Paul Hetrick spent the summer of 2009 outside in the relentless Florida sun, with a paintbrush in his hand and a community-driven motivation in his heart. He had been asked to produce a mural that would bring life to an ordinary wall in downtown Plant City.
This week, Hetrick returned to the 14-by-70-foot work of art that took him 400 hours to complete. But he wasn’t there to admire his piece. Instead, he was trying to assess the deterioration that has been plaguing the mural for the last year.
“It’s perplexing to me, because I’ve painted a lot of brick walls in my years of sign painting, and this one has responded differently than many of them,” Hetrick said.
An Ignited History
In 1974, local artist John Briggs donated his time to paint a mural as a tribute to Plant City’s iconic railroad history on an exterior wall of a historic, multi-business building on Collins Street.
But the mural barely lived to see its 30th birthday.
In 2005, Angelica Ruth Lockett was charged with seven counts of arson after tossing a lit cigarette onto some bedding in the back of a shop owned by her ex-boyfriend, Mark Simpson. The shop was in the 100 block of South Collins Street, where Briggs’ mural was located.
While investigating the case, detectives said Lockett had intended to cause damage to Simpson’s shop, but the flames got out of hand and burned all of the building’s seven businesses to the ground.
The mural suffered smoke damage, but its wall was the only part of the building that remained standing.
Three years later, the wall was torn down. The mural was not protected as a historical piece, and city officials decided it would be in the best interest of safety to demolish the wall.
Some Plant City residents thought the mural could have been salvaged.
“A lot of people here aren’t happy that they tore that wall down,” Valerie DeArmond, owner of Valerie’s Attic, said. “One night it was there, and the next morning, it wasn’t.”
DeArmond’s shop, which opened in 2013, is just across the street from the former site of the burned building. Now it is a parking lot and park area behind Whistle Stop Gourmet Coffee and Eatery and Krazy Kup.
In 2009, Jerry Lofstrom, owner of Whistle Stop, decided to organize a committee and plan a new mural that would also depict Plant City’s history, as a replacement for the mural that had been destroyed.
Briggs said he had been asked to paint the new mural, but he refused to take on the project unless the wall was first prepared with stucco. After designating this condition, he did not receive a call back, he said.
Paul Hetrick, owner of Paul’s Hand Lettering Service, was commissioned for the new mural, to be painted on the rear exterior wall of Whistle Stop. Lofstrom’s mural committee comprised himself, Hetrick, Scott Anderson, Fred Johnson and Sandee Sytsma (chairwoman).
The committee had to fundraise for the mural and Hetrick’s labor. Donations primarily came from the families of the community members who are depicted in the mural.
The mural, named “The Heart of Plant City,” was completed and dedicated to the city in January 2010.
A Deteriorating Present
In recent months, some downtown business owners and other community members have noticed that the mural is in poor condition.
“It should be lasting, but it’s peeling right off,” DeArmond said.
She said she has also seen some people going up to the mural and purposely pulling off chunks of paint that have started to peel.
The end result is a torn and tattered work of art in need of intervention.
Lofstrom said he noticed the damage about five months ago and discussed it with Sytsma about three months ago.
Though the wall had been sealed two years ago so that the paint would retain its bright colors, the committee has just recently become aware that the base material was fundamentally problematic.
“Not being aware that there were two different kinds of brick, we decided to start on the new mural … but it’s not the kind of brick, apparently, that can be painted on,” Sytsma said.
Sytsma said there is some money in the committee’s budget, leftover from the initial fundraising. But it is not quite enough.
“We’re not exactly sure what we’re going to do at this point,” Sytsma said. “I don’t have the money to completely paint over it and start again.”
Though the city passed an ordinance in 2009 to ban any new murals in the historic district, the ordinance did not affect maintenance of existing murals.
Hetrick said the peeling paint is only one of the issues at hand. Below the surface, the grout and even the bricks themselves are deteriorating into a sand-like consistency.
“It’s just pouring out of there,” Hetrick said. “You can rub your finger back and forth and it’s coming out.”
The mural originally cost about $25,000. To redo it would cost at least this sum, or more, if the committee decided to resurface the wall with stucco this time.
Hetrick said he has recently been in contact with the committee and hopes to meet with them soon to determine the best course of action.
“There’s a lot of money spent on that mural, and if there’s something we could do that would permanentize it … that’s what I really want to happen,” Hetrick said.
Contact Catherine Sinclair at csinclair@plantcityobserver.com.