Gandy: Trail can get by with a little help from friends
The nonprofit Friendship Trail Corp. has organized Bricks Across the Bay, the first major fundraiser for the trail.
By JANET ZINK
Published October 15, 2004
Three mornings a week, Frank Miller rides his bike on the Friendship Trail.
"It's peaceful. You're out in the open, over water, under the sky," Miller said of the 2.6-mile recreational trail that runs parallel to the Gandy Bridge.
And there's no traffic.
Miller is one of 600,000 walkers, joggers, skaters, bicyclists and fishermen who use the trail each year, according to Pinellas County Parks Department.
Now, Miller wants those people to put their money where their feet, wheels and poles are.
Miller and other members of the nonprofit Friendship Trail Corp. have organized Bricks Across the Bay, the first major fundraiser for the trail. By selling engraved bricks and distance markers, they hope to generate money to offset the trail's $320,000 annual maintenance costs and, perhaps, establish an endowment.
The trail opened in 1999, two years after bay area residents asked Hillsborough and Pinellas county government officials to give new life to the old Gandy Bridge, which was set to be torn down.
The counties agreed, allowing the state money earmarked for demolition to go toward creating and maintaining a recreational trail. Several years later, that money is gone, said Miller, executive director of the Friendship Trail Corp.
The county governments have pledged to contribute $160,000 each to the trail's annual maintenance costs, he said. But he wants to honor the promise he and other trail advocates made to government officials that they would raise money for the upkeep.
"We have a moral responsibility," Miller said. "We said we were going to fund it."
However, they said that before they knew the trail required $320,000 a year, Miller said.
To come up with the cash, the group needs to sell a lot of bricks.
It will take 36,720 bricks to line the edges of the bridge and raise about $1.5-million, after expenses, Miller said. To create an endowment for the trail, he plans to pursue matching funds.
Miller wants businesses and people from the two counties connected by the bridge to engage in a "friendly contest" to see who can span the bridge first with a row of engraved bricks. It's an ambitious plan. But it's a way for the people who use the trail to take care of it.
"We haven't forgotten that we said we'd try," Miller said.
Bricks Across the Bay, a fundraiser for the Friendship Trail Bridge, kicks off at 9 a.m. Saturday on the Hillsborough side and at 10:30 a.m. on the Pinellas side. The event is free, and everyone who attends gets a T-shirt or poster. Engraved bricks cost $60; distance markers range from $1,500 to $5,000 each. For information, call 835-5252 or go to www.friendshiptrail.org
