Drive along 1st Avenue South past Tropicana Field and you'll cross a strip of rusted rail that most people mentally file under "leftover infrastructure." It runs behind Ferg's Sports Bar, cuts through a gravel lot across Central Avenue, and has done nothing but sit there for years. If you've ever wondered whether that corridor is actually going anywhere, the answer arrived this summer, and it did not come from City Hall's budget office.
It came from Ferg's.
A Wish List Item Since 2003
The idea of turning that abandoned CSX line into a public trail is not new. The corridor has appeared in the city's trail plans since 2003, which means it has outlasted several mayors, multiple stadium redevelopment proposals, and at least one round of uncertainty over whether Major League Baseball would even stay in St. Petersburg. City transportation manager Cheryl Stacks put the dry spell in plain terms: St. Petersburg hadn't completed a trail acquisition in roughly a decade before this one. Land like this doesn't usually sit unused for two decades because nobody wants it. It sits unused because nobody can agree on how to pay for it.
That's the part that makes this summer's news different from the usual "someday" update.
The Money Didn't Come From Where You'd Expect
Cities typically fund rail-to-trail purchases through grants, bond measures, or conservation nonprofits. This one leans heavily on a single downtown business. Mark Ferguson, who owns Ferg's Sports Bar, is contributing $6 million toward the city's $7 million purchase of the 0.86-mile CSX corridor, structured as two 99-year ground leases rather than a straightforward donation. St. Petersburg City Council approved the leases unanimously on July 9, and the Trust for Public Land, which brokered the acquisition alongside CSX and the Rails to Trails Conservancy, announced on August 4 that it had completed the purchase and would convey the property to the city.
Ferguson isn't a disinterested donor. Part of the leased land runs directly through his own property, and the arrangement lets him keep using it.
"I've been leasing this same piece of property for the last 33 years," Ferguson said. "The railroad will be sold to the city and leased back to us. We can use it for whatever we want for our business."
That history matters for context. Ferguson opened his bar on that stretch of land before the Tampa Bay Devil Rays played their first game across the street, and the business has outlasted every redevelopment proposal that's circled Tropicana Field since. This is not his first bet on that block. It's his largest.
What 0.86 Miles Actually Connects
The corridor runs between 5th Avenue North and 1st Avenue South, covering about 7.8 acres. The plan routes the trail through a tunnel under 1st Avenue South, along a sidewalk beside the Ferg's property, and across Central Avenue, ultimately linking the Historic Gas Plant District and Tropicana Field area to the existing Pinellas Trail.
For anyone who already walks or bikes downtown, that's the detail worth sitting with. Right now, getting from the ballpark area to the Pinellas Trail on foot or by bike means threading through surface parking lots and crossing some of downtown's busier intersections without a dedicated path. This corridor closes that gap for the first time, connecting neighborhoods that a rail line has separated for decades.
The Bet Behind the Check
Ferguson has been explicit about why he's willing to put $6 million into land he doesn't own outright. He wants more foot traffic, and he's planning for a downtown that looks different in a few years than it does today.
"That's going to bring a lot more bikers, scooters, walkers," Ferguson said. "Get people off the coach and get them down here to the EDGE District."
The timing lines up with a separate, well-known fact about that neighborhood: the Tampa Bay Rays' contract to play at Tropicana Field runs through the 2028 season, and the team's long-term future in St. Petersburg remains an open question. A sports bar that has built decades of business around game-day crowds has an obvious interest in a second source of steady foot traffic that doesn't depend on whether a baseball team is still in town. Even now, Ferguson has said demand for parking near his bar outpaces the supply of one of downtown's largest garages. A car-free trail connection solves a problem he's already living with.
There's a smaller detail buried in the lease terms that says something about how cautiously everyone involved is treating this. Ferguson has said he doesn't plan to build any permanent structures on the leased land, because the agreement includes a reverter clause tied to the unlikely event that rail service is ever reactivated on the corridor. City officials describe that scenario as close to impossible, but the clause is a standard part of rail-to-trail deals, and it shapes what can and can't be built along the route for now.
Don't Expect to Walk It This Year
Here's where a lot of the coverage so far has been easy to misread. Securing the land is a milestone, not a finish line. The sequence looked like this:
- February 2026: City council votes to purchase the 0.86-mile CSX corridor between 5th Avenue North and 1st Avenue South.
- May 2026: The city drafts two ground leases with Ferg's covering the parcels that run through the sports bar's property.
- July 9, 2026: City council unanimously approves both 99-year lease agreements.
- August 4, 2026: The Trust for Public Land announces it has completed the $7 million acquisition and will transfer the corridor to the city.
What comes next is planning and construction, and city officials have said that process will likely take several years. If you're picturing a ribbon-cutting this fall, that's not what's happening. What actually happened is that a piece of land that sat in bureaucratic limbo since 2003 finally changed hands, cleared its legal hurdles, and is now, for the first time, on a real path toward becoming a trail instead of just an idea on a planning map.
For anyone who lives near the EDGE District, the Historic Gas Plant District, or the stretch of Central Avenue around Ferg's, that's still useful to know. The rusted tracks you've been driving past aren't slated for another decade of dormancy. They're spoken for. The people who will benefit most immediately are the ones already walking the Pinellas Trail wondering why it doesn't quite reach downtown, and the businesses along that corridor betting, like Ferguson, that more people on foot is worth the wait.
If you're weighing how projects like this shape a neighborhood's long-term trajectory, that's the kind of local read the Leisa Erickson Group brings to every conversation about St. Petersburg real estate. Let's Connect.
