The new train station, scheduled to open this summer, will recall the city's early days through art and architecture.
By ANNE LINDBERG
Published April 28, 2004
PINELLAS PARK - When the new train station opens this summer, the city will have a showplace with sweeping architecture and custom-made period furniture.
Residents also will have a place to hang out, with a cup of coffee or a sandwich, while taking art lessons and browsing through artifacts from Pinellas Park's past.
Park Station, 5851 Park Blvd., will house Roe's Deli, the Pinellas Park Art and Historical societies, the Pinellas Park/Mid-County Chamber of Commerce, meeting rooms and city offices.
Council members unanimously agreed at last week's meeting to sign five-year contracts with Roe's and the others. Roe's will pay $200 a month rent for the first six months and $395 per month after that. The others are paying $1 a year each.
It is unclear when Park Station will open, but officials hope it will be early to mid June, said Patrick Murphy, the city's building development director.
Long a dream of city officials, Park Station is designed to be the centerpiece and anchor for a rejuvenated Park Boulevard.
It is supposed to evoke Pinellas Park's beginnings in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when the city sprouted around a railroad stop there and farmers loaded sugar cane for transport to refineries and distributors.
Council members had planned to re-create the original station but were disappointed when presented with a picture of the building that showed a nondescript, one-room box. Instead, they paid about $239,000 to the St. Petersburg architectural firm of Harvard, Jolly, Clees and Toppe to conceive the train station that might have been - large enough to house the chamber and other groups and architecturally correct for the era.
At a cost of $3.5-million, taxpayers will get a 16,792-square-foot building, parking for 74 cars, a bell tower/informational sign on the southeast edge of the Park Station complex, and custom cabinetry and furniture.
The building itself has a barrel ceiling that soars above the atrium. To each side are offices, and a balcony circles the second floor. Adorning the walls will be handcrafted cabinets and display cases, custom-made for Park Station by Furniture by Design, a Largo company owned by Colleen and Thomas Rabe.
The budget for that millwork is $148,000, but it is unclear if all that was spent with Furniture by Design.
The Rabes (pronounced "robbie") are noted for their furniture and cabinetry. They have built reproduction desks to replace those in the U.S. House of Representatives and have supplied 25 United States senators with bookcases. But they are most noted for library furniture, including the Harvard School of Medicine and the Greenwood branch library in Clearwater.
Pinellas Park City Manager Mike Gustafson was at the Greenwood grand opening and liked the furniture, Mrs. Rabe said. When it came time to furnish Park Station, the city called.
The Rabes also are making most of the furniture for Park Station. The bulk of it is from the "Crown" series, with fluted columns and crown molding. The oak will have a honey-colored stain called "solar oak."
Mrs. Rabe said city officials chose the Crown line because it had an appearance of having been made at the turn of the previous century.
The order includes six desks with returns for $1,652 each; a conference table for $2,170; a desk for $1,584; a wall display unit for $3,710. Also included is a lateral file for $817 and a credenza for $920. The grand total: $83,167.
That isn't all.
Officials are paying another $16,833 - the remainder of the $100,000 furniture budget - to Holmes and Brakel in Tampa. That furniture - not handcrafted - will be used in the atrium and for customers of Roe's Deli.
The city will charge a kind of furniture rent to Roe's, the chamber and art and historical societies. The money will be used to replace any worn or broken pieces.
Roe's will pay $7,085, divided into 120 monthly payments of $59.04.
The historical society will pay $3,198 in 120 monthly installments of $26.65. The art society will pay $14,256 in monthly installments of $118.80 spread out over 10 years. The chamber will pay $13,690 in monthly installments of $114.08.
Pinellas Park spokesman Tim Caddell said it made sense for the city to provide the furniture for the entire building to ensure that it was coordinated.
"We're trying to create kind of a period look to it which is why we went with the oak finish," Caddell said.
Although the expenditure sounds exorbitant, Pinellas Park is not the only city to furnish with custom-made period pieces.
St. Petersburg is accepting proposals for a designer to create period pieces for that city's annex. The bids have not been opened, so the cost is unknown.
