What do the Truman Waterfront Park, North Roosevelt Boulevard and its pedestrian crosswalks and the Lofts at Bahama Village have in common? All three fueled years of fussing and fuming — and all three turned out just fine.

Before you get out a basket of “yeah, buts,” I hear you. North Roosevelt is still a horror show of asphalt and decrepit retail strips. We’re about to get deep into outrage territory as the city decides how to revamp the 8-year-old Coffee Butler Amphitheater (and I’m not just talking about artificial grass on the “hill of seats”). We’ll have to wait another year or so for the last chapters of the Bahama Village lofts story, but for now, they sure have come together well.

Here’s my point: Sometimes we gotta wait.

We’ve lost the art of waiting. We’ve misplaced the art of silence. We’ve substituted instant outrage complete with astounding accusations sans proof of mischief. God bless social media, which I’ve loved since the 1990s, but it sure makes it simple to scribble a “what were they thinking” memo to the world and stir up unfounded vitriol. I’ve done that.

I’ve recently spent an inordinate amount of time traversing North Roosevelt and except for that bollixed-up water main repair at the Triangle on Sept. 3, which really was outrage-worthy — I mean, where the heck were cops to direct traffic? — the boulevard traffic moves pretty well. The promenade remains a decent place to wander along the waterfront and the coconut palms (should have been sabals, but that’s another column) delight the tourists.

That’s thanks in great measure to the $41.5 million re-do of the main drag into Old Town. Completed in August 2014, the reconstruction of the boulevard took almost three years, every single day of it accompanied by a chorus of “We hate this. We hate FDOT and we sure as heck hate the city.” Most of us have long forgotten how we complained during those three years.

Then there’s the pedestrian crosswalks, which were installed in 2019. You know, the ones where bikers and walkers punch a button and everyone’s gotta stop while they cross. I wish I had a dollar for every social media post that predicted mass carnage from tourist-driven golf carts and cars run amok. (There have been accidents and at least one fatality.) We moaned and groaned about how no one could figure them out, about how they interfered with getting to and fro and about how stupid they were. A bunch of us adamantly suggested those lazy folks go to the next intersection that had a signal light.

But here we are six years later and they’re mostly working. Except for the truly entitled and seriously oblivious who insist on crowding the crosswalks or speeding through with nary a look, we’ve figured out how to stop, look and go when the lights flash again.

Do you remember the waterfront wasteland?

As I wrote earlier, we haven’t read the final chapters on the Bahama Village lofts, which are scheduled to open soon. It’s been a long, slow slog since groundbreaking in September 2023 and there were years of bickering before that. What should they look like (quaint Conch cottages were preferred, though no one could explain how you could get a couple hundred cottages in that space), who qualified, how much and who the heck were getting kickbacks. Everyone had an opinion and whataboutisms abounded.

I’ve watched those 3.2 acres of fill and debris become a darn fine addition to the Truman Waterfront Park and the neighborhood. I was around there on Monday watching the crews plant trees and admiring the spectacular mosaics on the building that faces the new Frederick Douglass Community Center on Olivia Street. I’m sure there will be challenges ahead, not the least of which will be parking and traffic flow in that congested, weird intersection. Give it time. We’ll figure it out.

The mother of all kerfuffles was Truman Waterfront Park. It took decades to figure out what to do with the virtually useless, 33-acre property deeded to the city by the Navy in 2002. In 2014 the city broke ground for the first phase. Cue the unrelenting outrage chorus. Too much concrete. No trees. No plants. No grass. No shade. And it went on like that for years. I got tired of reminding the tree huggers that big trees from little seeds grow — but it takes time. Their response: “Plant fully grown trees.” Sigh. Arborists they are not.

Today it’s all but impossible to remember the wasteland you navigated to the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Ingham and Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. And in case you’re wondering, yes, the grass does grow back — completely — after the powerboat folks muck it up.

Lot of goings-on these days to fuel instant outrage. Hard to resist piling on. But here’s advice that works at more than crosswalks: Stop. Look. Listen. Patience, folks, patience.

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