A struggle ensued between various business and civic interests over whether the downtown waterfront was to become primarily a commercial port, or a waterfront park for use of tourists and as an amenity for adjacent residential neighborhoods. Straub’s eventual solution was to preserve the downtown waterfront for park and tourist use by promoting C. A. Harvey’s proposed port further south at Bayboro, in the vicinity of 10th Avenue South for commercial use. Debate over the waterfront park began in 1902 after the Board of Trade, the predecessor to the Chamber of Commerce, approved a resolution calling for a public bayfront park between Second and Fifth Avenues North. Straub backed the resolution through editorials in the Times. But the first real advance of the park vision did not occur until 1905 when a J. M. Lewis presented a plan to turn virtually the entire downtown waterfront into a park. Lewis’ plan became a major issue in the 1906 city elections, and the public waterfront supporters eventually won a majority of the seats on the city council.

In February 1906 a waterfront owner planned to build a number of rental cottages on the waterfront. Concerned that this would unleash a spate of low-end rental units on the waterfront, the city responded by passing an ordinance that ordered no buildings other than boathouses or bathing pavilions were to be built on the waterfront unless approved by the city. In April the Board of Trade, under the leadership of C. Perry Snell who developed residential neighborhoods in Northeast St. Petersburg and Snell Isle, began to buy up waterfront property and hold it in trust until the city could afford to turn the property into parkland.

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