Public art project at bus station will pay tribute to Palmetto’s waterfront history

Murals can be surprisingly expensive to do when it comes to public art projects but thanks to an anonymous donor the city of Palmetto and Manatee County are moving forward with just such a project.

The mural will be painted on the outside of the county’s transit station at 1802 Eighth Ave. W.

Artist Ron S. Berman, who also has done some work for the Walt Disney Company, will be able to proceed with the project if Manatee County commissioners approve an interlocal agreement with the city on Thursday. The city commission approved the agreement early last week.

Because the city spearheaded the effort to get the mural done and the transit station belongs to the county, the two governments have to agree on who will maintain it. The process was, “four years in the making,” said Mayor Shirley Groover Bryant.

The mural will pay homage to the city’s waterfront history, as well as its future, with images of the living shoreline at the Manatee River along Riverside Park West. The living shoreline was said to be the first of its kind in Florida, featuring concrete balls mimicking an artificial coral reef to enhance the shoreline ecosystem.

Also featured in the proposed mural is the city’s iconic ties to the seahorse that once stood atop the original building at the waterfront park back in the 1960s. The city is looking to resurrect that history with a 29-foot tall sculpture of a seahorse as the centerpiece for a planned new facility at Riverside.

There are no final timetables for the sculpture project, but Community Redevelopment Agency Director Jeff Burton said, “It’s definitely moving forward.”

The county’s transit station was designed with its standard blue and white color scheme.

Though the mural and the eventual sculpture aren’t close to one another, Bryant said she approached the county about doing the project, “to add a public art mural to the station, which will tie the north end of the city to the seahorse sculpture to be constructed near the Green Bridge”.