By Jen Ring
Pep Rally Inc. co-founders Joshua Pearson and Greg Bryon aren’t the only muralists and designers who’ve left their mark on Water Street Tampa, but they were the first.
When Water Street Tampa developer Strategic Property Partners (SPP) reached out to Pep Rally in 2017, they were still in Phase 0, pre-construction and contemplating how Sparkman Wharf, the waterfront entertainment destination at the heart of Water Street Tampa, would appear to guests.
Instead of stepping into the space, as the team is accustomed to, Pep Rally had to work from paper plans showing gray stacked shipping containers in the center of a waterfront park.
“You had to envision a lot of it because it was still the old iteration where you had the large buildings,” Pearson says. “They were just starting demo on some of the buildings that are no longer there.”
It’s become a destination for people from all over the country.
FROM ‘THE ARTISTS BEHIND SPARKMAN WHARF’S SIGNATURE LOOK’
Located at the park’s center, visitors see Sparkman Wharf shipping containers from all angles, something Pep Rally considered in their initial planning process.
“They showed us a few renderings,” Pearson says. “The thing we had to wrap our brains around the most was creating something continuous, so you don’t experience it from any one side. We wanted every side and every experience to be impactful no matter where you are standing in Sparkman Wharf.”
The biggest challenge with the Sparkman Wharf project, Pearson says, was painting all the shipping containers individually at their studio. These are the containers that rest above and around the working food stalls and tell Tampa’s story through a series of iconic images.
“And they weren’t laid out the way that they’d be laid out at Sparkman Wharf, so we had to number the containers, number the sides, and lay them out perfectly because they weren’t by each other,” Pearson recalls. “So the day that those got lifted into place on a crane was the day they came together. That was a stressful moment.”
But in the end, the team pulled it off so well they earned several additional design jobs in the neighborhood. As new restaurants moved in, they often approached Pep Rally to help with branding.
Proper House Group—the group behind the popular Rooster & The Till and Nebraska Mini-Mart restaurants—brought three new restaurant concepts to Sparkman Wharf over the following five years (Gallito Taqueria, Dang Dude, and Gorditos). They commissioned Pep Rally to design the logos, menu and visual identities for both Dang Dude and Gorditos. They didn’t do the initial design for Gallitos, but they’ve been doing menu redesigns for them lately.
“All the Proper House Restaurants we have a hand in,” says Pearson.
The containers of Sparkman are placed.
With each new restaurant, Pep Rally artists get to try the food, design the menus and the uniforms. They’re big fans of the shaved ice at Gorditos, which Pearson tells Current is very refreshing during the hottest parts of the year.
“Sometimes when we’re doing murals, we’ll take the team over there and all get shaved ice,” says Pearson. “That’s a go-to for us for sure.”
One of the things Pep Rally likes most about working with SPP is their commitment to giving opportunities to local talent.
“The amount of local chefs that have come through here is incredible,” Pearson says. “It’s a testament to SPP’s vision for Tampa and really taking restaurant concepts to the next level. 3 Corners Pizza inside Heron and some of the others have become very established restaurants, and they started as a shipping container.
“That’s the most exciting part for us,” Pearson continues. “We love being involved with the chefs, specifically Proper House. They are so animated and excited about their concepts. At Sparkman Wharf, you can be a little more playful, and it becomes almost a test. It’s like a trial. If it works at Sparkman, where you get a really good cross-section of people, it could be more successful as a larger brick and mortar, so it’s a cool testing ground.”
Both say it’s fantastic to see the vision take flight and become the hub it has. Seven years ago, SPP pitched the shipping container idea to Pep Rally as a temporary installation.
“It’s been so wildly successful, it’s absolutely not temporary,” says Pearson. “Now it feels like a staple of downtown. It feels like a must-see destination.”
Before you sample the street food or drink your first beer at Lighthaus, you can tell Sparkman Wharf is an exciting place. It simply looks the part. People walk around in Lightning gear pre- and post-game with trays of food, beer and ice cream cones. And at its center are Pep Rally’s painted shipping containers, announcing your arrival in Tampa with bold cursive letters surrounded by waves, marine life, tropical foliage and sand.
“At the time, I don’t think we understood the amount of people who would come to see it,” says Bryon. “It’s so much different now to go there and see a cruise ship dock and 10,000 people roaming around Sparkman Wharf. It’s become a destination for people from all over the country. It’s one of the first things they get to see docking in Tampa.”