Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park in Tampa, Florida

Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park is a City of Tampa park at 600 N Ashley Drive, open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., that Tampa Parks and Recreation says attracts over one million people annually to its special events.

The City's Curtis Hixon page lists park administration at (813) 274-8615 and the maintenance office at (813) 274-8677, and it groups the park's amenities into the features shown below. The City describes the great lawn as an urban open space for festivals and concerts, with sloped and terraced edges for viewing from a distance and room for sports or outdoor yoga classes.

At the dog run, each person may bring one large dog or two small dogs of 30 pounds and under at one time, and the City requires dogs to be at least 6 months old and display County license tags. The City page also notes that the Tampa Museum of Art holds one of the largest Greek and Roman antiquities collections in the southeastern United States.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the City of Tampa Curtis Hixon, Riverwalk and City Clerk mayor pages, the Tampa Museum of Art history page, the Friends of the Riverwalk timeline, the Curtis Hixon project pages of SWA/Balsley, Stantec and TLC Engineers, and two news reports from 2010 and 2011.

Curtis Hixon was the 45th mayor of Tampa, serving from November 3, 1943 until his death on May 21, 1956, according to the City Clerk's biography.

The Clerk records that Hixon was born November 23, 1890 in Louisville, Alabama, studied pharmacology in Atlanta, and moved to Tampa in 1914 to work as a pharmacist. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a pharmacist's mate during World War I, then bought the King's Drugstore on Franklin Street. He served on the Tampa City Council from 1929 through 1937 and was elected to the Hillsborough County Commission in 1939 for the Sulphur Springs and Seminole Heights districts, where he helped lay out the street plans for Sulphur Springs.

Hixon defeated three term incumbent Robert Chancey in the 1943 mayoral race and won again in 1947, 1951 and 1955. The Clerk credits his administration with several moves that set the shape of postwar Tampa: Drew Field was transferred to the City on October 15, 1947 and is now Tampa International Airport; in August 1949 the City bought 720 more acres beside the airport from the federal government; in 1947 Tampa acquired the former McCloskey and Company facilities at Hooker's Point for the port; in 1953 the City annexed Sulphur Springs, Rocky Point and the areas up to Fowler Avenue, adding 91,000 residents; and in 1956 the 2,000 acre Henderson Field Air Training Base was acquired for the University of South Florida and Tampa Industrial Park. The 1949 charter revision expanded the mayor's duties to include budget preparation and the negotiation of sewer, water, seawall and other city contracts.

Before the park, the riverbank held Curtis Hixon Hall, the auditorium and convention center that the City Clerk says was named in Hixon's honor beside the Hillsborough River after his death.

A first, simpler park later occupied the site. The engineering firm Stantec, describing the background to its own project, says the original Curtis Hixon Park had few amenities, a poor connection to the river and downtown, and no events. The Riverwalk itself reached the area much earlier: the Friends of the Riverwalk timeline records that the Riverwalk project was conceived by Mayor Bill Poe in 1975 as a bicentennial event and that a waterfront walkway of wooden planks was installed in the Curtis Hixon Park area in 1976. The landscape architects at SWA/Balsley write that their master plan for the new park called for removing an old museum and a sprawling parking garage that had cut the city off from its riverfront.

The current 8 acre park opened in 2010, according to the Friends of the Riverwalk timeline, under a master plan that tied the park, the Riverwalk and two new museum buildings together.

83 Degrees Media reported that the park officially opened in late January 2010, two weeks ahead of the new Tampa Museum of Art. The Tampa Museum of Art history page says the City and the museum's trustees chose architect Stanley Saitowitz in 2006 to build a new 66,000 square foot facility on a new site in Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park, that construction began in April 2008, and that the museum opened to the public on February 6, 2010. The same page's timeline gives the building opening as February 5, 2010, so the museum's own page carries two dates one day apart.

Several firms describe their roles on their own project pages. SWA/Balsley lists the City of Tampa as client and the park at 8 acres, and describes a Great Lawn framed on either end by fountain plazas, terraced lawn panels carved into the slope below the museum terraces, and a play area and urban dog run along the Riverwalk. Stantec says it served as engineer of record, providing surveying, civil engineering and transportation engineering for the park and adjacent streets, and lists Thomas Balsley Associates as architect. TLC Engineers says it was the electrical engineer and that Thomas Balsley was selected in an open design competition.

The park was also designed with its own water systems. Stantec lists irrigation with reclaimed water and a hydrodynamic treatment system that cleans stormwater before it enters the Hillsborough River, and the construction journal ENR reported in January 2011 that the park uses reclaimed water for irrigation and that remnants of old buildings, underground plumbing and concrete piers on the 8 acre site posed challenges during construction.

Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park is one of four parks the City of Tampa lists along the Tampa Riverwalk.

The other three on the City's list are Cotanchobee Park, Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park and Water Works Park. The Riverwalk grew in stages around it, and the Friends of the Riverwalk timeline dates the pieces nearest the park as follows.

The City's Riverwalk page lists the Tampa Museum of Art and the Glazer Children's Museum among the Riverwalk museums and the Pirate Water Taxi among the ways to travel on the water; the park's own dock is one of the Pirate Water Taxi stops, according to the City's park page. At the south edge of the park, SWA/Balsley notes, a pedestrian bridge now connects Curtis Hixon to the renovated Kiley Garden, which sits one story above grade.