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Bid to save Publix mural falls apart
Feb 14, 2012 (Tampa Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
TEMPLE TERRACE -- Wielding hammers and chisels, Elaine Coniglio and David Long whacked away for hours on the colorful, tiled wall that stood as a symbol of the city for 34 years.
They wanted to save a piece of Temple Terrace history before a demolition crew with heavy machinery arrived to tear it down to make way for the next phase of the downtown redevelopment project.
In the end, they saved remnants of the mural that had been a fixture on the front exterior wall of the long-closed Publix store at the southeast corner of 56th Street and Bullard Parkway.
"It was a beautiful piece of art," Long said of the tile painting created in 1978. "We just wanted to have something to remember our history."
Coniglio considered the decorative wall a part of the city's charm.
"That particular wall had been there a long time," Coniglio said. "Everyone in Temple Terrace had gotten used to it."
The Publix supermarket with the mural of fruits, vegetables and food products sat at the crossroads of the Temple Terrace commercial district for years.
In the late 1990s, the Lakeland-based chain opened a larger, standalone store at the northwest corner of Bullard Parkway and 56th Street. Yet Temple Terrace residents continued to appreciate the mural fronting the vacant space at the declining nearby shopping center.
Vlass Temple Terrace, the master builder of the city's $150 million town center project, recently directed workers to demolish the remainder of the plaza, including the former Publix.
At a special meeting of the Temple Terrace City Council on Thursday, Vlass officials plan to propose building a luxury apartment complex on the site.
Fearing time was running out to save the mural, members of the Temple Terrace Woman's Club asked and received permission from the builder to remove the tiles.
On Feb. 2, Coniglio, who is a member of the Woman's Club, and Long, who is married to a club member, began their mission.
The initial idea was to save as many tiles as possible, said Long, who co-owns Business Ink Printing with his wife, Anita. But the volunteers soon discovered they were facing an uphill battle.
"We got chips," Long said. "We weren't able to get whole tiles. They were mortared to the concrete building and impossible to get off in one piece."
In about two hours, the volunteers had collected "several buckets" of tile fragments. Most pieces were similar in size to potato chips.
Woman's Club members collected a few larger pieces last week after the Publix building was leveled, club President Maryrose Owens said.
Coniglio was confident the pieces of tile can be reused in future preservation projects.
"We have really artistic people in the community," Coniglio said. "Maybe they can make something special with the chips."
Suggestions such as using the fragments to create a mosaic or stepping stones already are circulating through the community.
The Temple Terrace Preservation Society was not part of the tile removal project, longtime member Grant Rimbey said. But its leaders previously tried to save the mural.
The inability to remove the tiles, which were adhered to the wall using a cement grout, was a major deterrent, he said. The only way to save the tiles would have been to remove the entire wall -- an expensive endeavor.
The hot, sweaty job of recouping pieces of the mural was a worthwhile effort, both volunteers said.
Coniglio is happy she invested the time to preserve a part of the city's past.
Long agreed, describing how he stopped by to help before attending a business meeting.
"All I had was a hammer and chisel to knock down pieces," Long chuckled. "I have sore knuckles to prove it."
___ (c)2012 the Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Fla.) Visit the Tampa Tribune (Tampa,
Fla.) at www.tampatrib.com Distributed by MCT Information Services
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