Clearwater city leaders have a vision of downtown as an arts, culture, and entertainment destination.
Several pieces are already in place. The historic 750-seat David and Nancy Bilheimer Capitol Theatre and the 9,000-capacity waterfront The BayCare Sound at Coachman Park give downtown two first-class live music venues offering vastly different environments and audience experiences. Coachman Park, which reopened in the summer of 2023 after a massive rebuild, is home to the monthly Market Marie, the city’s Sea-Blues and Art in the Park festivals, weekly fitness classes, and other special events that consistently draw large crowds to the picturesque park overlooking Clearwater Harbor.
Now, the Clearwater City Council’s “Reimagine Clearwater Main Library: A Cultural Destination” plan seeks to activate the downtown library building, an underused asset in a prime location adjacent to Coachman Park, as an arts or cultural destination that will draw more visitors and business to downtown and have a shared synergy with the neighboring amphitheater and waterfront park.
To put the plan into action, the City of Clearwater has invited museums, planetariums, or performing arts institutions to submit their concepts for
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City of ClearwaterClearwater Main Librarytransforming a portion or the majority of the five-story, 92,332-square-foot library building that opened in 2004 at 100 Osceola Ave. into "a destination experience for Tampa Bay area residents and visitors.” The City sent out the call for concepts on February 19th and will accept submissions from May 21st through 10 a.m. on June 20th.
“We’re hoping that a concept comes in that just kind of blows us out of the water, something that we hadn’t been thinking about that has to do with arts and culture,’’ says Clearwater Community Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Jesus Niño. “We want our downtown to be activated. We want a lot of the projects that come in to tie together with each other, so it will be a destination where people can walk from one to the other and just enjoy their weekend or day. And just everything is seamless, working together.’’
A reenergized downtown
The transformation of Clearwater Main Library into an arts or cultural destination is another step forward for a reenergized downtown.
The $84 million reconstruction of Coachman Park and the opening of The BayCare Sound created an entertainment and activity hub on the downtown waterfront. The Clearwater Ferry, which carries passengers back and forth between Clearwater Harbor Marina adjacent to Coachman Park and Clearwater Beach Municipal Marina, has expanded its days and hours of service since the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority took over its operation, strengthening the connection between the award-winning beach tourism mecca of Clearwater Beach and downtown. Ferry service will also resume service to and from downtown Dunedin when the neighboring city’s storm-damaged marina is fixed.
Beyond the waterfront, Niño and the Clearwater Community Redevelopment Agency have intensified efforts to recruit new businesses across downtown. Those efforts have produced results. Nine businesses opened in 2024, including the Cleveland Street Market, which houses three restaurants and a Topgolf Swing Suite. Looking ahead, the Harborview Hotel, a Hilton Tapestry hotel, is scheduled to open directly south of the Clearwater Main Library building in 2027.
A bold idea attracts support
City Council member and artist Lina Teixeira first proposed the idea of an arts entity occupying part of the library during a November 2024 Community Redevelopment Agency workshop.
“It was a sore spot for me that this beautiful, beloved waterfront property was underutilized,’’ she says. “And in my travels, I specifically looked for other libraries to see how they’re adapting to the new world where we can download a book in a few seconds. And I saw quite a few examples where they joined forces with art entities.’’
Her fellow council members, acting as the CRA Board of Trustees, came to like the idea.
“I think everyone realized that it’s something they could support,’’ she says, “because at the end of the day, we have a 90,000-square-foot library that is not utilized to its fullest, with an operating budget of over $3 million (per year).’’
Though the request for proposals states that part or the majority of the library is up for use, Teixeira would like for the building to still accommodate the library, along with what she hopes is something that’s going to keep visitors coming in throughout the day and the week.
It’s also important to partner with an entity that knows how to be successful and does that every day, she says, mentioning as examples the Dali Museum, the Glazer Children’s Museum, or the Smithsonian.
She likes the idea of an interactive museum that uses artificial intelligence to immerse the visitor into a painting and points to the example of the “Van Gogh Exhibit: The Immersive Experience,” a traveling exhibit that has been seen by more than 5 million people since 2017.
“You walk into the building and the whole room is the painting. So, you are stepping on the ground of the painting. The sky of the painting is when you look up,’’ she says.
Proven potential
For 25 years, the grassroots community nonprofit Clearwater Arts Alliance has worked to promote the arts, local artists, and Clearwater, including the downtown core. Their efforts have included traffic signal box art wraps, monthly art walk tours
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City of ClearwaterA Clearwater Arts Alliance exhibit in the library's first-floor gallery space. of downtown’s vibrant murals and other public art, and, most recently, partnering with city government to take the lead on the relaunch of “Sculpture 360,” a placemaking program that installs temporary sculptures by local and regional artists in the medians on the 400, 500, and 600 blocks of Cleveland Street.
Since last May, the nonprofit has also made sure the arts maintained a presence in the Clearwater Main Library. At the request of city officials, the Arts Alliance has reactivated empty gallery space on the library’s first floor as an “impromptu” art gallery, says the nonprofit group’s President Beth Daniels. They’ve organized and curated a mix of larger art shows that feature a group of Pinellas County artists and solo pop-up art shows that showcase an individual Clearwater artist. The Arts Alliance, which does not plan to submit a Reimagine Clearwater Main Library proposal to the city, typically attracts opening night crowds in the range of 100 to 200 people for the shows.
Daniels and Arts Alliance Creative Projects Director Betsy Walch say those healthy turnouts and the overwhelming response a few years back to a series of exhibits by famed landscape photographer Clyde Butcher that the city’s CRA brought to that same first-floor gallery space show the library’s potential as an arts venue.
“It would be wonderful to have another cultural offering that’s different from a music space or a theater space,” Walch says. “We don’t really have a major gallery or a museum in Clearwater.”
With Clearwater Main Library, Coachman Park, the BayCare Sound, the Capitol Theatre, and the downtown core in close proximity to one another, Daniels says the opportunity is there to create a synergy that strengthens the arts and benefits businesses.
Niño says the vision is an arts or cultural destination with an impact that goes beyond the city’s effort to boost the downtown economy.
“This is going to be an asset for the entire city of Clearwater: residents, business owners, visitors, you name it,’’ he says.
For more information, go to Reimagine Clearwater Main Library