lights on Tampa program in 2006, but his idea did not come to fruition then. Buckhorn revived it after taking office and approached Tampa Electric for help.

• Launch an "Opportunity Corridors” initiative to improve landscaping and decorative lighting along major routes into and out of downtown.The city is starting with a beautification this summer of Ashley Drive from the bottom of the Interstate 275 exit ramp to Tyler Street. The project will bring new accent lighting, plus colorful ground plants and flowering trees to the road. Buckhorn said the city will make a "four-year commitment" to bring similar improvements to Channelside Drive, Nebraska Avenue and other streets. Buckhorn says the goal is to make the streets more inviting, both to pedestrians and prospective businesses.

Along with these high-profile projects, Buckhorn's administration has carried forward with a variety of smaller parks and greenway projects, some already in the works before he became mayor, that are consistent with the nuts-and-bolts details of this promise. And his administration has working relationships with parks advocacy groups. But there is no action so far on the Parks Advisory Board he promised.

Buckhorn has delivered on the headline of his promise to launch a series of parks and public space initiatives. These are significant, ambitious projects. Still, his follow-through does not touch on everything he discussed in the fine print of his original campaign promise. If he finishes the list, we will revisit the rating. For now, it is In the Works.