Alex Size, left, and William Lorenzen with his 5-year-old son, Liam, sit in a converted parking spot on Tampa's Twiggs Street.

photo by Daniel Wallace, St. Petersburg Times

 

 

 

 

TAMPA -- A West Coast art collective fought today to make their urban surroundings more inhabitable for man, not machine.

In downtown Tampa this morning, that idea materialized as 176 square feet of sod outside a Thai restaurant, turning a metered parking spot into a usable, albeit small, public park complete with chairs, a checkerboard on a table, and a 10-foot Florida holly tree swaying in the breeze

Called National Park(ing) Day, local volunteers took over city-run parking spaces in hopes of boosting public use of urban environs across the globe. Despite the somewhat-radical roots of the concept, established in 2006 by the San-Francisco based arts group Rebar and backed by the national nonprofit Trust for Public Land, Friday's display was designed to promote living space, not rattle any cages.

In fact, the Tampa Downtown Partnership, the Mayor's Beautification Program, and the city paved the way for a special parking permit -- essentially waiving the I-can-do-what-I-want-until-my-time-runs-out
spirit of the arrangement.

Still, organizers say it's all about raising awareness.

"People notice it," Andy Lutton, executive director of the Mayor's Beautification Program, said of the parking space. "But people don't always notice the parks (right) here."

This spot, Lutton said, was picked for its high visibility to downtown foot traffic. And on this day, there was plenty, including a meter reader, who just raised an eyebrow, then smiled.