On a sunny Saturday last month, a dedicated tribe of Dan Kiley aficionados gathered in the beleaguered park he designed.

Make that two dedicated tribes. One toured the garden as part of a two-day symposium (see Mary Mulhern's story) organized by City Councilperson Linda Saul-Sena and Sarasota landscape architect Sue Thompson. The other, a hard-working crew of young architects who call themselves YARD OPS, spent the morning trimming overgrown trees, clearing concrete pavers and picking up more than 20 bags of debris and garbage.

Neither group can declare victory just yet in the fight to reclaim NCNB Plaza. But these activists are emblematic of an encouraging trend that's surfacing throughout Tampa Bay: They're not just complaining about the loss of public space - they're doing something about it.

When Sue Thompson heard that NationsBank Park Plaza, as it is now called by the city, was in danger, she was appalled. An Indiana native, she'd grown up near one of Kiley's most famous works, the Miller House Garden. She'd gone on to study his designs at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; he has "influenced so many people in our profession that it's amazing." And she'd actually met him; she took a studio class with his associate Peter Schaudt, who brought him into the classroom to talk about his work.It was almost impossible for her not to have heard of his achievement in Tampa.

"I knew all about it before I ever came here," said Thompson, who moved to Sarasota two years ago.

She hadn't heard about its sorry state, though. Then, this past February, she attended a lecture in Tampa by Charles Birnbaum, who leads the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative. In the course of talking about preserving post-World War II gardens, Birnbaum mentioned that the Kiley park was in danger because of the new art museum.

Birnbaum had himself been trying to save the garden; he first heard of its possible demise from the Planet's Susan Edwards, who wrote a series of articles about the garden beginning in March 2003. Birnbaum believes the park and building are "the last great civic expression that Tampa has created that is all its own" - as unique to the city as Bayshore Boulevard. He mobilized concern through his Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington, D.C., which published two books featuring the park, and makes the case for saving the garden on its website (www.tclf.org/landslide/kiley_tampa/index.htm). Those efforts have drawn national and international attention - but they've largely fallen on deaf ears here.

After hearing Birnbaum's talk, Thompson began organizing a letter-writing campaign to convince the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation to include the park on its 2005 list of Most Endangered Historic Places. She succeeded, and also organized, with Saul-Sena, the "Save the Kiley Park Symposium" in May.

"We thought it was important for people to know why people from Harvard and Berkeley and Sweden would think this garden is important," Thompson said. "We wanted to make sure that people understood what they had."

YARD OPS' Chris Vela, 28, remembers the park from his teenage years. As a Plant High student, he skateboarded down a long ramp through to the park and listened to rock concerts in the small amphitheater overlooking the river."I grew up with this park, in a way," said Vela, who left Tampa to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design. He returned and took a job with a local firm, and with his former co-worker Philip Crosby, 27, founded Young Architects Resisting Destruction Of Public Spaces.

The pair describe YARD OPS as "passionate young designers willing to speak out against the destruction of public spaces." Their first public cause is saving NationsBank Park Plaza, and they chose the high-profile moment of the symposium weekend to make their first public splash: the morning cleanup effort, aka YARD OPS 1.0. (Other OPS-ters contributing sweat equity that day: Margery Kraus, Mike Dailey, Richard Headland, Kim Headland, Gary Smith and Susan Crosby.)

Already, there is talk of forming a garden club to care for the park, similar to the one that looks after Plant Park across the river.

Vela and Crosby of YARD OPS say restoring and reconnecting the park to the people is imperative and might not cost a lot of money in the short term. Trees could be trimmed and replaced for relatively little, and sinking pavers could be reset into place. The alternative is unthinkable.

"We thought about the future, and [the park] could become another site for condos that could further limit the public's access to the waterfront," Vela said. Without viable and engaging public spaces downtown, Crosby fears the new condo boom could turn into a "vertical suburbia," with residents driving their cars into parking garages and ascending to their homes without connecting with neighbors.

Vela and Crosby are indeed passionate about the power of design to improve a community and its quality of life.

"We want these parks to speak," Vela said. "We want these buildings to speak to the community."

The duo have other public space fights on their radar screen, among them the BayWalk issue (see story above). They also plan to move beyond the Kiley effort to raise awareness of the role of public space through events, speeches, fellowships and other means. Crosby said, "We're just trying to provide new ideas."

On the day of the garden tour, Saul-Sena was happy to see YARD OPS at work."I'm very pleased to see their energy," Saul-Sena said.

The longtime city councilperson is helping plan a fundraiser in the park to show the private sector's growing involvement and concern. She's feeling some optimism that the park will see better days.

"Under the Vinoly [art museum] plan, the park was history," Saul-Sena said. "Now that the Vinoly plan is off the table, the park is save-able. We're trying to raise awareness of the importance of it."

First, they'll need the support of Mayor Pam Iorio.

As it stands now, Iorio told the Planet, rehabbing the park is not a priority. She said she will remain focused on her top issues of finding a new home for the Tampa Museum, creating an avenue of the arts downtown and transforming Curtis Hixon Park and the proposed riverwalk into vibrant public-private spaces.

"I've walked Kiley many, many times," Iorio said. "It's a total disaster."

She cited the litany of park problems: it leaks into the parking garage below, the trees are wrong and overgrown, it would need expensive ongoing maintenance if it were to be restored properly.

Iorio insists she will not devote any thought or money to the park until the rest of her downtown agenda is settled. The mayor said, "There's just no need for us to make a decision right now on that park."

And, Iorio added, when the day does arrive to deal with Kiley's creation, the neighboring building owner will have to be part of the solution as well.

The 31-story building (known as the "beer can" to most in Tampa) was purchased in January by Miami-based America's Capital Partners (ACP) at the bargain price of $35.5 million. (It was worth as much as $123 million just after its completion.) ACP has since renamed it the Rivergate Center, according to its leasing agent, Trammel Crow Company. The building loses its biggest tenant this month when Bank of America closes most of its offices there. Sykes Enterprises is the building's other major occupant.

ACP's Tampa-based vice president, Michael Lerner, did not return telephone calls for comment on whether his company was interested in restoring the park. There would appear to be no legal requirement to do so; when the park was built, the deal was for the city to maintain it while the building owner paid for design and construction.

Politics and cost aside, the park's proponents hold out hope for the future of Dan Kiley's innovative garden.

"As long as it's still here," Vela concludes, "the fight's not over."

To find about more about YARD OPS or its events, contact the young architects at yardops@yahoo.com. To join in Sue Thompson's campaign to save the park, e-mail letters of support to savekileypark@comcast.com. Weekly Planet Editor David Warner contributed to this report.