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Florida Matters: The St. Petersburg Pier, The Lens

The proposed Lens design to replace the current Inverted Pyramid St. Petersburg pier.

The aging St. Petersburg Pier officially closed to the public on May 31st. The city of St. Petersburg plans to demolish it and replace it with a new pier, a design called the Lens. But not so fast, opponents of the Lens design gathered more than 20,000 signatures to force a referendum on whether or not to move ahead with those new plans. The vote is scheduled for Tuesday August 27th. We'll take a look at why this has been such a big and contentious deal along with some background history on the relationship between St. Peterburg's waterfront and its iconic pier.